The implications of Information Foraging Theory on designing user-centered websites have not gone unnoticed. Jakob Nielsen and Jared Spool, among others, have put forth considered recommendations on how to enhance information scent on the web. Most of their guidelines, however, tend to assume that the designer has direct control over the explicit words used in the interface. While this is certainly the case for browse-based websites dependent on site-wide navigation and hyperlinks, it breaks down for search interfaces where both content and navigation are completely dynamic.

While the principles for amplifying information scent in search-based interfaces are complimentary to those of browse-based models, they are yet distinct from them. Understanding how information scent applies to search first requires an understanding of human search behavior and the factors that affect it.

People are just like bears (only less fur)

Marcia Bates' berrypicking model

In her landmark 1989 paper, Marcia Bates outlined search as an evolutionary process. Users often begin with a general query, glean a few nuggets from the initial results, reformulate their query based on that new knowledge, and then repeat this process. Like a bear foraging for food in the forest, knowledge seekers tend to rapidly migrate from one patch of information to the next.

A Bloomberg terminal concept by IDEO

While this iterative behavior is true of virtually everyone using search, there are two key factors that distinguish some users from others: domain expertise and search expertise (though John Ferrara has identified several additional factors). Some websites, for example, may be able to assume that users are highly literate in a specific topic, while other websites may need to design for a range of expertise in a variety of subjects (the case for web search engines). In addition, users experienced at using search interfaces will be more capable of utilizing sophisticated search tools, but less experienced users will demand less complexity.

Though domain and search expertise separate some users from others, a given user may have different goals at different times. The two primary types of goals are recall and exploration. Recall involves a straightforward retrieval of a specific fact or document (for instance, “what it the population of Brazil?”), and can generally be accomplished in a short amount of time. Exploration, on the other hand, is a more subjective process. Choosing where to go on holiday, for example, is a complex question that may take hours or even days to decide.

Carrots and sticks: designing for information scent

Understanding the iterative nature of search and the contexts from which users operate is the foundation for knowing how to effectively harness information scent to improve the usability of search. Above all else, Information Foraging Theory has taught us that users need to feel as if they are always “getting warmer.” As a user searches, information scent must grow increasingly poignant, emanating a feeling of progress to the user. When information scent is strong, users are confident that they’re headed in the right direction. When it’s weak, users may be uncertain of what to next, or they may abandon their search altogether.

When information scent is strong, users are confident that they’re headed in the right direction. When it’s weak, users may be uncertain of what to next, or they may abandon their search altogether.

There are many practical methods for increasing information scent in search. Some of them bear resemblance to Nielsen and Spool’s original recommendations, but are deserving of further elaboration in the context of search interfaces. We will trace the user’s journey from the searchbox, to the list of search results, and end with query refinement using faceted navigation.

The searchbox

In order for a user to have a successful search experience, he must first locate the searchbox and successfully enter a query. These two obvious requirements lead us to our first two design recommendations.

The searchbox should look like a searchbox
Cute attempts to drastically re-style the searchbox usually end in failure. The universal language of the searchbox consists of a border, white background, and a corresponding button that says “search.” In addition to expecting the searchbox to look a certain way, users have also come to expect it in a particular location: the top right corner of the page. The further one deviates from this expected appearance and placement, the more one risks that users will not actually discover the searchbox.

Provide as-you-type query suggestions
Whether the subject is a particular Icelandic volcano or the president of Iran, users are often not sure exactly what to type in order to find what they’re looking for. A little help can go a long way in getting the user off to the right start. As-you-type query suggestions reduce spelling errors and, equally important, give users a sense of confidence that they have entered a dependable query.

Autocomplete at Globrix, eBay, and Last.fm

Search results

Assuming that the user found the searchbox and managed to enter a query, she will then be presented with a set of results matching that query. Consisting of at least a title and description, search results are typically dense with information. The challenge becomes separating the signal from the noise.

Indicate the number of results matching the query
The number of matching results has a significant impact on the user’s confidence in his query. If he sees that a large number of results have been returned, he can safely assume that his query is adequate, whereas only a handful of results may be an indicator that he may have misspelled a word or is simply searching for something that doesn’t exist.

John Ferrara on Titles

Use descriptive titles
In order for users to detect information scent in search results, the results must be digestible at a glance. Titles are usually the first recipients of the user’s attention, so it’s important that they accurately describe the content that they represent. Avoid using file names as titles, which are often cryptic and usually contain little information scent.

Highlight matching words
In addition to descriptive titles, hit highlighting is one of the most helpful cues on the search results page, making queried words immediately stand out to the user. The user can quickly evaluate the list of results by simply observing the greatest concentration of highlighted words on the page.

Make visited links discernible from unvisited links
A visual indicator of which pages have already been visited provides useful scent to the user. Whether she is trying to re-find a page she found yesterday, or trying to avoid duplicating her efforts, a visited link color is very helpful.

Yahoo's best first pattern

More detail for top results, less detail for the rest
One of Peter Pirolli‘s interesting discoveries is that users tend to prefer more verbose results in some circumstances (when there is no time constraint or when there are few results to choose from), and more concise descriptions at other times (under a deadline or when there are many results). How can these opposing cases be reconciled? An ideal compromise is the best first pattern, in which extensive metadata is presented for the top one to three results, while more concise views are provided for all of the subsequent results.

Avoid zero results
A search result page that has no results is a serious roadblock to users. It will either delay their journey, or cause them to give up completely. It’s important to do everything possible to avoid zero result pages from ever occurring. Two helpful tools are automatic spelling corrections and synonym dictionaries. If the user has obviously misspelled a word in the query that would yield zero results, it’s best to automatically correct the spelling for the user, being careful to notify the user of the modified query.

Faceted navigation

Frequency can be indicated both numerically and with horizontal bars

So the user entered a query and glanced over the first set of results. What now? If the user already found what he was looking for, then job done. But chances are he still has a long way to go. Faceted navigation is the best available tool for facilitating the evolutionary flow of search. It both helps the user understand the shape of the data, and gives him the ability to drill down to a very specific slice of the results.

Show the number of matching results for each filter
Showing result counts for filters helps users understand the overall composition of the results. They provide cues that feed into our decision-making process, influencing how we decide to further slice the data. In addition to providing a numeric count, subtle visual indicators such as horizontal bars can make the distribution of results even more immediately obvious to the user.

Use breadcrumbs to indicate the user’s query and applied filters
In addition to choosing where to go next, users need to know where they are currently and how they got there. Breadcrumbs provide this trail, and also enable users to quickly get back in the event of having taken a wrong turn. Each breadcrumb should be independently removable, while Greg Nudelman has outlined an even more forgiving breadcrumb that allows for the swapping of one filter for a related one.

An internal knowledge management application at British broadcaster ITV

Make metadata clickable
When filterable metadata is shown for a search result, that metadata should be clickable to allow for organic filtering of the results. For example, when searching a catalogue of books that presents the author alongside each result, clicking on the author’s name should cause that author to be added to the query as a filter.

Find ways to meaningfully visualize facets
Many facets lend themselves to a certain kind of presentation. Whether the facet consists of cities, prices, keywords or categories, there is probably a corresponding visualisation well suited for each, from a map to a slider to plain text. Effective visualisations are ones that make the data tangible and easy to comprehend.

2010 House of Representative Election from the New York Times, Google Stock Screener

A fairytale ending

Information scent plays a valuable role in making the digital landscape easier to traverse. By applying principles that amplify information scent, we can help facilitate a state of flow that enables users to engage in productive, frictionless, enjoyable search experiences.

If there is a future for designers and marketers in big business, it lies not in brand, nor in “UX”, nor in any colorful way of framing total control over a consumer, such as “brand equity”, “brand loyalty”, the “end to end customer journey”, or “experience ownership”. It lies instead in encouraging behavioral change and explicitly shaping culture in a positive and lasting way.

Brand is a phenomenon that has emerged over the last century as a method of differentiation and control, with marketing beating a drum of “brand messaging”, “consistent impressions”, and a single “brand value”. User Experience is a more recent unicorn to chase, with designers claiming to drive business success through a focus on a prescriptive customer experience. There is a long history of extremely fragile collaboration between the offices of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the traditional shepherds of behavior-by-design, as designers become enamored with brand embodiment in products, and marketers striving to “own” the product specifications, features and functions. The fragility of the bond is obvious, as both groups frequently disparage the other in both private and public venues. As blanket generalizations, designers describe marketers as less honest then themselves, and disparage the Product Requirement Document as a laundry-list of jargon and nonsense. Marketers, in turn, often view designers (and by proxy, the product itself) as a means to an end; the goal – revenue, market share, and brand equity – will be achieved through business rules, not through creative endeavors.

Both groups are to fault, and both groups are perilously ignoring the huge potential at their fingertips. As members of both groups cling to brand and UX as differentiators, they have mistakenly focused on control as a means of generating revenue. In fact, neither brand nor UX will serve as the driving force behind financial success in the coming decades. “User experience” is just a new name for old thinking, and “User experience practitioners” exhibit the same hubris that has long plagued “brand thinking”: the large name-as-mindshare mentality that a company can own a space, a segment, or even a consumer.

clients struggle with the reality of brand complacency

The Problems of Brand and User Experience
For most of the twentieth century, brand – and the marketing machine that created it – ruled the culture of developed countries. The earliest parts of the 1900s boasted brands built around industrialism and production, and these acted as literal and figurative crests, positioned as major pillars of production. The mid part of the century led to the family-focused brands positioned as domesticated icons of class and consumption. And the late 90’s exposed global brands, dominated by large, faceless and relatively unknown holding companies making profit simply by waiting for an opportune time to offload a company to another company. Yet the rules of the game are in deep flux, due to sustainability, a credit meltdown, and an awareness of humanitarian efforts in developing countries. The basic, fundamental properties of major brands are increasingly questioned, as evidenced by the disparaged and embattled Ford and Citibank, and the questions of these mega-brands are more commonly rhetorical and pejorative.

In spite of this, brand equity facilitated by market share is still a goal of the Fortune 500, and it is common to hear clients – both marketers and UX professionals – speak of “winning” in relationship to the user experience.

Brand complacency indicates a trend towards commoditization

Simultaneously, however, clients struggle with the reality of brand complacency. They describe how their customers have become familiar with a particular brand-purchasing behavior, and continue to perform that rote behavior based on circumstances. This includes placement on the shelf, color of a label, and the realization that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. There is no “relationship” with the customer; this is a fragile connection that is the consumptive equivalent to taking the same route to work each day. This is a scary reality to face, as brand complacency implies a dependency on switching-costs as a means of retaining market-share. Brand complacency indicates a trend towards commoditization.

The Threat of Commoditization
A commodity is something that has no qualitative differentiation. Mass production drives commoditization within a particular product line, while the traditional “bunch and swarm” mentality of the marketplace drives commoditization across product lines. A desire to create a new set of interactions is an urge to escape this push towards sameness. Innovation is a business goal to produce products that have qualitative differentiation, and there are various forms of innovation – such as disruptive innovation – which are intended to produce massive qualitative differentiation.

In western civilization, the artifact is continuing to diminish in relevance and importance. While people continue to consume things, these things are increasingly a means to an end. Our relative wealth has positioned even the lower-middle class in a position where there is time for leisure, entertainment, and emotionally charged experiences.

Interesting, too, is the speed at which the digital artifact has moved from being exclusive and expensive to nearly free and ubiquitous. Software, once priced at hundreds of dollars and appropriately as scarce, is now widely available for no cost; networked services have enabled content feeds across artifacts, rendering even some services as irrelevant in the larger scheme of the competitive landscape. As an example, for many years, Microsoft offered a for-fee product called Outlook, which manages electronic mail. Google then offered a free service called Gmail, which also manages electronic mail. Then, as Google externalized the Google mail feed through a series of APIs, mail can be embedded in unlikely places – including other products, such as an instant messenger client (like Trillian), or even on other websites. The “designed product” has become less interesting and relevant, and no matter the innovations pushed by Google or Microsoft in their products, the data itself has been shifted to a champion position of value.

Behavioral Change: The Goal of Our Work
The focus on brand and control of the user experience is an attempt to avoid the above commoditization and irrelevance of artifact, and it references a dated model of dominance – one where a company produces something for a person to consume. This is the McDonalds approach to production, where an authoritative voice prescribes something and then gains efficiencies by producing it exactly as prescribed, in mass. The supposed new model is to design something for a person to experience, yet the allusion to experience is only an empty gesture. An experience cannot be built for someone. Fundamentally, one has an experience, and that is experience is always unique.

The focus on brand and control of the user experience is an attempt to avoid the above commoditization and irrelevance of artifact

Interaction design is the design of behavior, positioned as dialogue between a person and an artifact. A person commonly doesn’t talk to an object; they use it, touch it, manipulate it, and control it. Usage, touching, manipulation and control are all dialogical acts, unspoken but conversational. Conversation is only a metaphor for interaction, but it’s a useful one. Many of the same ways we “read” an actual, spoken conversation have parallels in describing and discussing interactions between people and things. Consider:

• Both conversations and interactions have flow, and often have a beginning, middle, and end;
• Both conversations and interactions act as intertwining of multiple viewpoints. In a conversation, the viewpoints come from people; in an interaction, viewpoints are embedded in an artifact by a designer;
• Both conversations and interactions act as both methods of communication and methods of comprehension; participants both contribute to, and take from, the activity;
• Ultimately, both conversations and interactions serve to affect behavioral change in participants.

This is powerful, as it describes an implicit way of extending a designers reach – and personal point of view, or message – into the masses. It is this mass distribution of dialogue that describes culture; we build culture through our objects, services and systems, as we define behavior through interactions. This is of equal prominence to the claim of “designing experiences”, yet leaves open the potential – the need – for the people (pardon, the consumers) to actually participate and contribute in a meaningful way. The things we do in the design studio have grand significance in the world. Our design decisions – even small, detailed, nuanced design decisions – resonate for years, and usually in a phenomenally large scale. Yet because these design decisions have an impact that is diffused and quiet, our impact is hard to notice and pin down. Culture is something that’s not immediately describable; the question “where does culture come from?” is almost as large a question as “where does life come from”, and is equally as evasive.

Cultural Change: The Implications of Our Work
This is a fundamental point that serves to elevate the importance of a designer, and also serves to articulate the implicit responsibility a designer has to the world around them. It’s such a fundamental point that it’s worth making again, in a more overt manner:

1. The interaction designer designs various aspects of an artifact;
2. The designer either explicitly or implicitly hopes to change behavior in a user;
3. This behavioral change is “baked” into the artifact, and then disseminated, in mass;
4. The artifact serves as a stimulus to change behavior in society;
5. This combination of artifacts and behavior describes culture.

Every design decision – from the large and strategic decision to design accounting software, to the small and nuanced decision to use a checkbox instead of a radio button – contributes to the behavior of the masses, and helps define the culture of our society. This describes an enormous opportunity for designers, one that is rarely realized. We are, quite literally, building the culture around us; arguably, our effect is larger and more immediate than even policy decisions of our government. We are responsible for both the positive and negative repercussions of our design decisions, and these decisions have monumental repercussions.

Our Deep Responsibility
For most designers, this responsibility is hidden by the celebratory claims of designing experiences. This claim almost abdicates the long-term responsibility, as “an experience” has an end, at which time the designers’ role seemingly ends. The work is meaningful only on an immediate level of craft and creation, and while designers often take pride in a product once it has launched, they do not frequently make the connection between their creations and the culture that surrounds them. “They’ve stopped using my product – their experience is over.” Convenient – but utterly false. Because emphasis is placed on innovation or brand, designers learn to value their work based on newness or recognition; metrics for success are tied to profit and marketshare, rather than positive and long-term culture change. As the causality is extended over a long period of time, it is diffused as a single product mixes with the rest of the milieu. The individual contribution of a single designer feels muted and insignificant, as there is no feedback loop to indicate the role of an individual design in shaping culture and society.

These negative qualities of our last century’s focus on brand and experience have been forced upon the business of design and the design of business, but it is only interaction and the ability to change behavior that will serve as fundamental pillars upon which to drive successful new endeavors. We must refocus and reposition our work within major companies away from a marketing-driven focus on brand and a design-driven focus on experiential ownership. Instead, it is up to us to emphasize the value a company can provide in changing human behavior – the lasting, nuanced, intellectual, and deep responsibility we have to the culture we are building.

This requires a conscious tradeoff and reprioritization. Instead of control, we must focus on frameworks. Instead of seeking to own and prescribe a singular experience, we must strive to adapt to the peculiarities and nuances of human behavior. And instead of complicity absorbing the corporate drive towards power and brand positioning, we must acknowledge the huge responsibility implicit in our work and constantly vocalize how our work supports humanity and the cultural landscape that surrounds us. We’ve built that cultural landscape, and we owe it to ourselves and to our work to tend to our creation as it morphs, changes and adapts. As you cringe from someone talking into a Bluetooth headset on the subway, or smile as a child and mother look at photos on their phone, realize that this technological culture is ours in the making. Both the bad and good are our ongoing fault and responsibility.

Interaction 10

If you want to meet Jon Kolko in real life: he is one of the keynote speakers at Interaction 10. It is the third annual conference hosted by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Each year, IxDA aims to gather the interaction design community to connect, educate, and inspire each other. This year it is held in Savannah, Georgia (USA).

Photos by: hipposrunsuperfast, Lord Jim & arquera

Josh Porter has a nice post out this week on the importance of taking user behaviors into account in social experience design. In Behavior First, Design Second, he makes use of an example I often use myself: what if twitter removed the follower count from user profiles? But I differ with Josh’s reasoning that some social behavior is hardwired.

It may be the case that certain human qualities are enduring attributes of human nature (ack, don’t like that term…). It may be that from the Ten commandments through to the Seven deadly sins, qualities like vanity, jealousy, greed and some number of others are simply human. But if they are, I’m inclined to consider them impulses, inclinations, tendencies — effects but not causes. I like to think that these social qualities are most often reactive, are responses to situations, social context, and social relationships or dynamics.

Josh cites the accumulation of followers on twitter as an example of a tendency to collect. It might be that all humans are inclined to collect; I’m more inclined to think that collecting is a social phenomenon. Be that as it may, collecting is related in my mind to ownership and possession. It’s related also, but in a different way, to numbers and magnitudes. A collection is a number of things and a pile of things. It might be that I like the pile, or that I like the number. It might be that I can show off the collection, or talk about how many… Owning and telling are different in my book.

Collecting, then, isn’t to me the behavioral explanation that Josh puts forward, but is a behavior behind which may be different psychological motives:

• Some twitter users may collect followers and be happy in their hearts for the number they can count
• Some may think about being seen having a large number of followers
• Some may think about their own status in terms of their follower count
• Some may think about the attention they’re getting from their followers

In other words, counting followers is a design-related behavior in which other motivational and psychological (and psychosocial) factors are implicated:

• status is derived from number of followers
• attention is attributed to number of followers
• status is projected onto number of followers
• status is associated with some important followers (not all followers collected are the same!)
• vanity is reflected in a number of followers

In other words:

• Collecting can have a social function: expressing or standing for status or position
• Collecting can have a communicative function: a representation of status to others
• Collecting can have a personal function: making one feel that there’s an audience that pays attention

and so on…

Collecting is probably not the original or primary cause or motivation behind the follower behaviors seen on twitter. We may count things, but I don’t think that’s grounds to assume that we count people in the same way. Yes, we count the number of people, but that’s not quite the same. The number can represent and signify to others; our motives for signifying are not our motives for collecting.

I think it is probably more likely that the follower phenomenon on twitter can also be explained by means of interaction design. Twitter is a communication tool. Communication, as a system of action or interaction is contingent on the participation of another person. I can tweet, but I cannot do anything to make somebody else respond. This may be the single-most common reason that new users stop using twitter — they simply don’t get anything back. The only type of interaction that does work, independent of any other user’s attention, recognition, response (etc) is following.

I would claim that following provides success. It’s an action that works, an action that can be completed without involving interpersonal or social contingency. It’s an action that to many users may also serve as a friendly gesture (I’m following you!); which may also involve an expectation (follow me back!), and these have little to do with collecting and a lot to do with exploring the sociality of a tool using competencies developed over a lifetime.

In fact one could argue, though it’s a bit of a stretch, that the expectation for reciprocal following (which is the habit of new users) is a social workaround to the asymmetry of relations designed into twitter. That symmetry is preferred, socially speaking, to asymmetry: and an etiquette of reciprocity is the hack that overcomes the design flaw…

I just wanted to comment on this because it is endlessly fascinating. And because I think the motives in social interaction are multiple, escape attribution to a single behavior or practice (eg collecting), and should be understood and unpacked with an eye to the social dynamics of the site or service in question. Social media interactions are a result of social dynamics, and escape explanation by means of the behaviors of individuals only.

We should be talking about this stuff — and I’m glad to see it covered — because the social practices that emerge around mediated communication and interaction are a complex of personal, social, community, and public uses and utilities, values, and actions.

I hope this is taken in the right way. I want to move this kind of thinking along; my disagreements or distinctions are always with respect and, I hope, a shared interest in learning.

From Joshua Porter’s blog:
We don’t just collect attention, of course. We collect lots of things. Most video games are built entirely around the premise of collecting things. The more you collect the higher your score. The more coins that Mario and Luigi collect, the better they do. It’s a causal relationship. We understand when playing these games that collection is the way to achieve success.

As designers we must remember that behavior comes first. Always. The quirky, the obscure, the vain, the annoying, the wonderful. We need to observe human behavior if we are to support it in design. If people collect things, how can we support that? If people are vain…how does that affect the design? Will it kill some interesting behavior…or will it help drive adoption of the service?

So, back to behavior. Some behaviors that drive us nuts are core to the human experience:

We want attention.
We collect things.
We want status.
We are vain.
We make judgments accordingly.