Transcript Ambient Findability - School of Information

Ambient Findability
• Peter Morville
- Information Architect
- founder Semantic Studios
• Ambient Findability blog
• What does Ambient
Findability mean to you?
Findability
• The quality of being locatable or navigable.
• The degree to which a particular object is
easy to discover or locate.
• The degree to which a system or environment
supports navigation and retrieval.
• These systems & objects need architecting to
allow findability.
• Findability (information) literacy?
Lost & Found
• Information Access is expanding
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Content
Availability
Technology
“an information-rich world with new possibilities and
problems” (p3)
• What’s not information or ambient ?
- What’s the life of desktop computing?
- Notebook computing?
• How has your own information experience changed in
the past few years?
- Does findability change it?
- What else might?
• Fun, Business, Education?
Findability & Wayfinding
• What is wayfinding?
- How maps, addresses, signs &
building/design conventions let
us “know” where we are & how
to get someplace else. (p17)
• Digital Wayfinding?
- How sitemaps, URIs, icons &
site/task conventions…
• Context is key
- Location, location, location
Wayfinding technology
• Navigation tools
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Lighthouse
Compass
Chip log
Sextant
Chronometer
• Maps & Charts
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Paths - streets, paths
Edges - walls, fences, doors
Districts - sections
Nodes - points of reference, transitions
Landmarks - contextual for each of us
Wayfinding in the Noosphere?
• Is virtual wayfinding the same as in the real
world?
- What’s the real world again?
• Where are you when you talk on the phone?
• When you’re on the Web?
• Metaphors at play
- Is it all about finding? As a goal?
- Less about finding as discovering?
• Where’s the space for the Web?
- But it’s not all about the Web is it?
• When the going gets mobile, your space does
matter.
Information Retrieval & Findability
• How closely is IR related to (A)F?
- Mooers - the trouble with IR
• The Information conundrum
• We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the Web
- Visual navigation lets us apply real world
metaphors to the Web
• That’s a great first step, but…
- What changes does ambient information lead us to
in the future?
- How does relevance change?
Information Interaction
• Computational power makes interacting with
information possible and easier
- How “easy”?
- Often too much of a good thing?
• Moving beyond the linear model
- Berrypicking
- Iterative models (state & context)
- Complex inforation seeking models
• The Age of Broadband?
Wayfinding 2.0
• We’re only beginning to understand the way
to design information for ubiquitous
interaction
- What models of information use and mobility make
the most sense to build upon?
• Techniques (context related)
- Triangulation
- Proximity
- Scene analysis
• What about our context?
- Habits, preferences, constraints
Findable Objects
• How can we work in concert with physical objects in
an information landscape?
- Give objects metadata that relates to their properties &
context
• Is this a technology-driven manifest destiny?
- GPS, RFID, URI, UPC, Sensor nets, nano-everything
- How would each of the technologies change:
• Information access
• Information retrieval
• Findability and re-findability?
• If we have information overload now, what about with
all this online, all the time?
Designing for Findability
• Findability precedes Usability
• In the Alphabet and on the Web
• You can’t use what you can’t find
• List of hacks on page 111-3
Sociosemantic Web
• How does the interaction change with
increased access?
- Increased content?
- Increased speed? (fluidity)
• Is it people-based understanding vs. machinebased?
- Metadata for us or machines?
• Why not both?
• This needs some serious architecting
- Taxonomies
- Ontologies
- Folksonomies
Thinking about Findability
• What’s inspiring about these ideas?
• How would you use them?
- As a designer or IA?
- As a person?
• Do you think this is a new metaphor for the
information seeking process?
- What’s new about it?
- What’s it building on top of?
• How would these principles & ideas influence
your IA work?