Introduction to Findability

Introduction to FindabilityCyril Doussin, 28/05/08

Ambient Findability

Peter Morvillehttp://semanticstudios.com/

“Find”

• discover or perceive by chance or unexpectedly

• discover after a deliberate search

• succeed in obtaining

“Find”

• what is exposed to us (on purpose or inadvertently)

• after searching

Searching for...

physical items

Searching for...

• about oneself

• about concepts (meaning of...)

• detailed information (eg. product)

• entities in the same society (people, businesses, organisations etc.)

Knowledge

Searching for...

• to validate feelings or judgments

• to establish trust relationships

• complementary judgments

Opinions

Searching for information

• physical

• conceptual

• social

• knowledge

• judgments

Information

• Data: a string of identified but unevaluated symbols

• Information: evaluated, validated or useful data

• Knowledge: information in the context of understanding

Information closely tied to communication

Memes

Pieces of information transmitted from one mind to another

what viral marketing is trying to achieve

Multi-Agent Systems

• reactive agents

• cognitive agents

Systems composed of interacting intelligent agents.

Interesting base to study collective behaviour & communication patterns.

Findability

“Findability refers to the quality of being locatable or navigable.”

Findability: item level

evaluate to what degree a particular object is easy to discover or locate

Findability: system level

how well a physical or digital environment supports navigation and retrieval

Wayfinding• Knowing where you are

• Knowing your destination

• Following the best route

• Being able to recognise your destination

• Finding your way back

Directional Sense by Jan Carpman and Myron Grant. Evans & Co. (2006)

How to make something findable?

• make sure the item is easy to discover or locate

• have a well-organised system which supports easy navigation and retrieval

“In Your Face”Discovery Principle

Expose the item in places known to be frequented by the target audience

Hand-guided navigation

• sorting/ordering

• sign-posting

Describe & browse

• similar to asking for directions

• similar to asking random questions

• get list of entry-points to pages

Mixing things up

Recommendations

• describe intent

• casual discussions

• advice

• past-experiences

= communication between peers

Web = Referral system

• Anyone can add signs to entry-doors on your site

• need for relevancy system

• search engines: PageRank

• peer based: Digg

Relevance

• Precision: how well a system retrieves only relevant documents

• Recall: how well a system retrieves all relevant documents

Precision = Number relevant & retrieved /Total number retrieved

Recall = Number relevant & retrieved /Total number relevant

Relevance

• Sample search: small set of documents are sufficient

• Existence search: search for a specific document

• Exhaustive search: full set of documents needed

Need to identify the type of search

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Content Organisation

• Taxonomy: organisation through labeling

• Ontology: taxonomy + inference rules

• Folksonomy: adding a social dimension

• Increasingly important as the volume of information grows and information is shared

• Very good base for search engines.

Measuring Findability on the Web

• count number of steps

• many ways to get to your data

• search engines predominant

• peer-based lists and directories important

Recommendations

• Aim to strike a balance between sources

• Know the path your audience will follow

• Understand type of search

• Make advertising relevant

• Make your content rich & relevant

• Make your content structured

The End

Thank you!