Incentive Architecture

Marianne SweenyTechNet/Servers Web Team

April 29, 2004

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Introduction

Agenda Information Behavior Models Emerging Trends in information architecture Search Where we are now Where we could be?

incentive Architecture “.. [is a ] unifying coherent structure that motivates users by taking advantage of persuasive tactics that will make them take action to help them make the right decisions”

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Information Seeking Model

Dervin’s Sensemaking

Users strive to make sense of reality as they move through situations, time, and space

Users encounter gaps in their knowledge and see these as barriers

Users seek to “bridge” the gap and reach their goal (a reality that again makes sense)

Information is what bridges the gap (provides answers, advice, help, etc)

Users deploy various strategies to build the bridge over the gaps

Ask friends or co-workers (#1 information resource) Go to other resources (print, Web, experts)

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Information Seeking Model

Bates’ Berrypicking A typical search evolves as information is gathered in bits

and pieces along the way Query – document – thought – revision – extension/revision

– requery – document…and so on Searchers use a variety of techniques and resources Sometimes they want more

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So, What’s the Difference Between Browsing and Searching? Browsing

Views pages one at a time Navigates sequentially through hyperlinks Self-guided through site space and dependent on

“browsing cues” [information scent] Iterative depending on information found along the way

Searching Initiated by entering a search query and viewing a list of

ranked results Specifics driven Results deprived of context Includes irrelevant results due from machine intervention User has to know the taxonomy to be successful

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What our own CuSat Tells UsFinding things on our site is a problem for many

of our users

June 1999: 40% cannot find what they are looking for 50% of the time June 2001: Devs 54% / ITPros 54% cannot find what they are looking for

50% of the time SQL Server (FY01Q4): 44% cannot find what they are looking for 50% of

the time August 2001 (CuSat Grand Report ): 44% cannot find what they are

looking for 50% of the time April 2002 (ProdCom Functionality FY02Q4): Ability to find information =

31% vsat / 21% dsat April 2002 (CuSat SQL Server): Ability to find information = 29% vsat /

19% dsat July-Dec 2003 (CDDG Online CuSat): Frequency of finding information =

26% always / 18% seldom; satisfaction with ability to find information 31% vsat / 19% dsat

March 2004 (TechNET Web visitor profiling): Found everything = 46%, Found something = 31%, Found nothing = 25%

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Emerging Trends in Information Architecture

Mental Models Page Paradigm Information Scent Transitional Volatility Effective View Navigation Captology

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Mental Models Made famous most recently by Don Norman People form mental models of themselves

how the world around them, and the things, in it work

Incomplete Unstable Without firm boundaries Unscientific Parsimonious

Our users bring their peculiar mental model of how our sites work with them when they visit

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Page Paradigm

Every user comes to a Web site with a goal in mind

On any given Web page the user will Click something that appears to take them

closer to their goal Click the BACK button

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Information Scent

Remote indications of target content in the form of out-links throughout the information structure

Users forage for content on our sites Use hyperlinks as proximal cues for distal content

Information Scent is a subjective assessment of the user

User’s actions towards their goal is informed and influenced by information scent How to Buy has a strong scent SQL Server’s inoperability with Windows Server 2003 has a

weak scent

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Transitional Volatility Occurs in any page to page transition Users are looking for “something” on the site

and are often unable to “predict” the most direct path to success

Navigational competition (left navigation, right navigation, embedded links, stand alone links, etc.)

Navigational overload = navigational mechanisms compete instead of coordinate with other mechanisms

Habituate --- Reorient --- Predict Local view navigation provides the optimal user

experience (showing only the present directory in detail)

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Effective View Navigation Navigational view is small and user short of

time Paths through navigation should be short “Where to go next” is central to user’s concern Navigability requires an interlocking Web of

set representation Conceptual perception so that the navigator can

decode mirroring and form an actual perception of the information set

Similarity-based Navigation Large-scale semantics dominate

More stress on granular labels

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Effective View and Transitional Volatility in Practice on Oracle

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Captology

Study of the persuasive nature of technology http://captology.stanford.edu/

How can Web sites change what people believe and what they do

Types of Web site credibility Presumed Reputed Surface Earned

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So, What Do We Know So Far? Users come to us with a goal which is usually to get help bridging an

information gap in their sensemaking model of the world Along the way to collecting information to help them bridge

this gap, they find other bits of information which may cause them to revise their original quest

Users come to our sites with a preconceived mental image of how the site is laid out and functions

Users tend to ignore all navigational aids to focus on the body content where they either find what they are looking for or a pointer or they hit the BACK button

Users follow a “scent” for the information that they desire Users have a small frame (fisheye lens) through which they

navigate and little time Page to page transitions introduce transitional volatility which is

not always bad – local navigation views, working in collaboration with other navigational mechanism, provides the user with a sense of location (not lost-ness) and that the site has more content

Web sites have “credibility” which can be used to persuade the user to take certain action or change the user’s belief about something

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Search

Enterprise vs. Web Search SharePoint Portal Server

“Up the road a piece” Not GPS

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Architecture or Information Architecture

The way Clients are looking to the future requires that we should study our client’s situation more than we have ever done before. If we are to succeed, we must learn a great deal about how clients are organized and what strategies underlie their way of doing business”

Lorraine JohnsonSwinburne University of Technology

School of Information TechnologyHawthorne, Australia

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Where Are We Now

Customer Verbatim Since the adoption of the Product Lifecycle

navigation across the Product sites, we’ve segmented and developed personas for our audience – do they map to each other?

What is the identity of the Product Sites?

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What About Our Sites? SQL Server Product Site Today

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But Wait, There’s More

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And Still More…

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Where We Could Be

Competitor Analysis Oracle IBM

A proposed IA for the Product sites utilizing concepts recently discussed

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Persuasive Architecture in Practice

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Persuasive Architecture in Practice

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SQL Server Maybe Later?

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Resources Used for This PresentationASIST Special Interest Group: Information Architecture Mail ArchivesSearching Versus Finding: Why Systems Need Knowledge to Find What you really Want;

Woods, W.A.; Sun Microsystems; http://research.sun.com/spotlight/2004-04-05.wwoods.html ; April 2004

Guiding Users with Persuasive Design; Perfetti, Christine; User Interface Engineering.com; http://www.uie.com/articles/chak_interview/; March 2003

Business Centered Design; Olsen, Henrik; Interaction Designer’s Coffee Break; http://www.guuui.com/issues/01_03.php; January 2003

Seductive Design for Web sites; Scanlon, Tara; User Interface Engineering.com; http://www.uie.com/articles/seductive_design/; July 1999

Persuasive Navigation; Lash, Jeff; Digital Web Magazine; http://www.digital-web.com/columns/iaanythinggoes/iaanythinggoes_2002-12.shtml; December 2002

Understanding the Seductive Experience; Khaslavsky, Julie, Shedroff, Nathan; Communications of the ACM; May 1999

Transitional Volatility in Web Behavior; Danielson, David; http://www.stanford.edu/~davidd/MastersThesis/ ; June 2002

Transitional Volatility in Web Behavior; Danielson, David; IT & Society; vol.1, issue 3, Winter 2003; http://www.ITandSocity.org

From the mind’s eye of the user: The Sense-Making qualitative-quantitative methodology; Dervin, Brenda;

In J. D. Glazier & R. R. Powell (Eds.), Qualitative research in information management (pp. 61-84). Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited. Reprinted in: B. Dervin & L. Foreman-Wernet (with E. Lauterbach) (Eds.). (2003). Sense-Making Methodology reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin (pp. 269-292). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. (1992)

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Resources Used for the Presentation

The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online Search Interface; Bates, Marcia; http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/berrypicking.html; 1989

Incorporating Navigation Research into a Design Method; Lombardi, Victor; ASIST IA Summit 2004; http://www.iasummit.org/finalpapers/13/13_Handout_or__final__paper.ppt

Conceptual Links Trump Hyperlinks; Patch, Kimberly; TRN Magazine.com; http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2002/071002/Conceptual_links_trump_hyperlinks_071002.html July 2002

The Page Paradigm; Hurst, Mark; Goodexperience.com; http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/04/0219.pp.html; February 2004

Scent Trails; Olston, Chris, Chi, Ed; Carnegie Mellon Databases.com; http://www.db.cs.cmu.edu/Pubs/Lib/tochi03scenttrails/scenttrails.pdf ; 2001

Effective View Navigation; Furnas, George; School of Information, University of Michigan; http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=5&q=http://www.si.umich.edu/~furnas/Papers/CHI97-EVN.2.pdf&e=7764; March 1997

Navigation in Electronic Worlds; Jul, Susanne, Furnas, George; Navigation 1997 Workshop; http://www.si.umich.edu/~furnas/Papers/Nav97_Report.pdf