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Information Architecture
& Findability
Peter Morville
The Yaffe Center Conference on
Creating Persuasive, Credible Web Sites
University of Michigan Business School
January 30, 2004
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Peter Morville
Background
• Library and Information Science (1993)
• Information Architecture Pioneer
• CEO, Argus Associates (1994 - 2001)
• Co-Author, IA for the World Wide Web (1998, 2002)
Current Roles
• President, Semantic Studios
• President, Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture
• Adjunct Faculty, UM School of Information
• VP, User Experience, Q LTD
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1.
The combination of organization,
labeling, and navigation schemes
within an information system.
2.
The structural design of an
information space to facilitate
task completion and intuitive
access to content.
3.
The art and science of structuring
and classifying web sites and
intranets to help people find and
manage information.
4.
An emerging discipline and
community of practice focused on
bringing principles of design and
architecture to the digital landscape.
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Search Systems
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/search.html
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Why is IA Important?
Cost of finding (time, frustration)
Cost of not finding (bad decisions, alternate channels)
Cost of construction (staff, technology, planning, bugs)
Cost of maintenance (content management, redesigns)
Cost of training (employees, turnover)
Value of education (related products, projects, people)
Value of brand
(identity, reputation, trust)
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Employees spend 35% of productive time searching for
information online. Working Council for Chief Information Officers
The Fortune 1000 stands to waste at least $2.5 billion / year
due to an inability to locate and retrieve information. IDC
Poorly architected retailing sites are underselling by as
much as 50%. Forrester Research
50% of web sales are lost because customers can’t find
content fast enough. Gartner Group
Content on a typical public corporate website grows at
an 80% rate annually. The CMS Report
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Vividence Research
The Tangled Web
Most Common
Usability Problems
Poorly organized search results
53%
Poor information architecture
32%
Slow performance
32%
Cluttered home pages
27%
Confusing labels
25%
Invasive registration
15%
Inconsistent navigation
13%
Vividence found poorly
organized search results
and poor information
architecture design to be
the two most common and
serious usability problems
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“Findability will eventually be recognized as a central and
defining challenge in the development of web sites, intranets,
knowledge management systems and online communities.”
Peter Morville, The Age of Findability
“A case of librarians trying to muscle into the usability
field with their own spin…findability is just a subset of
user-centered design.”
Reader Response
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/002595.php
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Hits
Trust
Location
Location
Location
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popularity ≠ authority
“melanoma”
“cancer”
Melanoma Home Page
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NCI Home
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Cancer Information
Types of Cancer
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The fundamental premise of the
cluetrain manifesto is that companies
have been blind to the sea change the
Internet represents, desperately
clinging to methods that worked
wonders in the broadcast era but that
are radically unproductive online.
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Pull 
 Push
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Buying Info
14 Screens
300 Links
3,000 Words
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surrounding, encircling, enveloping
Ambient Findability
the ability to find anyone or anything
from anywhere at anytime
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Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media
produced about 5 exabytes of new information in
2002. Ninety-two percent of the new information was
stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks.
How big is five exabytes? If digitized, the nineteen million
books and other print collections in the Library of Congress
would contain about ten terabytes of information; five
exabytes of information is equivalent in size to the
information contained in half a million new libraries the size
of the Library of Congress print collections.
Although the Internet is the newest medium for
information flows, it is the fastest growing new
medium of all time, becoming the information
medium of first resort for its users.
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/26
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A wealth of information creates
a poverty of attention.
Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate Economist
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David Rose
ambientdevices.com
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An Austrian firm (Tholos Systems) is
developing a giant video-conferencing
system that will be deployed in public
spaces in London and Vienna next year,
allowing people in the two cities to meet
and talk eye-to-eye. Wired News, Oct 22 2003
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CNET News. Nov 25, 2003.
Radio frequency identification tags
aren't just for pallets of goods in
supermarkets anymore.
Automatic Locates
Schedule an "automatic locate" to see
where your child is at a given time.
Breadcrumbing Feature
This feature is great for identifying a
specific route or series of destinations.
Applied Digital Solutions
is hoping that Americans can be
persuaded to implant RFID chips
under their skin to identify themselves
when going to a cash machine
or in place of using a credit card.
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Peter Morville
[email protected]
Semantic Studios
http://semanticstudios.com/
Q LTD
http://qltd.com/
Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture
http://aifia.org/
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