In part 2 of this 2-part blog post I shall look at Search Engine Optimization and tree-testing in relation to findability.

Search Engine Optimization can help improve the findability of your website

How you organize the structure of your website’s content as well as how you implement web standards and conventions is important for search engine optimization (SEO) because search engines can only react to standard representations. In addition, the organization of your interface design affects its SEO ranking. Considering that search engines are arguably the most commonly used online tool, a website’s search ranking can potentially make or break a website. Simply put, search engine optimization is the art of science of increasing traffic to a given website. This is done by optimizing structure, text content, photos and videos to increase a website’s visibility on search engines and other web 2.0 portals such as Facebook. Another way of doing this is through interface design whereby a website appears the same in different web browsers, and without errors. After all what good is it to create a wonderful interface design if it may appear broken to a significant number of users. Using a number of different portals to generate more inbound traffic from different sources also results in higher search engine rankings which begets more traffic. Other considerations of SEO, even though they don’t necessarily have much to do with interface design proper, include incorporating particular keywords and key phrases even and recoding a website to make it more crawl-able by search engines.

Usability tests can help determine the findability of your site content

As mentioned in part 1 of this blog, the best way to determine the findability of your interface design’s content is to conduct iterative usability testing. One usability method that is particularly helpful when evaluating and optimizing findability is tree testing. The information architecture of interface designs is in most cases organized in hierarchies. These are referred to as trees (with subsections “branching” out). Tree testing, also known as card-based classification or reverse card sorting, seeks to find out how well users are able to find information within a website’s hierarchy. Remember, tree testing differs from traditional usability testing in that it is not done on a wireframe prototype or the website itself but on using cards (or software) of a simplified text version of the site structure. A typical tree test is as follows:

1.    Users are given a “find it” task (e.g. look for the breakfast menu).
2.    Users are then shown a list of the top topics on the website (as they might appear in the main navigation)
3.    They choose one and then are shown a list of subtopics (such as in a sub-menu of a navigation)
4.    They continue choosing, backtracking if necessary, until they have found a topic that completes their task.
5.    The test conductor has the user repeat this process several times with several different tasks
6.    After several users have completed the tree test, the results are analyzed by the design and development team.

For the reasons mentioned above, findability should be an important consideration of every interface designer.

In this two part blog post I shall look at findability and the crucial role it plays in the interface design of websites. In part 1 of the blog I shall explain what findability is and what the main issues are affecting findability on a website.

What is findability?

Findability, in computer science, refers to a user’s ability to identify and then navigate the interface designs of websites or web-apps. It encompasses aspects of information architecture, user interface design, accessibility and search engine optimization. The term findability is credited to Peter Morville who remarked that “findability precedes usability. In the alphabet and on the Web. You can’t use what you can’t find.” In this vein findability is two-pronged, on one hand dealing with users finding a website. On the other hand it deals with how users find things that they are looking for, such as the help section or contact details etc., on a given website. According to Neilson Online currently there are more than 1,733,993,741 internet users generating and interacting with vast streams of data. Findability helps ensure your website doesn’t get lost in the mix and, when found, not to be deserted by frustrated users who in all likelihood won’t return, barring a thorough reworking of the interface design.
If you are developing a website with a new user interface and are interested in optimizing your website’s ability to be located by prospective users on the internet, then it is important to infuse your design process with adequate research about the above mentioned topics.

Issues affecting findability on a website
Findability concerns itself with the effort to make a user interface design easily navigable or usable and to ensure that the interface design process is fully integrated and effective. Key to findability is the organization and representation of a user interface design.  This refers to among others, the layout, the use of breadcrumbs and local navigation. Are users able to easily navigate a website and find the services they were looking for? If they found themselves in the middle of a website (which happens often as people share direct links) would they be able to figure out where in the hierarchy they were?  These issues can easily be revolved by adhering to web standards and through iterative usability testing of wireframe prototypes created with the use of wireframe tools such as pidoco. Another important issue affecting findability is the qualities of your web-site’s content and how it is geared towards search engine optimization.

Several weeks ago Google updated their Google Images page interface design to move from a text-based to a more image based user interface.  The most noticeable changes include search image results that are assembled in a larger, more mosaic style pattern.  Google vice president of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer also maintains that “stripping [the interface down] and highlighting the image” will be simultaneously enticing and beneficial for users.  The idea is that users will have visually visceral and instantaneous access to the products that they seek.

Further changes to the Images interface include the way Google allows users to view selected pictures. Users can now click on the desired image and it will be blown up with the website of origin shown as faded in the background.  Google will also be phasing out text ads and replacing them with image ads to further improve the usability and clarity of its interface design.

But now let’s look at the interface design features that struck me: OnLive’s interface design is, in a word, cinematic. Upon starting the program a small overlay opens up requesting log in details. The background of the menu screen is made up of a number of small screens with running games, supposedly being played that moment by other users. The layout of the interface design is nicely suited to video games as there aren’t too many menu options, and it’s clearly designed to be easily navigable with a control pad. Choosing one of the menu options, such as the Marketplace game store, reveals breadcrumbs at the top of the interface design – one of those usability best practices. When acquiring a demo, the top right of the interface design layout of the games menu displays how much more time users have to play the game until they must purchase or rent the full-version. All in all, this is an interface design that is refreshing and easy-to-use, which is a great plus with online gaming services.

OnLive’s greatest challenge to date is keeping the lag down to a minimum of micro seconds. When streaming video, buffering time of 3 seconds is manageable. While playing a video game, 3 seconds could well mean game over. OnLive feels to me like a service intended for use two years from now (ready for use in Japan). The service is currently only available in the US where only 25% of broadband connections are faster than the 5 Mbps threshold needed to use it. Despite this, the service holds promise, working and sporting the same interface design on multiple formats such as PC, Mac, Linux, TV and even the iPad, which may make it a triumph of interface design.

I recently came across an interesting gaming platform that I thought I’d share. It seems appropriate since there were several things that I noticed which stood out with regard to its interface design. Well, you’ll see for yourself if you read further.

OnLive is a new service that seeks to turn the gaming world upside down with a decidedly disruptive Web 2.0 approach. Thus far video games have been largely an affair of hardware, localized at that. You (which usually meant mum or dad) would buy a game console or a PC with the best possible graphics card etc… Once that business was out of the way all that was left was to buy the games. This meant buying a piece of plastic with data on it. With the advent of ubiquitous internet, downloading games directly to your local hard drive became possible through services such as Steam. However one needed compatible hardware to be able to run the software. OnLive’s premise is to harness the cloud and a web-browser for gaming. The games run on servers in a remote data center and the audiovisual output is streamed to your computer in exchange for your controller inputs. This means that as long as you have a good internet connection, the hardware settings of your computer do not matter. All very nice so far.

What else has changed?

Users with a WizeHive account can now log in with their Google account. This enables them to access Google Docs from within WizeHive’s interface design and link the appropriate documents to specific workspaces. Data can also now be tagged thus adding to the usability of the software tool offering users a way of organizing information in way that is meaningful to them. In addition to these changes, WizeHive has released a free iPhone app that manages to cram as much of the functionality of the web-app into an interface design that fits the iPhone’s smaller screen real estate. Changes such as these further underscore WizeHive’s easy-to-use collaborative interface design concept and point into a future direction of pushing aspects like collaboration and mobility even further.

Overall, the interface design changes seem to have a positive effect on the usability of the application and they may be a good example for other tools to follow.

WizeHive, an online collaboration tool that lets users share files, manage projects and track activity with others in secure, private workspaces recently revamped its interface design along with adding further functionality. A great opportunity to look at some interface design questions. WizeHive allows users to track multiple people and projects through its project management system. Users can create workspaces tailored to a specific client for the sharing of key business data, notes, documents and tasks. In addition, WizeHive helps to automate business processes, such as job applications or contests, through its WizeApps.

What has changed in the interface design?

Perhaps the most notable change to WizeHive’s interface design is that the new interface design is now much more streamlined, thus saving users time when they work with WizeHive, which may potentially bring down costs.  As before the interface design displays recent activity within an activity stream like Twitter, but now up to five workspaces can be added to clickable tabs at the top of the screen for easy access in addition to a ‘More Workspaces’ tab to access other workspaces that are not displayed by an individual tab within the interface design. There are further little improvements that all seem to add to the usability and clarity of the program.

How do users use the Guardian’s interface design?

For Phil Gyford, this meant creating a website with a unique interface design that features nothing more than a page that starts with the leading article from the daily newspaper. The date features at the very top of the page. The main navigation options are clicking right and left (for next and previous article respectively) thus meaning that users have no option but to read articles in the order presented. Users can however jump between sections (namely the main section, sport, g2, and film & music) right from what the developer has tentatively called the “sparkline/scrubber” at the top of the interface design. This same area of the interface design also indicates in red the current page as well as article length for users to be aware of where they stand in reading the daily edition.

Further considerations of this interface design

The choice in interface design works with the developer’s intention to improve the readability of the news content as there is no other clutter (in the form of links to all sorts of other articles, adverts etc.) around the article, which means that users can fully focus on one article. This consideration is of particular interest as studies have shown reading speeds on digital displays to be up to 10% lower than for traditional print products. The clean interface design of the Guardian also adds to the finishability of a day’s worth of news, something very irksome to achieve going through a traditional news website’s every subsection. A feature that I feel could be added is a calendar that allows users to jump to a specific date (for those who missed reading yesterday’s newspaper for example).

The Guardian, a major British national daily newspaper, has long received critical acclaim for its website which is also incidentally one of the most visited English-language news websites in the world. This success may not least be due to the influence of a superior interface design employed by the creators of the website, which greatly enhances usability. The website’s interface design is very efficient in layout and design allowing users to easily delve into the full gamut of news on offer along with clearly defined clickable breadcrumbs, helping users navigate easily to further subsections of the website.

What decisions led to this type of interface design?

An independent programmer name Phil Gyford has now offered users a unique streamlined way to enjoy the Guardian. Using the Guardian’s Content API he thought to tap into the need to consume news with the ease of a newspaper. No matter how well designed a newspaper’s interface design on its website may be, they all require users to actively navigate through separate sections. According to his personal blog, Phil Gyford “wanted something with reduced friction. There should be as few difficult decisions as possible, nothing harder than ‘shall I turn the page?’. I wanted to avoid having to make a big decision before reading an article. It should be as quick and effortless as possible, as close to how easy it is to start reading an article in a newspaper”. This statement speaks volumes to the importance of the ease of use with which end users (in this case the readers of the digital paper) can understand, utilize and navigate an interface design. With usability being one of the most noticeable determinants of quality online, its impact can not be overestimated, especially when addressing such a diverse audience as the Guardian does.

Usability, user experience and a user interface design to match are key. You can have a great product that does a whole bunch of amazing things, but if packaged in an abominable interface design that frustrates users, you’re setting yourself up for a failure even if your interface design is aesthetically pleasing. Your product and its user interface design needs to be as easy to use as possible and this means getting feedback through usability testing from people that fit the profile of your target users. Thankfully a number of tools exist, such as Pidoco, that allow you to easily create wireframe prototypes of your product which can be viewed, annotated and/or edited (even going as far as conducting remote usability tests) long before the coding process begins. The advantage of this approach is that is makes rectifying glaring usability and interface design flaws relatively inexpensive compared to changes that become necessary after the implementation is already finished.

Aside from the features of an app, the usability of its interface design is a key differentiating factor, and it should be considered as a unique selling proposition. There are numerous examples of products and software applications that have succeeded, not least due to their superior usability.