Information Management Weblog

Usability = Removing Elements

Peterme:

Let's say you have a website, and a registration process that takes four steps. Each step is pretty well-designed-- 90% of users are able to complete each step. However, only 65% of people will actually make it through, because you're losing people every step of the way (.9 x 4 = .65). The shows that often the best way to address the problem is not to improve the individual elements, but to remove elements altogether.

Libraries

I like my local public library. It doesn't hurt that my neighborhood branch is one of the coolest buildings in town. Since I've been riding the bus to work, I have a ton of time to read, so I've become a fairly avid library user.

But, I'm starting to find their online catalog a bit wanting at times. Some semi-random ideas for improvement:

• I'd like to be able to schedule (approximately) when I get books on hold. Sometimes I'll get three or four books at once, making it hard to make it through all of them before they're due back.


• Sometimes I'll search for a book and come up with nothing--not only do they not own it, but they don't even list it in the catalog. I just stumbled upon the Interlibrary Loan form, so this is an option. But, they should put a link to this on every search page: "Can't find what you're looking for? Request it here..."


• I'd imagine that users used to Amazon and Google will find the search interface a bit more daunting. Granted, library catalog search, as a concept, has a long history, but perhaps the library catalog vendors could take a few pages from the playbook of these search experts. Offer sorts based on popularity, or predefined "best bets" picked by library staff. More powerful and intuitive search refinement...all sorts of fun stuff.

Okay. Enough of this rant.

IA and IM

I'm going to respond to Lou Rosenfeld's pondering about "what the difference is between IA and information management." I realize that this sort of discussion has the potential to quickly go tumbling down the rabbit hole. Lou points out this danger, as well. Oh well.

Why respond? Well...

1. I did name my weblog the "Information Mangaement Weblog."


2. I have a degree with the phrase "Information Management" in it. So, I feel some interest in making sure others know what this means.

Before attempting to define this thing, I should point out that, while in school, we spend a fair amount of time discussing what IM meant. These tended to be big, wandering discussions. I don't think we ever exactly nailed it down. I have a feeling that it is a big tent, with plenty of room.

Next, I remember that I mentioned the IA-IM question before, also in response to a post by Lou: September 25, 2003. I think that IM can be considered roughly analagous to what Lou describes as "Enterprise IA." But, it might even be a bit broader than that.

Looking at how the University of Washington defines IM, the key concepts seem to be:

• Incorporates management, computer science, information science, philosophy, law, and design. (Should that be "Design" with a capital "D"?)


• Focuses on strategic planning, systems design, business leadership, metadata, networking, and information technology.


• Human-centered.

In the program we spent a good deal of time thinking about the web and IA. But we also discussed CM and KM (even a little DM--document management), as well as more traditional ares of IT (networking, databases, etc).

Do you suppose I could get away with saying "I'd know it when I see it?" Probably not.

In the end, anything that anything to do with, um, managing information could easily fall under the IM tent. And I guess I like a little fuzziness here. No need to be pinned down.

Alton Brown Weblog

This has absolutely nothing to do with information, management, or technology. Sorry. Dan Cederholm reports that TV host ("Good Eats") has a weblog. Cool. But, no RSS feed. What's the point of having a weblog if there is no RSS feed?

Update: John Bodoni emailed me to say that Sean M. Burke set up a RSS feed of Alton Brown's weblog at http://interglacial.com/rss/alton_brown.rss. Thanks, John and Sean. But, my above rant stands, given that it shouldn't be all that hard for weblog owners to publish an RSS feed...