The notions of ‘information scent’ and ‘information shape’ are in Kalbach’s view both crucial to effective web navigation.
The concept of ’scent’ is (as the term is presumably meant to convey) difficult to define concretely. Kalbach says it ‘refers to how well links and navigation match a visitor’s information need and how well they predict the content on the destination page’. He also, however, quotes Spool, Perfetti, and Brittan to the effect that scent is a quality compounded of many ingredients that adds up to a ’sense of confidence in navigating’.
Of particular interest in creating this sense of confidence is the powerful role of keywords and labels – users rely a great deal on the rapid scanning of a page for relevant labels in navigating, and this is furthermore an effect that increases as users become more experienced in using the web. Finding labels that are both accurate and map onto user expectation is thus crucial to creating effective web navigation.
Related to the concept of ’scent’ and confidence is the notion of ’satisficing’ – the observable behaviour whereby visitors will tend to choose the first option they encounter that seems to satisfy their needs, rather than evaluating an entire page for the optimal solution.
Complementing the notion of ’scent’ is the idea of ‘information shape’ – which is to say, information genre and the set of formal characteristics that define this. Because genres are such precisely in relation to other genres, overall rules are impossible to formulate: satisfying the conditions of information shape is really a question of working with established conventions. That being said, useful work has been done in the area of identifying evolving digital genres – with Kalbach citing the work of Elaine Toms and that of Andrew Dillon and Misha Vaughn in particular.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: Designing Web Navigation, information scent, information shape, satisficing
Design Observer- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Ajaxian- Javascript Inheritance Patterns: Learning from Closure November 13, 2009 Michael Mahemoff
- Lunascape Orion: Cross browser extensions November 13, 2009 Dion Almaer
- SPDY: Make HTTP chatter a lot faster November 12, 2009 Dion Almaer
- WebGL Musical Solar System November 12, 2009 Dion Almaer
- Evidence; that your code will work November 11, 2009 Dion Almaer
-
Web news, design, and accessibility links
No Responses Yet to “Information scent and information shape”