experience design, emerging media, business and technology [circa 2014…]
Designing the Search Experience: The Information Architecture of Discovery is officially available for purchase from Amazon – congratulations to authors Tony Russell-Rose and Tyler Tate. As I mentioned in July, I was invited to contribute a piece. You can read my contribution in chapter four, “Modes of Search and Discovery”.
Now, go buy the book!
Search and discovery is a ubiquitous and under-addressed question in the user experience and interaction design domains, so it’s very exciting to see former colleague Tony Russell-Rose and co-author Tyler Tate take it on their new book, Designing the Search Experience. I mention this for two reasons: first, because I expect it to be a good book. I’ve collaborated directly on a number of papers and projects with Tony (including the initial articulation of the Language of Discovery), and he has the rare ability to synthesize strongly research-based and theoretical perspectives with a thorough understanding of innovative industry practice. And Tyler’s work speaks for itself 
Second; I’m excited to be a contributor. Tony and Tyler have gathered a number of recognized and respected practitioners and voices in the search and discovery arena, and it’s a privilege to be invited. My piece appears in chapter 4, and is a thorough readout of how we’ve used the modes of discovery to drive product design. I hope you find it interesting.
Designing the Search Experience is due for publication in the fall – look for the announcement, and then get ready to buy!
The other day, over a hot corned beef sandwich from the 2nd Avenue Deli, someone asked what I’m reading now. As usual, I ended up mumbling a few half complete book titles (not sure why, but I always have difficulty remembering on the spot – probably because I’ve got four or five things going at once…).
To help fill out the list, and because I’m still doing most of my writing via other outlets, here’s a snapshot of the books scattered around my house. It’s divided into helpful categories, including ‘Books I’d Like To Start Reading Soon, But Shouldn’t, Because I’m Still Reading Other Stuff’, and ‘Books I’ve Been Meaning to Read Sometime Soon, But Probably Won’t Won’t Get To In The Near Future.’
Books I’m Reading Now
Books I’d Like To Start Reading Soon, But Shouldn’t, Because I’m Still Reading Other Stuff
Books Recently Finished
Books I’ve Been Meaning to Read Sometime Soon, But Probably Won’t Get To In The Near Future
Bonus: Things I’m probably Never Going to Start / Finish Reading
Use the discount code FOJOEL10 to receive 10% off Rosenfeld Media books purchased online. Everyone loves a bargain!
Amazon is offering new Text Stats on “Readability” and “Complexity”, and a Concordance feature, both part of their comprehensive effort to translate the physical book[store] experience into the online medium. The new features build on existing capabilities such as Look Inside, Wishlists, Recommendations, Editorial and Customer Reviews, Citations, and Better Together to create a comprehensive book buying experience. In the same way that bookstores include kiosks to allow customers access metadata and other information on the books for sale in the immediate environment, Amazon is offering on-line capabilities that simulate many of the activities of book buyers in a bookstore, such as checking the table of contents and indexes, flipping through a book to read passages, or look at select pages.
The new features appear on product pages for books, as well as other kinds of works. [Try this intro to FRBR for a look at the conceptual hierarchy differentiating works from items, and it’s implications for common user tasks like finding, identifying, selecting, and obtaining items.]
Text Stats may be experimental, but it’s hard to feel comfortable with their definition of complexity, which is: “A word is considered “complex” if it has three or more syllables.” To point out the obvious, English includes plenty of simple three syllable words – like “banana” – and some very complex one syllable words – “time” “thought” and “self” for example.
The Text Stats on Readability seem a bit better thought through. That’s natural, given their grounding in research done outside Amazon’s walls. But with clear evidence that US education standards vary considerably across states and even individual districts, and also evidence that those standards change over time, I have to question the value of Readability stats long term. I suppose that isn’t point…
The Concordance feature is easier to appreciate; perhaps it doesn’t attempt to interperet or provide meaning. It simply presents the raw statistical data on word frequencies, and allows you to do the interpretation. Amazon links each word in the concordance to a search results page listing the individual occurances of the word in the text, which is useful, and then further links the individual occruance listings to the location within the text.
With this strong and growing mix of features, Amazon both translates the bookstore experience on-line, and also augments that experience with capabilities available only in an information environment. The question is whether Amazon will continue to expand the capabilities it offers for book buying under the basic mental model of “being in a bookstore”, or if a new direction is ahead?
Here’s a screenshot of the Text Stats for DJ Spooky’s Rhythm Science.
Text Stats:
Here’s a screen shot of the Concordance feature.
Concordance:
User Research can be so relentlessly earnest and purposeful that it gets to be a bit stifling. After a few dozen well-crafted personas work their way purposefully through a set of mildly challenging but inevitably successful scenarios for the tenth time in one week, a diligent user researcher is likely to be hungering for something a bit more satisfying; something akin to the persona, but more fully-rounded; something that conveys the ambiguous complexity of human character with honesty; something not only insightful, but consistently forthright across a multiplicity of aspects. Perhaps even something that is genuinely malapert.
Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees, And Other Creatures Unique to the Republic is that something. Written by Robert Lanham, it’s a hilarious collection of idiotypes – stereotypes outside the design world, personas within – couched as the outcome of serious scientific inquiry whose method is called idiosyncrology.
I advise reading with humility close at hand, since it’s likely you’ll find yourself inside, and it’s only fair to laugh at everyone if you’re included…
Here’s the description:
Lanham, author of The Hipster Handbook and creator and editor of the Web site www.freewilliamsburg.com, extends his anthropological examination of Americans beyond trendy Brooklyn neighborhoods to the entire country, where Yanknecks (“rebel-flag-waving rednecks who live outside the South”), Sigmund Fruits (“people who insist on telling you about their dreams”) and others have existed thus far without being formally studied by “idiosyncrologists” like Lanham and his team. Presented with the authoritative tone of a serious anthropological study, complete with an Idio Rank Scale that assesses the weirdness of each type, many of Lanham’s profiles are hilariously accurate descriptions of co-workers, family members, friends and other acquaintances that almost every American has encountered at some point in their lives. There are the Cornered Rabid Office Workers (CROWs), who “claim to be poets or playwrights” when discussing their work with strangers, “even if they just spent the last nine hours doing data entry on the McFlannery acquisition,” and Hexpatriates, Americans who decry everything about America yet never actually leave the country (and who “refer to the Loews multiplex at the mall as ‘the cinema’ and the Motel Six by Hardees as ‘the pensione”). Illustrations by Jeff Bechtel, depicting the fashion sense of Holidorks (people who wear holiday-themed clothing) and Skants (women with shapely butts who always wear spandex pants), enhance Lanham’s characterizations.
Related posts: