Introduction to Findability presentation given at the London Web Standards Group meeting on 28th May 2008.

1. Introduction to
Findability
Cyril Doussin, 28/05/08

2. Ambient Findability
Peter Morville
http://semanticstudios.com/

3. “Find”
• discover or perceive by chance or unexpectedly
• discover after a deliberate search
• succeed in obtaining

4. “Find”
• what is exposed to us (on purpose or inadvertently)
• after searching

5. Searching for...
physical items

6. Searching for...
Knowledge
• about oneself
• about concepts (meaning of...)
• detailed information (eg. product)
• entities in the same society (people,
businesses, organisations etc.)

7. Searching for...
Opinions
• to validate feelings or judgments
• to establish trust relationships
• complementary judgments

8. Searching for
information
• physical • knowledge
• conceptual • judgments
• social

9. Information
• Data: a string of identified but unevaluated
symbols
• Information: evaluated, validated or useful data
• Knowledge: information in the context of
understanding
Information closely tied to communication

10. Memes
Pieces of information transmitted from one
mind to another
what viral marketing is
trying to achieve

11. Multi-Agent Systems
Systems composed of interacting intelligent agents.
• reactive agents
• cognitive agents
Interesting base to study collective behaviour &
communication patterns.

12. Findability
“Findability refers to the quality of
being locatable or navigable.”

13. Findability: item level
evaluate to what degree a particular object is
easy to discover or locate

14. Findability: system level
how well a physical or digital environment
supports navigation and retrieval

15. Wayfinding
• Knowing where you are
• Knowing your destination
• Following the best route
• Being able to recognise your destination
• Finding your way back
Directional Sense by Jan Carpman and Myron Grant. Evans & Co. (2006)

16. How to make
something findable?
• make sure the item is easy to discover or
locate
• have a well-organised system which
supports easy navigation and retrieval

17. “In Your Face”
Discovery Principle
Expose the item in places known to be
frequented by the target audience

18. Hand-guided navigation
• sorting/ordering
• sign-posting

19. Describe & browse
• similar to asking for directions
• similar to asking random questions
• get list of entry-points to pages

20. Mixing things up

21. Recommendations
• describe intent
• casual discussions
• advice
• past-experiences
= communication between peers

22. Web = Referral system
• Anyone can add signs to entry-doors on
your site
• need for relevancy system
• search engines: PageRank
• peer based: Digg

23. Relevance
• Precision: how well a system retrieves only
relevant documents
• Recall: how well a system retrieves all
relevant documents
Precision = Number relevant & retrieved /
Total number retrieved
Recall = Number relevant & retrieved /
Total number relevant

24. Relevance
Need to identify the type of search
• Sample search: small set of documents
Precision
are sufficient
• Existence search: search for a specific
document
• Exhaustive search: full set of
Recall
documents needed

25. Content Organisation
• Taxonomy: organisation through labeling
• Ontology: taxonomy + inference rules
• Folksonomy: adding a social dimension
• Increasingly important as the volume of
information grows and information is
shared
• Very good base for search engines.

26. Measuring Findability
on the Web
• count number of steps
• many ways to get to your data
• search engines predominant
• peer-based lists and directories important

27. Recommendations
• Aim to strike a balance between sources
• Know the path your audience will follow
• Understand type of search
• Make advertising relevant
• Make your content rich & relevant
• Make your content structured

28. The End
Thank you!