Incentive Architecture

1
Incentive Architecture

• Marianne Sweeny
• TechNet/Servers Web Team
• April 29, 2004

2
Introduction

• Agenda
• Information Behavior Models
• Emerging Trends in information architecture
• Search
• Where we are now
• Where we could be?
• incentive Architecture .. is a unifying
  coherent structure that motivates users by taking
  advantage of persuasive tactics that will make
  them take action to help them make the right
  decisions

3
Information Seeking Model

• Dervins Sensemaking
• Users strive to make sense of reality as they
  move through situations, time, and space
• Users encounter gaps in their knowledge and see
  these as barriers
• Users seek to bridge the gap and reach their
  goal (a reality that again makes sense)
• Information is what bridges the gap (provides
  answers, advice, help, etc)
• Users deploy various strategies to build the
  bridge over the gaps
• Ask friends or co-workers (1 information
  resource)
• Go to other resources (print, Web, experts)

4
Information Seeking Model

• Bates Berrypicking
• A typical search evolves as information is
  gathered in bits and pieces along the way
• Query document thought revision
  extension/revision requery documentand so on
• Searchers use a variety of techniques and
  resources
• Sometimes they want more

5
So, Whats the Difference Between Browsing and
Searching?

• Browsing
• Views pages one at a time
• Navigates sequentially through hyperlinks
• Self-guided through site space and dependent on
  browsing cues information scent
• Iterative depending on information found along
  the way
• Searching
• Initiated by entering a search query and viewing
  a list of ranked results
• Specifics driven
• Results deprived of context
• Includes irrelevant results due from machine
  intervention
• User has to know the taxonomy to be successful

6
What our own CuSat Tells Us

• Finding things on our site is a problem for many
  of our users
• June 1999 40 cannot find what they are looking
  for 50 of the time
• June 2001 Devs 54 / ITPros 54 cannot find what
  they are looking for 50 of the time
• SQL Server (FY01Q4) 44 cannot find what they
  are looking for 50 of the time
• August 2001 (CuSat Grand Report ) 44 cannot
  find what they are looking for 50 of the time
• April 2002 (ProdCom Functionality FY02Q4)
  Ability to find information 31 vsat / 21 dsat
• April 2002 (CuSat SQL Server) Ability to find
  information 29 vsat / 19 dsat
• July-Dec 2003 (CDDG Online CuSat) Frequency of
  finding information 26 always / 18 seldom
  satisfaction with ability to find information
  31 vsat / 19 dsat
• March 2004 (TechNET Web visitor profiling) Found
  everything 46, Found something 31, Found
  nothing 25

7
Emerging Trends in Information Architecture

• Mental Models
• Page Paradigm
• Information Scent
• Transitional Volatility
• Effective View Navigation
• Captology

8
Mental Models

• Made famous most recently by Don Norman
• People form mental models of themselves how the
  world around them, and the things, in it work
• Incomplete
• Unstable
• Without firm boundaries
• Unscientific
• Parsimonious
• Our users bring their peculiar mental model of
  how our sites work with them when they visit

9
Page Paradigm

• Every user comes to a Web site with a goal in
  mind
• On any given Web page the user will
• Click something that appears to take them closer
  to their goal
• Click the BACK button

10
Information Scent

• Remote indications of target content in the form
  of out-links throughout the information structure
• Users forage for content on our sites
• Use hyperlinks as proximal cues for distal
  content
• Information Scent is a subjective assessment of
  the user
• Users actions towards their goal is informed and
  influenced by information scent
• How to Buy has a strong scent
• SQL Servers inoperability with Windows Server
  2003 has a weak scent

11
Transitional Volatility

• Occurs in any page to page transition
• Users are looking for something on the site and
  are often unable to predict the most direct
  path to success
• Navigational competition (left navigation, right
  navigation, embedded links, stand alone links,
  etc.)
• Navigational overload navigational mechanisms
  compete instead of coordinate with other
  mechanisms
• Habituate --- Reorient --- Predict
• Local view navigation provides the optimal user
  experience (showing only the present directory in
  detail)

12
Effective View Navigation

• Navigational view is small and user short of time
• Paths through navigation should be short
• Where to go next is central to users concern
• Navigability requires an interlocking Web of set
  representation
• Conceptual perception so that the navigator can
  decode mirroring and form an actual perception of
  the information set
• Similarity-based Navigation
• Large-scale semantics dominate
• More stress on granular labels

13
Effective View and Transitional Volatility in
Practice on Oracle
14
Captology

• Study of the persuasive nature of technology
  http//captology.stanford.edu/
• How can Web sites change what people believe and
  what they do
• Types of Web site credibility
• Presumed
• Reputed
• Surface
• Earned

15
So, What Do We Know So Far?

• Users come to us with a goal which is usually to
  get help bridging an information gap in their
  sensemaking model of the world
• Along the way to collecting information to help
  them bridge this gap, they find other bits of
  information which may cause them to revise their
  original quest
• Users come to our sites with a preconceived
  mental image of how the site is laid out and
  functions
• Users tend to ignore all navigational aids to
  focus on the body content where they either find
  what they are looking for or a pointer or they
  hit the BACK button
• Users follow a scent for the information that
  they desire
• Users have a small frame (fisheye lens) through
  which they navigate and little time
• Page to page transitions introduce transitional
  volatility which is not always bad local
  navigation views, working in collaboration with
  other navigational mechanism, provides the user
  with a sense of location (not lost-ness) and that
  the site has more content
• Web sites have credibility which can be used to
  persuade the user to take certain action or
  change the users belief about something

16
Search

• Enterprise vs. Web Search
• SharePoint Portal Server
• Up the road a piece
• Not GPS

17
Architecture or Information Architecture

• The way Clients are looking to the future
  requires that we should study our clients
  situation more than we have ever done before. If
  we are to succeed, we must learn a great deal
  about how clients are organized and what
  strategies underlie their way of doing business
• Lorraine Johnson
• Swinburne University of Technology
• School of Information Technology
• Hawthorne, Australia

18
Where Are We Now

• Customer Verbatim
• Since the adoption of the Product Lifecycle
  navigation across the Product sites, weve
  segmented and developed personas for our audience
  do they map to each other?
• What is the identity of the Product Sites?

19
What About Our Sites? SQL Server Product Site
Today
20
But Wait, Theres More
21
And Still More
22
Where We Could Be

• Competitor Analysis
• Oracle
• IBM
• A proposed IA for the Product sites utilizing
  concepts recently discussed

23
Persuasive Architecture in Practice
24
Persuasive Architecture in Practice
25
SQL Server Maybe Later?
26
(No Transcript)
27
Resources Used for This Presentation

• ASIST Special Interest Group Information
  Architecture Mail Archives
• Searching Versus Finding Why Systems Need
  Knowledge to Find What you really Want Woods,
  W.A. Sun Microsystems http//research.sun.com/sp
  otlight/2004-04-05.wwoods.html April 2004
• Guiding Users with Persuasive Design Perfetti,
  Christine User Interface Engineering.com
  http//www.uie.com/articles/chak_interview/
  March 2003
• Business Centered Design Olsen, Henrik
  Interaction Designers Coffee Break
  http//www.guuui.com/issues/01_03.php January
  2003
• Seductive Design for Web sites Scanlon, Tara
  User Interface Engineering.com
  http//www.uie.com/articles/seductive_design/
  July 1999
• Persuasive Navigation Lash, Jeff Digital Web
  Magazine http//www.digital-web.com/columns/iaany
  thinggoes/iaanythinggoes_2002-12.shtml December
  2002
• Understanding the Seductive Experience
  Khaslavsky, Julie, Shedroff, Nathan
  Communications of the ACM May 1999
• Transitional Volatility in Web Behavior
  Danielson, David http//www.stanford.edu/davidd/
  MastersThesis/ June 2002
• Transitional Volatility in Web Behavior
  Danielson, David IT Society vol.1, issue 3,
  Winter 2003 http//www.ITandSocity.org
• From the minds eye of the user The Sense-Making
  qualitative-quantitative methodology Dervin,
  Brenda
• In J. D. Glazier R. R. Powell (Eds.),
  Qualitative research in information management
  (pp. 61-84). Englewood, CO Libraries
  Unlimited. Reprinted in B. Dervin L.
  Foreman-Wernet (with E. Lauterbach) (Eds.).
  (2003). Sense-Making Methodology reader Selected
  writings of Brenda Dervin (pp. 269-292).
  Cresskill, NJ Hampton Press. (1992)

28
Resources Used for the Presentation

• The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking
  Techniques for the Online Search Interface
  Bates, Marcia http//www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/b
  ates/berrypicking.html 1989
• Incorporating Navigation Research into a Design
  Method Lombardi, Victor ASIST IA Summit 2004
  http//www.iasummit.org/finalpapers/13/13_Handout_
  or__final__paper.ppt
• Conceptual Links Trump Hyperlinks Patch,
  Kimberly TRN Magazine.com http//www.trnmag.com/
  Stories/2002/071002/Conceptual_links_trump_hyperli
  nks_071002.html July 2002
• The Page Paradigm Hurst, Mark
  Goodexperience.com http//www.goodexperience.com/
  columns/04/0219.pp.html February 2004
• Scent Trails Olston, Chris, Chi, Ed Carnegie
  Mellon Databases.com http//www.db.cs.cmu.edu/Pub
  s/Lib/tochi03scenttrails/scenttrails.pdf 2001
• Effective View Navigation Furnas, George School
  of Information, University of Michigan
  http//www.google.com/url?saUstart5qhttp//ww
  w.si.umich.edu/furnas/Papers/CHI97-EVN.2.pdfe77
  64 March 1997
• Navigation in Electronic Worlds Jul, Susanne,
  Furnas, George Navigation 1997 Workshop
  http//www.si.umich.edu/furnas/Papers/Nav97_Repor
  t.pdf