Does a bottom-up information architecture improve search ranking? This is another in a series responding to questions from my TC Dojo series on Bottom-up Information Architecture. I have several questions from the second session on writing, but I’m still working off the backlog of questions from the first session on organization. (Because we are moving… Read More »
I got a number of really good questions following my TC Dojo session on Bottom-up Information Architecture (below). I want to address the questions in a little more depth than was possible in the webinar. Q: I’ve attended multiple Every Page is Page One webinars. They get bogged down in theory but never explain what tasks… Read More »
It is easy to set an ideal for technical communication that it should deliver the best solution — the ideal solution — to every problem. Many critiques of Web search as a tool for finding technical solutions focus on the many less than perfect solutions that any search query returns. How is the user to find the ideal solutions in the… Read More »
‘Any technology you use should be “Googlable”‘. These are the words of Bill Scott, VP Engineering, Merchant | Retail | Online Payments at PayPal, as reported by the amazing Sarah Maddox. (I say amazing because Sarah manages to lucidly and intelligently blog just about every conference session she attends. Having just helped cover the LavaCon conference, and… Read More »
Last week I wrote about the death of hierarchy as the dominant form of content organization. One of the comments on that post asked me to “comment on the different perspectives between this blog post and “Search is not enough” by the Nielsen Norman Group?” Let me get the central question out of the way… Read More »
Hierarchy as a form of content organization is dying. A major milestone — I want to say tombstone — in its demise is the shutdown of the Yahoo directory, which will occur at the end of the year according to an article in Ars Technica, Yahoo killing off Yahoo after 20 years of hierarchical organization. (Actually it… Read More »
Summary: Safari Flow represents a move to Every Page is Page One navigation for books, but its success is limited when the content is not written in Every Page is Page One style. At Tom Johnson’s suggestion, I have recently subscribed to Safari Flow. Safari Flow is a new take on the Safari Books Online… Read More »
Summary: Today there is no “right place” to put information that will ensure that readers find it. Instead, we have to focus on making sure our content gets filtered in to the reader’s search. Every Page is Page One information design and bottom-up information architectures are key to achieving this. The “right place” for content… Read More »
Hypertext means more than just text with a bunch of links in it Hypertext is something of a neglected subject these days. Everyone is talking about the Web, but nobody is talking about the class of thing the Web is: a hypertext environment. But to neglect this essential fact about the nature of the Web… Read More »
What is the right word to describe a node of a hypertext? What should we call the basic unit of information that we present to readers? Is it a page, a topic, or an article? (I’m going to take it as read that the answer is no longer “a book”. If you disagree, that’s what… Read More »