For week three, we were required to view several websites one of which was Louis Rosenfeld’s Media/Search Analytics website at http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/searchanalytics/. This site provides information on a research topic called “search analytics” which is rapidly attracting interest. I found this site to be really fascinating and a great help on how to improve your searching process. On the site, there was an excerpt from the book titled “Search Analytics: Conversations with your Customers” by Louis Rosenfeld & Marko Hurst. According to the authors (2010), “When you perform search analytics on your site’s data, you’re using a highly useful user research method that can: Help information architects improve the findability of information, help authors and editors ensure that their sites provide appropriate content, help interaction designers improve the design of search interfaces and search results, help IT professionals better understand the demands place on their sites’ search engines, help managers better understand the people who interact with their organization, its content, and its products, and provide organizations with a unique, cost-effective way to engage with their customers and employees” (p. 1). I enjoyed reading the blog and the details about the books. Additionally, I appreciated the design of the site and how easy it was to navigate.
Another website that was mentioned was a page on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia about Contextual Design. Contextual Design was created by Karen Holtzblatt and Hugh Beyer. It is a design process that is user-centered and it includes ethnographic methods for collecting pertinent data to the product, rationalizing workflows, field studies, and system & designing human-computer interfaces. This is also an area that is becoming steadily more significant and can really assist people in establish the result or usage of a system. My feelings are that it allows an information architect to obtain complete knowledge of the perceptions of the user and as a result, can prefect the process so that the user can have a better experience the next time around. I was also interested to learn how contextual design has been utilized in building digital libraries. This is really important to me as libraries have been expanding into the digital world and so many people are taking advantage of it. The only issue I have with the page is that it is by Wikipedia and I know from some of my other classes that it does not always have the most accurate of information. However, after viewing the references and the external links that were provided, I can conclude that the information on the page is factual. I will say that if I was trying to provide information to the public about a topic like this, I would not use Wikipedia as a way to promote it as I would be worried that it would undermine the topic’s credibility.
References:
Rosenfeld, Louis & Hurst, Marko. (2010). “Search Analytics: Conversations with your Customers” Brooklyn, NY. Rosenfeld Media, LLC .