Browse Navigation and Search Combo

[Grant, Kathryn --- Sr. Technical Writer --- WGO]

Just from a user standpoint, I definitely agree with Lisa. In fact, I
just had a relevant experience yesterday--several searches didn't locate
what I needed, so I used browse and was able to navigate to what I
needed.

I'm not aware of any pitfalls of offering both.


-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-stcusesig_l-284445 at lists.stc.org
[mailto:bounce-stcusesig_l-284445 at lists.stc.org] On Behalf Of Lisa
Goldberg
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:45 AM
To: STC Usability SIG discussions
Subject: [stcusesig_l] Re: Browse Navigation and Search Combo

As an Information Architect I almost always recommend a combined
search/browse approach. It depends on the user tasks, of course, but if
you are presenting content, it's important to provide both options
because some people prefer to search and some prefer to browse,
depending on what they are doing. The exception is very small sites
where a search is not necessary.

Lisa


On Jan 24, 2008 10:25 AM, Chamberlin,Debra
<Debra.Chamberlin at gartner.com> wrote:
>
>
> Greetings,
>
> I was wondering if anyone could direct me to some recent articles and 
> materials or speak from experience about the usefulness of providing 
> browse and search capabilities together or even speak to any pitfalls 
> of this combined approach to finding content (ala 
> http://www.amazon.com/).  I know that the categories for browse have 
> to make sense for users and that metadata needs to be thoughtful, but 
> wanted to find some discussion about offering both.
>
> We're considering this approach for our intranet.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Debbie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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