Usability Dimension: "Findable"

FINDABLE.

Fourth feature in our series: Dimensions of Usability. First three posts discussed the dimensions - useful, usable, and desirable.

Peter Morville says: "Findability precedes usability, in the alphabet and on the Web. You can't use what you can't find."

For your web site, there are two aspects of findability: how well your site can be found on the Internet, and how well information can be found on your site. While the former aspect is very important and concerns itself with concepts like search engine optimization and marketing techniques, we're going to restrict this feature to the latter aspect of findability. The issues that affect findability are: organization of the web site, representation of the user interface, web standards, user interaction, navigation, and content. Achieving a good design and score in these parameters would actually directly contribute to having a higher SEO too.

A standard way of measuring this dimension: "findable" for your web site is usability testing methodologies such as: Tree Testing or Reverse Card Sorting. It's all about focusing on the user's ability to identify and navigate  through your site/application to find and retrieve information and sources relevant to his needs. Things like: navigation, sub-navigation, placement of content, choice of words and phrases, information-flow, search functionality...contribute towards making your web site findable or not.

Few examples of highly findable sites:

• opera


• hbo


• chandra harvard


• fwa


• questacon


• ted


• brainpop


• penguin classics


• stimulus

Simply put, we must strive to design navigable web sites, products, and locatable objects, icons, user interface elements, so users can find what they need. Few things to keep in mind:

• avoid having no way of going back to home


• don't have illogically named links


• have consistent navigation across different pages


• don't have too many sub-navigation levels/hierarchy


• use breadcrumbs and sitemaps


• make states of hyperlinks different and noticeable

Next usability dimension topic: Accessible.