Information Architecture to Support Better Findability

A non-technical session geared towards anyone involved in the re-design or development of a Drupal site with robust content search needs.

It can be a costly mistake to only think of search as a ‘feature’ to configure without considering information architecture and content strategy. It can be significantly more difficult when the content has been minimally curated and there are high expectations for ‘an awesome new search feature’.

The problem in search is often establishing semantic relevancy. Content experts know content, search experts know search and it can be difficult to bring these two groups together. This is a user centered session targeted at either/both groups. 

The presentation will cover:

• The fundamental differences between navigate, browse and search
• When to promote navigation or browsing, and when to point users to a search field
• When to show suggestions, autocompletes, or related items
• How to plan for and handle misspellings, partial words and synonyms
• How to provide the best experience when users have no idea what they are looking for
• How and when to use facets and sorting
• How to structure content to assist with contextual discovery
• How to plan for and handle search on mobile
• How to benchmark and test a query judgement list

We will also discuss examples from our experience on:

• How to elicit the most valuable search specifications
• How to productively discuss search goals with non-technical stakeholders
• Moving from a content structure that uses flat tagging or no tagging
• The building blocks of search interfaces
• Discussing expectations for search queries and results
• How to design for user error
• Why to start with a minimum viable product

Vanessa Turke has been having fun with Drupal since 2006. Starting out as a volunteer content creator for a non-profit, then moving into Drupal administration, training and support before beginning a career specializing in Drupal as a full time solutions architect and in 2008. She has finely honed the ability to translate business requirements and website usability research into detailed UX and functional specifications for many different verticals including education, ecommerce, publishing and enterprise. She enjoys collaborating with stakeholder groups and multi-disciplinary teams to solve complex user journeys and workflow challenges.