A reflection from Donna M post Findability vs discoverability.

I fully agree about the importance of distinguishing between making something findable and making it discoverable. The key here is that web sites nowadays starts to be rich information spaces, with a complex user interaction and a heavy load of fresh content.

While the amount of information increases, making anything simply findable could become impossible or economically not viable. In other words, maintaining a top down ia, a taxonomy, it’s an hard task.

On the other side, a folksonomy, though naturally less precise, invites users to investigate, to surf, to discover site content in an enjoyable way.

As said by Donna, discover is:

“To notice or learn, especially by making an effort”

This definition highlights the learning aspect, rather than the locating aspect. It puts the information task in a broader context of learning rather than focusing on it as a task in itself. It broadens the task into something that could encompass a lot of small ‘finding’ tasks.

In the same category:

This entry was posted on Friday, March 18th, 2005 at 1:09 am and is filed under Information Architecture, Online Resources, External Articles, Donna Mauer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.