What inspired you to write a book about findability?

First, I was irritated by the constant use and abuse of the word “usability.”  So many people had been talking about usability as a panacea, to the point where the term became too broad and ambiguous.  It had become synonymous with “quality”, when in reality it is only one piece of the web puzzle.  My decision to write the book was a reaction to that.  I wanted to emphasize that other facets of the user experience are equally important.

Second, I was frustrated by the boundaries of information architecture.  At larger companies, where people play specialized roles within functional silos, you have information architects and graphic designers and software engineers and marketing professionals, and since everyone tries not to step on each other’s toes, cross-disciplinary challenges including search engine optimization and findability fall through the cracks.

Third, whenever I want to force myself to learn something new, I write a book.

How do you define findability?

Findability is the quality of being locatable or navigable. At the item level, we can evaluate to what degree a particular object is easy to discover or locate. At the system level, we can analyze how well a physical or digital environment supports navigation and retrieval. And, as I suggest in the book: “The successes of findable objects and their systems are often closely linked. An orange life jacket fails to grab attention in an orange ocean, but a statistically improbable phrase jumps right out in a sea of books. Findability requires definition, distinction, difference. In physical environments, size, shape, color, and location set objects apart. In the digital realm, we rely heavily on words. Words as labels. Words as links. Keywords.”

I advise all web designers to ask the following three questions:

1. Can users find your web site?
2. Can users find their way around your web site?
3. Can users find your content despite your web site?

These questions are clearly relevant to the publishers of online information services and reference databases. Each bibliographic record and each document is a findable object. It’s worth thinking “outside the box” about all the different ways people might find those objects.

Speaking of “outside the box”, you specifically asked us to make sure that Findability.org would be useful for everyone, even mobile users who aren’t staring at a desktop screen.  Why?

Web browsing is no longer about  the personal computer.  People are accessing the web in more ways than ever, using their PDAs, cell phones, or PlayStation portables.  Web designers have to be ready to handle clients who ask why their web site doesn’t look good on their Treo.

Findability.org was built with all users in mind.  We started with a simple but attractive design, which was constructed using valid XHTML and CSS code.  This gives you a good base to be cross-browser friendly, but that isn’t enough anymore.  You have to separate your complicated CSS from your more simplistic CSS, in order to create a site that elegantly degrades in older browsers.  You have to think about what your web site will look like when the user hits “Print”.  You have to think about what your web site looks like not only on a 1600 x 1200 screen, but also on a 200 x 200 screen.  And what happens when the user bumps the text size up to 200%?

We all have problems finding what we need online. We don’t know how to evaluate information sources. And we anticipate accurate results from two-word searches. Will improved findability help solve these problems?

When I graduated from library school more than a decade ago, I hoped we would teach the world to speak Boolean. But then Google showed us the wisdom of improving the tools rather than seeking to improve the users. In 20 years, we’ll still rely on two-word searches, but the algorithms and interfaces for ranking and displaying results will be more sophisticated. But that won’t be enough. I hope that information literacy becomes a more integral component of early education. The ability to evaluate and cross-reference sources of information is becoming a core life skill. In healthcare, commerce, education, news, and politics, if we don’t know which sources to trust, we can’t make informed decisions. This is a major challenge for individuals, institutions, and governments.

If you had to distill the core message of your new book in a few key concepts, what would they be?

At the crossroads of ubiquitous computing and the internet, we are creating new interfaces for exporting digital networked information while simultaneously importing vast amounts of data about the physical world into these networks. GPS, RFID, sensors, wearables, implants, ingestibles, and other emerging technologies are enabling an internet of objects we can barely imagine. We’re headed towards ambient findability, a world in which we can find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime.

However, there are no revolutionary solutions on the horizon. As the web grows exponentially, so will the findability challenges and opportunities. Amazon, eBay, and Google all understand the profit potential of mining the millions of niches the web makes possible. Findability will be key to competitive advantage in the coming years.

In your opinion, what is the most important, influential findability innovation?

In my lifetime, the internet is the single best answer to this question, but it’s the interaction of many innovations that excites me about findability. Progress is happening so quickly in so many places, it’s impossible to keep up. I’m amazed by the success of the Wikipedia. I’m already dependent on Google Desktop. And I’m intrigued by my friend Edward Vielmetti’s willingness to identify his location via Plazes. Personally, I’m not sure I want to be that findable, but I am sure that findability is where I want to be.