Week 11: How Hard Was It To Find This Post*

Findability

It is defined by Peter Morville in Ambient Findability (on page four) as "a) the quality of being locatable or navigable. b) The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate. c) The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval. "

So the findability of any object in my purse hovers around zero percent.

Findability could be confused with search engine optimization. While search engine optimization can help people find a site via Google or Bing, that's not all there is to findability. The contents within a site should be findable too. The first step to make that happen is to make the site usable. If the architecture of the site is confusing, e.g. unclear navigation, then the usability of the site suffers. You can not expect people to find anything if they can't figure out how to use the site.

The more people who can find the site and it's content the better. It doesn't do much good if a web site is highly findable for only 5 people. Not only can you build a site so that it is accessible for people with disabilities but also accessible for machines.


More on Findability
Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry -an article by Aarron Walter who has taught at both Templar University and the University of Georgia

The 10 Worst Findability Crimes Committed by Web Designers and Developers - I'm not sure what the beef is with Verdana but I agree with the pagination thing. (It is MADDENING.)

*Well, Week 11 posts were late so it probably was hard to find this.