Welcome to Information Architecture
A story. I am spending time with Mimi, my upstairs roommate, and she tells me about the new tank-tops they have at Old Navy. They are $12 and would be great for Spring. I am leading the redesign of the Montefiore Hospital CME website, and this upcoming week is phase I of Information Architecture -- the time when you organize all the information into categories, figure out what goes where on the site and how the information is most easily accessed. I look around the house and assess I need some post-it notes, and am out of white paper. Procrastinating: Saturday night I go to oldnavy.com, and in three clicks locate these "women's stretch camisoles" I was told about. Clicking on the shirt image brings me to a page where I can view the shirt in any of its six colors, and then add it to my shopping cart. At the bottom of the page I can choose to ship the order to "me" or "someone else". I choose "me", and have two shirts in the cart when I realize the price of shipping is extortion and that there's an Old Navy about 15 minutes from my house. Free for the price of a walk. And, it's next to an Office Max. Camisoles and post-its: I have a plan for Sunday. Sunday comes, I drive to the mall, important things first: post-its can wait. I walk into Old Navy and quickly locate the shirts. As I am filling my arms with different sizes and colors, a "Sales Associate" approaches me and holds open a big mesh blue bag. She gestures that I should dump my stuff in it and use it for further shopping -- kind of like a shopping cart, but not unwieldy; more like a beach bag: light-weight, see-through, and roomy. It's easier to fill this bag than it is my arms with hangers, and fill it I do. Proceed to the dressing rooms, back to the clothing aisle, back to the dressing room, and finally towards check out. It was easy to find everything: there were signs (the actually matched the buttons on their website) indicating which "wear" was on which floor. There was one long line that snaked to a pit of 12 cash registers: the front person in the line was guided to the next open register. The register, when open, flashed a green light over it, so the human guide at the front of the line had a visual cue where to direct the next customer. The line moved quickly (although not so quickly that you couldn't reach out and add another pair of pants to the pile) and soon I paid, was handed a bag, and left. Next, post-its. As soon as I walked into Office Max, the alarm went off,
as if I had stolen something. I looked around and a security guard waved
me into the store with an impatient gesture. The alarm continued to sound
as I went to the paper aisle, where I tried to figure out which one of
the hundreds of reams of paper would be fine for my printer. I didn't
want to spend lots of money for fancy paper: all I needed was print capabilities
-- for wireframes, invoices and the like. After a few minutes I saw a
second paper aisle behind the first paper aisle, and over there the paper
was cheaper. It wasn't clear what the difference was, but eventually I
decided on some hp recycled office paper. Wandered the store, found post-its
in a far corner next to office chairs, picked up two huge packs and went
to check out. At the check-out counter, there was an uncertain cluster of people standing near two cashiers. I got on the back of the cluster and then an Office Max employee escorted some people to the front of the line and gave them to the next cashier. I figured this must be legit -- after all, they were escorted and weren't cutting -- but still, I felt like I wanted to be closer to the register so it wouldn't happen again. I wasn't the only one who felt that way -- the whole clump of customers clustered close to the cash registers, and then, with uncertainty, huddled there, looking at the candy bars. "Is this line for one or both of the registers?", I heard someone behind me ask. There was a pause. "A line for each?", someone else ventured, and we all sorted ourselves appropriately, into two lines. Had the answer gone the other way -- "One line for both" -- I am sure we would have stayed as we were. The system was not designed to be either, and so it fell to the number and whim of the customers to sort ourselves as we saw fit. When it was my turn, I paid, got bagged, and walked towards the door past the guard I had seen when I came in. "Have a nice day", I said (I was in a cheery mood since I had such nice new shirts). "Receipt", she said. I walk back towards the register feeling annoyed at the brusqueness of it all and wondering if the cashier even could give me a receipt at this point, now that she was working with another customer, but, luckily I saw the receipt in my purse, where I must have put it, without thinking, after paying. I turned around and walked back towards the guard, proffering my receipt and holding out my bag for inspections. She took the receipt, signed it, did not look at the bag to confirm the relationship of receipt items to bagged items, and gestured for me to leave. I could have filled my bag with other items since she had no interest in looking into it, but nonetheless, I quietly left, got in the car and came home. |