Comments on: The IA of Topic Maps Based Portals http://www.topicobserver.com/blog/semantic-web/tm/2007/the-ia-of-topic-maps-based-portals/ A blog on Topic Maps, Information Architecture, Usability and other aspects related to modern web development. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:31:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Trond http://www.topicobserver.com/blog/semantic-web/tm/2007/the-ia-of-topic-maps-based-portals/#comment-20 Trond Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:12:54 +0000 http://www.topicobserver.com/blog/tm/2007/the-ia-of-topic-maps-based-portals/#comment-20 Yes, I guess most studies are probably in-house user testing of the sites in general, which is good, but it would be nice to know more about this. It's not just the banner ads, but general eye-tracking studies (<a href="http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/" rel="nofollow">http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/</a>) seems to suggest that the right-most column is basically overlooked .... perhaps this changes when and if the user "senses" (hehe) that the info is of interest? Yes, I guess most studies are probably in-house user testing of the sites in general, which is good, but it would be nice to know more about this.

It’s not just the banner ads, but general eye-tracking studies (http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/) seems to suggest that the right-most column is basically overlooked …. perhaps this changes when and if the user “senses” (hehe) that the info is of interest?

]]> By: Lars Marius Garshol http://www.topicobserver.com/blog/semantic-web/tm/2007/the-ia-of-topic-maps-based-portals/#comment-17 Lars Marius Garshol Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:08:57 +0000 http://www.topicobserver.com/blog/tm/2007/the-ia-of-topic-maps-based-portals/#comment-17 I think you make a valid point, that we don't really know how users experience the associations on the right-hand side, and that there is a chance that they might overlook them because they assume that this is where the ads are. So far I've only seen one study of user behaviour on Topic Maps-driven web sites (Oh and Park, TMRA 2006), and that study did not look at this aspect at all. Instead they compared the success/failure rate of users on a number of tasks on two comparable sites, one TM-based and one not. It would be interesting to see this tested somehow. Either automatically (by sniffing what links people follow) or through user testing. I think you make a valid point, that we don’t really know how users experience the associations on the right-hand side, and that there is a chance that they might overlook them because they assume that this is where the ads are.

So far I’ve only seen one study of user behaviour on Topic Maps-driven web sites (Oh and Park, TMRA 2006), and that study did not look at this aspect at all. Instead they compared the success/failure rate of users on a number of tasks on two comparable sites, one TM-based and one not.

It would be interesting to see this tested somehow. Either automatically (by sniffing what links people follow) or through user testing.

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