RE: Designing a Very Specific Web Interface

["Ben Weisner" <benw -at- weisner -dot- com>]

Hi Ruth,

There is a very good report you can purchase from the Nielsen Norman Group
(Jakob Nielsen's consulting firm) that describes a variety of findings based
on usability studies of how people use search on e-commerce sites. Here's a
link to the TOC of the report:
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/ecommerce/search.html. I recommend it to
anyone who is considering how best to provide users with access to their
information. I'd also recommend the book, "Information Architecture for the
World Wide Web,"  by Rosenfeld and Morville which discusses the relationship
of information architecture to information access.

Best regards,

Ben Weisner
Weisner Associates Inc.
Information Design & Development
952-933-4471 | 800-646-9989
http://www.weisner.com
mailto:benw -at- weisner -dot- com

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-techwr-l-50368 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-50368 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com]On Behalf Of Ruth
Lundquist
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000 4:27 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Designing a Very Specific Web Interface


(I've searched google for "web interface design" as well as "search engine
design" and various mutations thereof. I've also spent some time reading
many links on www.webpagesthatsuck.com. While finding a lot of good info, I
don't see anything that specifically applies to my situation.)

That said, do any of you gurus have thoughts on the following:

My company builds databases of documents for clients (we don't author the
documents--they come from a variety of sources), which the clients access
via a secure web site hosted by us. We call these databases "libraries" and
customers currently search for documents in their libraries using a
remarkably ugly & unintuitive interface that we've designed.

Based on customer feedback & our need to market a professional looking
product, we are redesigning the search interface. My gut-feeling is that
the interface should look, feel, and function more like a search engine
you'd find on the web (google, alta vista, dogpile, et al), because many
people are familiar with using that type of search interface.

It differs from a search engine, however, in that it is not a full text
search. Customers can search using specific criteria only. For example,
manufacturer, trade name, CAS #, ingredient, or user-defined data which is
entered about the document. They can not search the content of the actual
document. This search functionality is core to our business & is not
something that will be changed (so please don't suggest that--we want it
this way & more importantly so do our customers).

My question is this:
Do any of you have suggestions for designing search engine-like web pages?
Other than simply looking at how other search engines are designed? Or
would it make more sense to design a more application-like interface with
the criteria listed in drop-down boxes and with fields for entering
specific information? (FYI, we will build the interface, not purchase a
search engine to run against our database.)

Please reply to the list. Thanks in advance.


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