EuroIA Rome 2012

Written by Martin Belam

Published by Emblem Digital Consulting Ltd, September 2012

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“The dirty magnet” - Gerry McGovern

“One thing I’ve learnt from working on the web: Often the things that we think work, don’t work. And the things we think won’t work, do work.” - Gerry McGovern, EuroIA

Gerry was talking about giving users what looked like an irritating over-complicated survey, where they have to rate the five most important things they want to do on a website. At first glance it looks like nobody would ever fill in the form, but wherever they’ve tried it, it is great for sorting out what Gerry terms the “top tasks”. A relatively small amount of tasks always have a huge demand, and vastly outweigh the votes for what Gerry calls “tiny tasks”.

The “dirty magnets” in the title of Gerry’s talk were a type of navigation that pulls people away from where they really wanted to go, because it falsely drew them away with a vague promise. It happens, he says, because in any organisation everyone has loads of tasks that need doing. A small number dominate, but there are hundreds of “tiny tasks” disrupting the most important things. Sometimes these “tiny tasks” even get elevated to “top task” status because they get supported by senior managers who think they are really important thing for customers to do.

In a great IA, Gerry says, a link says “This is what I am”, but equally it also says “This is what I’m not.”

He illustrated his point with a great set of mock-ups of road signs, where a really simple choice at a junction becomes an information overload nightmare as more elements are added included such unhelpful terms