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Big ole breadcrumb: good on the street, but not on the page

Hansel and Gretel sprinkled breadcrumbs on the forest path to find their way home, and it’s a common practice in web design to place breadcrumbs atop web pages to help users find their way. Breadcrumbs display the path that users took to tell them where they are in the website and how to return to previous pages.
© Anthony Aneese Totah Jr | Dreamstime.com 

Street signs serve the same purpose in cities, but not always successfully. For example, sometimes street names change to denote a different city quadrant or to honor a person of cultural or historical significance.

Changes in name or blocked signage can confuse motorists and pedestrians navigating streets. Whether people are driving or walking, a landmark building, such as the Old Red Courthouse in downtown Dallas (see photo above), can help people find their way. I see it as a big ole breadcrumb. Helpful as it may be, it wouldn’t be tolerated in a planned, gated community. That’s because its style (Romanesque Revival Style, circa 1893) is different from other buildings in the neighborhood (e.g., the Bank of America Plaza [Modern Art Deco Style, circa 1985], on the right).

Buildings in gated communities typically have a common look and feel. That unified look contributes to a neighborhood’s identity and is likely a draw for home buyers. Houses in gated communities retain their value better than houses in non-gated communities.

Within a website, webpages typically also have a common look and feel. A unified look on a website contributes to the website’s identity and gives visitors a sense of where they are. If page design departs from site design — layout, navigation, color, and font — visitors are likely to be confused. They may not know which site they’re on, and rather than looking for products or information on the current page, leave the page to get their bearings. They miss any resources the page offered, and website owners miss their opportunity to sell or inform.

Design consistency is important on websites. It helps you find your way. On the street, consistency doesn’t help you. It hinders, in my opinion. On a website, you want breadcrumbs to support wayfinding, but you want them to be consistent with overall design.

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2010 09 26 Pamela Livingston Information Architecture Comments (4) Permalink

Content Governance Using CMS

Content Governance Using CMS

2013 12 18 Pamela Livingston Content Migration with CMS Comments (0) Permalink

Final Thoughts

I began this course in writing for interactive media with few preconceptions. Although I worked as a technical writer for a number of years and wrote corporate communications, volunteer newsletters, and even, long ago, articles for a daily newspaper, I wasn’t sure that my experience would be entirely relevant. I assumed that my experience would help me adapt to this new-to-me environment, and I believe my assumption was mostly correct.

I say mostly correct because I struggled, and continue to struggle, with a key element of writing for interactive media; namely, using social media effectively. I feel clumsy using it and know that I must push myself to master it. I will work on this, as well as continue my effort to learn good writing for the web and the technical tasks necessary to support a blog.

What did I learn? That I need to write shorter sentences, write more than a first draft, and write daily to hone my skills and allow time for revision. I need to be more tactful in critiquing and more careful in telling jokes. I learned valuable insights about how to improve my work from my team-mates, Desiree and Geoff, and from Professor Nichols. Thank you, all.

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2011 03 14 Pamela Livingston Writing for the Web Comments (0) Permalink

Buzz word

“Passion” is a buzz word these days. I say this without evidence, just my own observation. A Google search yielded two “passion is buzzword” results: Fresh Brainz: Buzzwords I Hate and Has Passion Become Another Job-Seeker Buzzword? I am glad to see that others share my sentiments. In businesses, schools, and organizations, those in authority challenge those who are not to state their passion. It seems intrusive to me and also unrealistic. Who has the energy to be passionate all the time? Who has the energy to be around someone who is passionate all the time? I like calm, I like reason. Passion I like in small doses.

But I learned in a “writing for interactive media” course at Quinnipiac University what those in authority really mean when they ask after your passion. And I am relieved. Curiosity, interest, and even a little knowledge I can handle.

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2011 03 14 Pamela Livingston Buzz Words
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Thoughts the “Search” lecture

I have yet to follow the SEO principles listed in the Search lecture and see that I will have to revisit my blog to cull repetitive posts. I will then have to come up with a list of unique, or nearly so, topics for future posts to use SEO effectively. Coming up with a topic list will guide my writing efforts, as will knowing that the content for each new post must be unique and must contain relevant keywords.

I follow SEO principles at work. A recent assignment to add page metadata to website content prompted me to read chapter 17, “Optimize Your Site for Search Engines,” of The Yahoo Style Guide. Chapter information was very helpful in completing this task.

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2011 03 14 Pamela Livingston module 6 reading
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Thoughts on PowerPoint

Seth Godin’s blog post, “Really Bad Powerpoint,”[sic] has some information in common with Yale professor emeritus Edward Tufte’s writings about PowerPoint, and I think it likely that Godin used Tufte’s book, Beautiful Evidence (Graphics Press, Cheshire, CT: 2006) as an information source. Godin is kinder in his assessment of PowerPoint than Tufte is. Godin says, “Powerpoint could be the most powerful tool on your computer,” and goes on to provide tips for using PowerPoint effectively.

Tufte devotes an entire chapter of Beautiful Evidence to PowerPoint. I think the title of this chapter, “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within,”indicates his assessment of this tool. Pages 172-173 display a print version of The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, Inc. The presentation is a parody and shows how PowerPoint’s native features guide, or dictate, writing style.

I believe that PowerPoint can be useful, following the guidelines that Godin provided.

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2011 03 14 Pamela Livingston module 5 reading
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Thoughts on Conversation

The lecture on conversation makes some good points. Most people wait for an opportunity to speak rather than listen to what the other person is saying. People use conversation to show off rather than share information. Showing off, by breaking into a conversation, presenting your views with confidence and even high-jacking another speaker’s views and claiming them as your own are successful strategies in business settings, I have observed. I have never seen anyone called out for this kind of rudeness, but I have seen them be rewarded through recognition, better assignments, and even promotions.

I don’t recall reading that fear is also a motivation in wresting a turn to speak, but I think that it is. People want to be noticed not just because they like the limelight, but because they’re afraid if they go unnoticed, they won’t get recognition and better assignments, etc. It would be a good thing, in my opinion, if the listening aspect of conversation were included in school curricula.

Having never mastered the art of conversation myself (I, too, am guilty of the sins cited in the Conversation lecture), I purchased How to Speak, How to Listen, by Mortimer J. Adler, a few years back. I recall that Adler makes the case for including listening in school curricula.

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2011 03 14 Pamela Livingston module 5 reading
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Thoughts on Rewriting

With the exception of my module 6 assignment, I have yet to do a thorough rewrite on any content I’ve written for this course or, if memory serves me, any of the technical documentation I’ve written over the years. I do rewrite as I compose, testing words and phrases that seem suspect and cutting them when they are irrelevant or don’t ring true. I have saved a few “little darlings” in separate files during this course, but I am sorry to say that their reprieve will likely be short-lived. Death to little darlings! I want my file directory clutter-free.

As a technical writer, I was accustomed to having an editor review my work and catch my mistakes. I performed this same function for other writers on my team. It’s easier to see others’ mistakes than your own, research shows, because writers see what they intended to write rather than what they actually did write. Revisiting a document the next day, time permitting, usually brings the errors to light. So does pressing the Send button in your email application. After sending your email, you can see your errors in bold relief by rereading the message in your Sent box. It’s too late to do anything then but explain or apologize profusely, or both. The advantages are a rush of adrenaline, which many people seek out through extreme sports, and office drama leading to another adrenaline rush.

Seriously, though, I am willing to forego these benefits to enjoy the greater rewards of writing quality content. I know my cut-as-you-go process is insufficient for achieving that end. I must take the advice of Zinsser and others to set aside time for writing daily to see my work improve. That’s the tricky part. Oh, yes, and then there’s the writing.

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2011 03 13 Pamela Livingston module 4 reading
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Thoughts on Email Revisions

David Silverman’s “How to Revise an Email” article in the Harvard Business Review has some good advice. I agree with all of it from the standpoint of advocating for clear communications and agree with most of it from the standpoint of keeping your job in corporate America. Or maybe I should say corporate culture, because most large American corporations employ a large share of their workers in other countries. These corporations are American, but also global.

Corporations assign their offshore offices names to indicate that the offices, although physically located in India or elsewhere, are nevertheless part of the U.S. organization. Rather than Corporation X, India, for example, the India office or offices would be named Region 10. That was the practice a few years ago. I understand that it is changing again to accommodate changing business needs.

I introduce this anecdote because the issue of writing emails for global business teams was not included in Silverman’s list, and it should be. The direct communication he advocates (item 6, no equivocation) would not fly in all circumstances, particularly when dealing with colleagues in other countries. I’ve no references to cite, but have seen first-hand and have heard from people working on the global teams of various U.S. corporations that communication with overseas colleagues requires a great deal of tact. In the United States, we prize directness in communication. In other countries, tactfulness, at the expense of specifying clear deadlines, reporting roles, and the like, is prized, and directness seen as uncivilized and rude.

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2011 03 13 Pamela Livingston module 4 reading
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Thoughts on “Logic” and “A Writer’s Decisions”

After posting a rewrite of an assignment to defend my area of interest, I reread the “Logic: Layers of Evidence” lecture and “A Writer’s Decisions” (Zinsser, chap. 23). Both have left me with misgivings about the work I just completed. Was it sound? Am I on the right track, or should I scrap the blog I started as a class assignment to explore my areas of interest, improve my writing skills, and, possibly, showcase my writing talents with the objective of future and continued employment?

The topic I chose for my blog is, loosely, the relationship between real-world architecture and information architecture. Others have written about this topic, although I think not extensively. The objective of these writers has been to use the analogy to explain what information architecture is, how it is employed, and why it matters. A few, such as blogger and Princeton Ph.D. candidate, Molly Wright Steenson, have written about this topic extensively, and it appears, with great precision.

My own blogging effort has been more a define-as-I-go enterprise. Rereading Zinsser’s statement that writing is clear and sequential and that logic is the glue that holds it together gives me pause, as does Professor Nichol’s statement that “you must provide layers of evidence in order to persuade others of your conclusion.”

The analogies I make, comparing bytes to words to bricks, and optical illusions to my blog topic, are tenuous. I cannot see a way to make an irrefutable argument that I am correct, but at a gut level I believe that I am. The tenuous relationship of bytes to bricks allows exploration into a wide area, as technology draws the physical and virtual worlds closer together. The reference to optical illusion sets the stage for that exploration. I do not doubt the Zinsser and Nichols are correct. Logic is the glue that holds writing together, and layers of evidence must be provided to support your conclusion. But I contend that there is also room for a leap of faith. However tenuous the relationship between building blocks of electrons, building blocks of thought, and building blocks of physical material, the relationship is there, and it is worth exploring.

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Defending my area of interest, revisited

The relationship between the built environment and the virtual environment is both tenuous and obvious. Seeing that relationship is like looking at an optical illusion. First you see the young woman, then the old, or maybe vice versa, if by chance you notice the difference or have been tipped off that there is one.

But when you see one, you can’t see the other. You have to remember that the single image contains both views. Switching from one view to the other can be slow at first. With practice, it takes seconds. But however quick the switch, I contend that you cannot see both images at the same time.

The same can be said for the separate disciplines of architecture and information architecture, which I have chosen as an underlying theme for my blog, bytesandbricks.com. It is obvious that you cannot see the structure of a building and the structure of a website at the same time. But the similarity in structures exists, and others, such as authors Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, have identified it and used it in their classic IA primer, Information Architecture and the World-Wide Web, 3rd Ed.

I am inspired by these experts in the fields of information architecture and user experience. They show the way to better website design — an area that I, like many others, have become interested in through happenstance. For me, it was the need to retool my skill set for the current job market.

However unintentionally, they also showed me a new way to look at the world. Where before I took the built landscape for granted, I now appreciate its profound influence on the daily quality of our lives if not our personal identities. Where before I saw websites as conveniences, I now see that at least some of them provide a rich trove of information and visually pleasing design.

I chose the domain name for my blog to telegraph to potential readers the nature of the content I plan to cover. The term “bytes” in the context of my blog means a special kind of building material, and the term’s technical meaning as an eight-bit unit of digital information supports my definition. These eight bits encode a single character in a computer. Characters make up words. Words make up thoughts, and thoughts make up sentences, which when committed to WordPress, make up a blog post. Bytes are malleable units of information, as are words. Though a blogger cannot and does not manipulate bytes to write a blog post, he or she depends on their behind-the-scenes malleability for structuring, formatting, and publishing blog content. Less malleable than bytes owing to their definitions, words nonetheless are raw materials that can be manipulated to build a case — to make an argument that conveys the writer’s logic and passion. Bricks are material units of construction that can be manipulated into different structures — roads, walls, and towers. Organizing these separate units — of digital information, of denotative and connotative meaning, of formed and baked clay — into a cohesive and coherent structure is akin to magic. It’s like making something out of nothing. That’s why I’m interested in these topics. That’s why I gave my blog its name.

I admit there are other reasons. I liked (sort of) the alliteration of the title and thought it might be catchy. I also thought it might be (or kind of is) dumb, but took a chance and forged ahead. I have seen other websites using the terms bricks, sticks, and stuff in their titles. Low-end merchandise is not what I’m selling. I hope instead to provide interesting information on a variety of topics related to architecture, information architecture, and the contributions to quality of life, or at least user experience, that each has. The well-designed house and well-designed neighborhood support residents’ safety and sanity. The well-designed website supports the need of users for quick access to information. The built environment we live in gives us a sense of place, which in turn contributes to our sense of identity. The virtual environment we use to conduct our daily business gives us greater access to information and arguably more control of our lives. I believe these topics are worth investigating.

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2011 03 13 Pamela Livingston module 6 rewrite
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