On-Site Information Findability

On-site Information findability:

towards an integrative view

MASTER THESIS WITHIN: Informatics

NUMBER OF CREDITS: 30

PROGRAMME OF STUDY: Information Architecture and Innovation

AUTHORs: Rients Wiebren Johannes van Blanken, Zdeněk Šrejber

JÖNKÖPING May 2020

Master Thesis in Informatics

Title: On-site Information findability: towards an integrative view

Tutor: Daniela Mihailescu

Date: 2020-06-03

Key terms: Findability, Information Architecture, and Social Informatics

Abstract

A major component of the internet are websites which each have their information architecture, but more importantly, findability. This thesis focusses on the topic of findability, which is defined by Morville as “The quality of being locatable or navigable” (Morville, 2005, p. 4). Findability has become more crucial due to an increasing amount of information and time people spent on searching and gathering information. This motivation has led to the aim of investigating findability through insights into, and a delineation of, two complementary perspectives: information architecture and social informatics. Empirical evidence was collected through semi-structured interviews with design practitioners, and a literature review was conducted to provide an integrated view of findability.

The STIN-model and berry-picking model provide a frame of reference which designers can use to improve the findability of their digital platforms. The most predominant suggestions based on the empirical evidence are as follows. Firstly, designers should remember that they are problem solvers and should always use methods appropriate to the problem that needs to be resolved. Secondly, designers should start with problem analysis, which should combine qualitative and quantitative methods to reach the optimal results with regards to user research. Finally, do not reinvent the wheel, make use of already existing tools that incorporate upgradeability and reusability.

Acknowledgments

After two years of study, the final product of our work has been completed. Zdenek and Rients are proud to present this thesis, but before we can do so, there are some people we would like to thank. Firstly, we would like to thank Daniela Mihailescu for her guidance, feedback, and motivational support. We also thank Andrea Resmini for being our mentor and for teaching us invaluable skills which we can utilize for the rest of our lives. Our thanks also goes out to all the interviewees who have helped us to gather the required data. We would also like to thank all the colleagues and friends we had the opportunity to meet in this master. Moreover, our thanks also go to our friends and families who supported us during the master studies.

Figure 1 Honest work (KnowYourMeme, n.d., p. 1)

Table of Contents

1 Introduction ...... 1

1.1 Problem Discussion ...... 1

1.2 Objective ...... 2

1.3 Scope and limitations ...... 3

1.4 Thesis structure ...... 4

1.5 Definitions ...... 4

2 Literature review ...... 6

2.1 Findability ...... 6

The current state of findability ...... 6

Models ...... 7

Summary ...... 10

2.2 Information architecture ...... 11

History of IA ...... 11

The current state of IA ...... 13

Frameworks ...... 17

Information Architecture Summary ...... 25

2.3 Social Informatics ...... 26

History of SI ...... 26

The current state of SI ...... 27

Frameworks ...... 28

Social Informatics Summary ...... 32

2.4 Proposed Integrative view ...... 33

Integrated view model ...... 35

3 Methods ...... 36 iii

3.1 Research Philosophy ...... 36

Selected research philosophy ...... 38

3.2 Research approach ...... 39

3.3 Research strategy ...... 39

3.4 Research choices ...... 40

3.5 Primary data ...... 40

3.6 Secondary data ...... 41

3.7 Ethical Consideration ...... 43

4 Results ...... 45

4.1 Introduction ...... 45

4.2 Project manager & UX-designer at Societygal ...... 46

4.3 Product Designer at &Partners ...... 48

4.4 Director of Design Strategy at &Partners ...... 52

4.5 DevOps web application developer ...... 55

4.6 Lead Designer at Pilotfish ...... 57

4.7 Codes ...... 60

Aim ...... 62

Communication ...... 62

Design ...... 62

Experience ...... 62

Issue ...... 63

Methods ...... 63

Perspective ...... 63

Philosophy ...... 64

Process ...... 64

Research ...... 64

User ...... 64

Verification ...... 65

5 Analysis ...... 65

5.1 Findability ...... 65

5.2 Information Architecture ...... 66

5.3 Social Informatics ...... 67

5.4 Integrative view analysis ...... 69

6 Conclusion ...... 70

7 Discussion ...... 73

7.1 General points ...... 73

7.2 Theoretical framework ...... 73

7.3 Methods ...... 74

7.4 Results & analysis ...... 74

7.5 Suggestions for future research ...... 75

8 Reference list ...... 76

Figures

Figure 1 Honest work (KnowYourMeme, n.d., p. 1) ...... ii

Figure 2 Thesis structure ...... 4

Figure 3 Classic information retrieval model (Morville, 2005, p. 59) ...... 8

Figure 4 Bates' Berrypicking model (Morville, 2005, p. 60) ...... 8

Figure 5 Moving into pervasive information architecture...... 12

Figure 6 Venn diagram of IA concepts (Rosenfeld et al., 2015) ...... 15

Figure 7 Information Architecture for the Internet of Things ...... 23

Figure 8 Social Informatics timeline ...... 27

Figure 9 Proposed Integrative View ...... 35

Figure 10 Alternative stances on knowledge and reality ...... 38

Figure 11 Integrative view model on On-site Information Findability ...... 69

Tables

Table 1 Identified concepts in sources used for the thesis ...... 42

Table 2 Matrix of theory and practice articles per IA, SI, and Findability ...... 43

Table 3 Analysis of literature ...... 80

Table 4 Interview Schema ...... 84

Appendix

Appendix 1 Literature review...... 80

Appendix 2 Interview template ...... 81

Appendix 3 Interview transcripts ...... 85

1 Introduction

Huge mainframes computers stored inside large buildings evolved and decentralized into personal computers located on every office desk. Personal computers have spread from office desks to households. Single household computers evolved from a family-owned machine to several individually owned computing devices (Šrejber et al., 2019).

At the moment of writing, there exist 1.7 billion websites on the world wide web (Internetlivestats, 2020). All these websites have their own goals, content, and audience, but that also means much information is available in different shapes and forms and can be accessed from different sources. Consequently, and maybe ironically, this presents a challenge in finding a single, specific, desired piece of information. Each website has different qualities and features of findability, but besides the differences between these websites, they have something in common, design!

There is a critical issue of matching a website’s content to the preferences and needs of its users. “Most importantly, 61% of users said that if they did not find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site, they would quickly move on to another site” (Hendron et al., 2014, p. 3). Moreover, an adaption of content to be available and findable on different device types is of significant importance.

1.1 Problem Discussion

McKinsey executed a study about the Social Economy and found that individuals spend 19% of their time workweek on searching and gathering information (2012). Based on a 40-hour workweek, an individual would spend almost 8 hours, or a full workday, by just searching and gathering information. Due to the increasing amount of time people spend online searching and gathering information, the findability of information on websites has become a point of concern.

In the last thirty years, society has changed from “an industrial to an information society, in which the main targets and the results for the majority of the employed population will be information products and services” (Kolin, 2011, p. 460). This societal shift has created 1

an urgent need for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to “store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data or information” (Rennie & Law, 2009). For this reason, “today there is an objective social need for a systematic study of the information society in the field of scientific knowledge and disseminating it through a modernized educational system” (Kolin, 2011, p. 460).

The impulse for research of the findability problem arose from the personal experience of the authors, who faced troubles regarding the findability of information. The existence of this issue was further reinforced by the discussion with peers, who also expressed similar or identical problems when looking for information. Although the literature on findability exists and is available, the authors believe that theory is not being 100% utilized in real-world design.

A gap can be identified in how websites are designed so that software and web users can find the desired information. The application of Information Architecture standards allows designers to improve the findability of information on their websites, but this problem persists. Therefore the authors have decided to make information findability the topical subject of study and the question of immediate interest for both research and practice.

1.2 Objective

The objective of this master thesis is to review existing literature on findability and identify potential perspectives which combined with designers' work experiences provide insights and contribute to an integrative view on on-site information findability. To achieve that following research questions are addressed:

RQ1: What perspectives and frameworks can be derived from literature that provide insights into on-site information findability?

RQ2: What conceptual elements, which are being used by designers, exist and how do they provide insights into on-site information findability?

1.3 Scope and limitations

Scope

The scope of the thesis is focused on an exploration of information findability through Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), mainly accessed via the internet. This research provides an insight into fields of information findability.

The available literature is explored for theoretical knowledge, practitioners are interviewed to gain knowledge about their current processes and toolsets, and suggestions for digital design practitioners are provided and discussed. Lastly, the identification of potential areas and directions for further detailed research is also an expected outcome.

The contribution of this research will include: a theoretically and empirically grounded integrative view on information findability.

Limitations

One of the main priorities and challenges in terms of limitation of qualitative research is acquiring a representative sample profile and achieving data saturation within the time frame of this thesis. Time and planning were essential factors as scheduling interviews, processing literature and gathering data were expected to be time-consuming activities.

Another limiting factor, especially for the scope and planning of the research, was that the research was conducted as an expected student thesis starting in January 2020 and finishing in May 2020. The authors also had to plan according to lectures and workshop structure presented by the university.

The final factor that was introduced during this thesis was the COVID-19 global pandemic. This global pandemic forced the researchers to conduct their interviews via digital means, which left out body language and other aspects that can add value to data collection.

1.4 Thesis structure

To visualize how this thesis has been structured, the following figure is provided. This figure is intended to provide a bird’s-eye view of the research.

Figure 2 Thesis structure

Phase A: the literature review, will provide different insights and perspectives into findability. Phase B will use the knowledge about findability and compare it to the results gathered from interviews. Afterward, the results of these steps will be analyzed and will provide a conclusion and a discussion.

1.5 Definitions

Actant

Refers to a person, creature, object or artifact involved in the network analysed.

Ambient Findability - by Morville (2005, p. 6),

“who describes it as a world, where we can find anything or anyone from anywhere and at any time, and this is the world we should be striving to create around us, as it doesn’t exist yet”.

Designer

Person that uses their creative abilities to design tangible or intangible products, services or experiences, in order to solve an identified problem.

Findability - by Morville (2005, p. 4):

• “The quality of being locatable or navigable.” • “The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate” • “The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval.”

Information

What is Information? Information can be either physical, semantic or digital. Physical information is a perceived representation of the physical environment around us, semantic is perceived representation of communication between people and digital one arose after the introduction of ubiquitous ICTs and is perceived information transferred through digital space. (Hinton, 2014b)

Information Architecture – by Resmini (2014a, p. 85):

Information architecture is an applied art that solves the “problem arising when we need to manage, produce and consume large amount of information”.

Social Informatics is (Kling, 1999, p. 1)

“the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts”

2 Literature review

In this chapter, the review of literature related to information findability will be discussed.

2.1 Findability

The current state of findability

The act of searching and gathering information has been an activity of the human race since the start of time. However, we cannot always find the information we are looking for. Findability is the field of study that focusses on the findability of information and is defined by Morville as (2005, p. 4):

Hendron et al. define four distinct aspects of findability: “(1) on-site search, (2) related links and products, (3) site match to customer needs and preferences, and (4) cross-device experience” (2014, p. 2).

Hendron et al. identify a type of findability that is concerned with information on a webpage: “On-site findability is concerned with the ability of a potential customer to find what they are looking for within a specific site” (2014, p. 1).

A way we design and use findability tools in the software, especially the web, has evolved from a physical space. Even in the pre-digital era, the physical environment was a major factor in how humans name and describe newly introduced artifacts and actors. The example presented by Morville (2005) is “homo erectus”, meaning “upright man” explain that this specie of human had straight back and its head up. Consequently, physical space is also a reason we say, for example, “go there … and there …” in the context of visiting a website. This works well for humans as, in our understanding, we can relate newly identified artifacts to artifacts/concepts that we already know from our experience. Moreover, even when social actors search for something new, they use known

information and concepts, that are already know to them, even though it might not be 100% related to desired search results. (Rosenfeld et al., 2015)

As searching and gathering information has been a fundamental part of humanity, Morville further explains that: … “What we find influences what we do. But the first step is deciding to search, and the smallest of barriers will deter us. The primacy of accessibility is among the firmest ties that bind our rationality” (2005, p. 212). Since the smallest barriers will deter us from even starting to search and gather information, it becomes vital that information on websites, is findable for the user. The adage of: “You Can't Use What You Can't Find” (Morville, 2005, p. 160), perfectly describes this.

Models

Any time, any human makes such a search, the term “Human Information Interaction (HII)” can be used, as it describes the way users interact with information, regardless of which medium used for access or connection (Morville, 2005). HII can be viewed as a sub-set of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field and is optimized for network information systems with a focus on user-centered methods and dynamic multi-channel behavior. Morville (2005, p. 59) states:

In such environments, users may find and interact with information objects though variety of devices and interfaces. The emphasis shifts from interfaces to information.

A lot of work in this field was done by Marcia J. Bates and the Berrypicking model she has introduced (Morville, 2005). Bates suggested that the usage patterns for information

retrieval are not represented well with simple models where only one query can accomplish the desired results, as shown in figure 7.

Figure 3 Classic information retrieval model (Morville, 2005, p. 59)

Instead, Bates introduced the Berrypicking model, figure 8 below. What the berry-picking model aims to explain is that sometimes social agents have only limited or no knowledge (thought) about the desired search result (information that leads to Exit). By executing the repeating process of varying queries and retrievals of information, social agents slowly and gradually increase their knowledge that will eventually allow them to find the desired information. This model is thus a more accurate representation of the information retrieval journey each social actor undergoes on a regular basis.

Figure 4 Bates' Berrypicking model (Morville, 2005, p. 60) 8

Going through the user journey of searching for information, it is crucial to mention there exist push and pull information. Push information is when information is pushed on the user, such as an aggressive advertisement or spam emails. Pull information, on the other hand, is something that the user desired to find within the network or system. Morville (2005) mentions an imbalance between the two, where the push is more dominant and takes up much more of the real-estate of websites. Marketing departments especially focus on pushing for the push information, mainly home pages of websites. Morville also urges designers that they need to “push for pull” and come up with designs where push and pull are in balance, and thus achieve ideal user-friendliness.

Additionally, Hendron et al. define several examples that the impact of findability has on a website:

74% of consumers get frustrated when content, offers, ads, or promotions on a website appear that have nothing to do with their interests. This decreases conversion rates and increases bounce rates, thus decreasing the overall findability of products across the site. As a result, companies that don’t invest time in site design, content creation, and recommendations that are relevant to their customers pay an enormous price (2014, p. 3).

Klyn (2010) introduced the concepts of Ontology, Taxonomy, and Choreography in the Information Architecture field. Moville (2005) in his book Ambient Findability he left out choreography and instead talks about Folksonomy. Choreography, defines interaction rules among the relationships. Folksonomy, in contrast, lets the users define such rules and relationships and can be thus viewed as an extension of taxonomy and choreography by employing users, people, folks in the process.

To evaluate folksonomy, we need to know about controlled vocabularies. Controlled vocabularies are pre-designed arrangements of words used to index information in high quality. A disadvantage is that such vocabularies can cover only a limited quantity of information (Morville, 2005). This disadvantage could be mitigated by the employment of folksonomy, where users can extend the missing parts. Thus, designers can and should 9

embrace a design that enables and promotes the involvement of users. That way, indexation can cover a larger quantity of information, a self-explanatory real-life example can be wiki websites.

Summary

Findability could be defined as the quality and degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate and the quality and degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval (Morville, 2005).

Findability on the web has evolved from a physical space. The physical environment was a key factor in how humans name and describe newly introduced artifacts and actors. Furthermore, Morville explains that “What we find influences what we do. Nevertheless, the first step is deciding to search, and the smallest of barriers will deter us. The primacy of accessibility is among the firmest ties that bind our rationality” (2005, p. 212).

Moreover, McKinsey executed a study about the Social Economy and found that individuals spend 19% of their time workweek on searching and gathering information (2012). Based on a 40-hour workweek, an individual would spend almost 8 hours, or a full workday, by just searching and gathering information.

From the overview of available model and Frameworks, both Berrypicking model by Bates and Folksonomy approach has proven to be a useful tool for design (Morville, 2005). Berrypicking is the model that replaced simple retrieval and more accurately maps user journeys during information retrieval. At the same time, folksonomy adds the benefit of potential user-generated content to the design of the solutions (e.g. user-generated tags, descriptions, and playlists).

2.2 Information architecture

History of IA

With the ever-increasing amount of information in today’s world, the need to arrange information has never been more substantial. Resmini & Rosati define Information Architecture as: “Information architecture is the discipline that: Information architecture (IA) is a professional practice and field of studies focused on solving the basic problems of accessing, and using, the vast amounts of information available today” (2011, p. 33). However, this problem has been in existence far before the introduction of computers: “Around 330 B.C., ancient Egypt’s Library of Alexandria listed its contents in a 120- scroll bibliography” (UX Collective, 2017, p. 1).

The modern-day version of Information Architecture was brought to attention by, among others, Richard Saul Wurman. He used the term ‘Architecture’ in combination with ‘Information’ at the American Institute of Architecture conference of 1976 (Resmini & Rosati, 2011).

In 1998 an essential artifact in the development of Information Architecture was introduced: Information Architecture for the world wide web: “the book dealt with the increasing difficulty Wurman was experiencing in communicating rising amounts of information and presented a large selection of design solutions to the problem. It was a designer’s book: from a designer, for designers” (Resmini & Rosati, 2011, p. 37). This bookmarked the beginning of a new chapter in the world of IA and, in retrospect, can be seen as the cornerstone of ‘classic IA’. Its introduction led to information architecture becoming mainstream (Resmini & Rosati, 2011).

Further development of the Information Architecture field was sparked when: “Users were entering the scene as producers (or prosumers, a term acknowledging their mutated role as both consumers and producers of information), tagging was everywhere, and personal mobile devices and home appliances were redrawing the boundaries of computing” (Resmini & Rosati, 2011, pp. 41–42). The aforementioned advancements created the need for pervasive and ubiquitous Information Architecture as people were 11

spending an increasing amount of time in cyberspace. The following figure illustrates the timeline from classic IA to pervasive and ubiquitous IA (Resmini & Rosati, 2011, p. 43):

Figure 5 Moving into pervasive information architecture

Now that we have taken a brief look into the history of Information Architecture, we will move on to understand its current state.

The current state of IA

In today’s world, information architecture is past the point of being connected just to library science or aimed at web site design improvements. These were concerned with labeling, organization systems, navigation, search, and sorting systems. However, the ubiquitous blend of physical and digital space is the additional factor that has to be considered by current IA research and practice. E.g. social actors consume information in a different social and environmental context, through the usage of different mediums, devices, and technologies.

A definition of Information Architecture, according to Resmini (2014a, p. 85) is as follows:

Information architecture is an applied art that solves the “problem arising when we need to manage, produce and consume a large amount of information”.

Nevertheless, what is Information? Information can be either physical, semantic, or digital. Physical information is a perceived representation of the physical environment around us. Semantic is a perceived representation of communication between people, and digital one arose after the introduction of ubiquitous ICTs and is perceived information transferred through digital space. A factor for consideration is that while physical and semantic information is natural, digital information is wholly artificial and human-made. Digital information itself is not readable by humans, only computers can read it, but such information can be explained to humans through translation and means that we know from physical and semantic context. (Hinton, 2014b)

The definition of architecture concerning IA by Hinton (2014b, p. 104):

”This work is an act of architecture: the structuring of raw information into shared information environments with useful, navigable form that resists entropy and reduces confusion. This is a new kind of architecture that designs structures of information rather than of bricks, wood, plastic and 13

stone (…) People live and work in these structures, just as they live and work in their homes, offices, factories and malls. These places are not virtual: they are as real as our own minds.”

As presented by Lacerda & Lima-Marques (2014, p. 8), Information architecture can be characterized by the following parameters:

• IA has a specific and relevant object of study • IA is inherently transdisciplinary • IA has a growing community of scholars and practitioners • IA plays a significant and necessary role in society • IA is experiencing a new context of framing with the rise of ubiquitous information spaces

Klyn (2010) explains his view of Information architecture in three concepts:

1. Ontology – understanding the meaning, its patterns, and rules 2. Taxonomy – arrangement of systems and structures to accomplish a task 3. Choreography – defining interactions rules among the relationships

With the increasing number of available information, it is becoming harder and harder for social actors to navigate within the ecosystem of digital artifacts and finding the desired information. To improve the findability of information is one of the focuses of IA. The adage “cannot see the forest for the threes” fit the situation perfectly.

The term “affordance” needs an explanation to understand the upcoming paragraph. Affordance is a term used for evaluating the opportunity for action, in the context of this research, it is an opportunity to find and retrieve the information. The term originates in the physical environment where animals evaluate the opportunities to gain an advantage in survival (Gibson, 1986).

As established previously, there is information all around us, and social actors might become overwhelmed by it. New devices create new interaction points and change the affordance of information for social actors. To manage this problem, a concept of Ambient findability was introduced by Morville (2005, p. 6), who describes it as a world,

where we can find anything or anyone from anywhere and at any time, and this is the world we should be striving to create around us, as it doesn’t exist yet.

Definition of “ambient” by Morville (2005, p. 4) :

• “Surrounding; encircling: e.g. ambient sound” • Completely enveloping

According to Hendron et al. (2014), we can split findability into external and on-site. Although very frequently used for business and marketing purposes, these principles also apply for the findability of any other information. External findability is concerned with “brand awareness” and search engine optimization (SEO) in case of online searches, in a setting of physical space, SEO is replaced with a “visible” location. Physical location and/or SEO are there both to ensure social actors can easily find the desired information. External findability is not the aim of this thesis. Once social actors land on the corresponding website or visit desired physical space, on-site findability is the primary concern. On-site findability has far bigger control over the experience of social actors. Many factors, such as navigation, structure, graphics, content, have a direct influence, and are part of the Information Architecture field.

Figure 6 Venn diagram of IA concepts (Rosenfeld et al., 2015)

As presented by Degler (2014), one of the essential features of every good digital ecosystem, supported by IA and user experience, is a seamless transition between different roles of social agents. Different agents have a different origin, purpose, responsibility, and activity they intend to execute. Thus, the experience must be designed accordingly, either by predicting the behavior of social agents or even better by monitoring their activity, learning, and adapting the system. Such a process allows for human/centered approach in design by considering:

• Meaning of information and their relationships • Change of information on change of meaning • Change of relevance over time • The amount of information and sustaining a relevance upon its increase

(Degler, 2014)

Rosenfeld et al. (2015) describe several models of architecture when social actors look for information. Most frequently “too simple” model is used, where an actor asks a question, magic happens, and the final answer will display´. However, this model does not represent reality, its too straight forward, does not consider context or social actor as a factor for the search.

There are different situations, sometimes simple search could be enough, but other times social agents want to execute an in-depth, detailed search, or there might be a situation when they do not know what they are looking for.

In a nutshell, a quality findability solution always considers many factors related to the search, considers a change of actor’s needs and desires, may even suggest what it is that actor wants, and learns from every executed action to improve any future interaction with an actor.

Frameworks

This section will delve deeper into what frameworks exist within Information Architecture.

Big Information Architect, Little Information Architect

From the introduction of Information Architecture into the world, two frameworks or perspectives were the primary focus: Big Information Architect and Little Information Architect. In his column with the same name, Morville defines Little Information Architect as: “the little information architect may focus solely on bottom-up tasks such as the definition of metadata fields and controlled vocabularies” (2000, p. 1), and defines Big Information Architect as: “the Big Information Architect may play the role of "an orchestra conductor or film director, conceiving a vision and moving the team forward” (2000, p. 1).

Big IA and Little IA have been the subject of much discussion, and have had an impact on the way people view the field of Information Architecture. Big IA’s approach gave rise to user-oriented principles. However, it also has a weakness: “Big IA has not developed deeper reproducible structures that can help designers understand how elements of a website shape dynamics between people and contribute to larger organizational structures.

By not having reproducible structures, Big IA’s impact is of a smaller nature compared to little IA. The consequence of this lesser impact is that Big IA is past its sell-by date and will not be used by designers/academics as a framework to guide their process. The cause of this problem is as follows: “Big IA was born during the consulting boom of the early 2000s, and as such, many Big IA practitioners are outside consultants. A custom- built approach for each project earns consultants more money” (Jaffe, 2019b, p. 1). As the primary driver of Big IA was to generate more income for the business, its value contribution toward the future was not viable.

On the other end of the spectrum exists Little IA. According to Jaffe, “Little IA provides the structural approach to information architecture that Big IA lacks” (2019, p. 1). However, Jaffe also adds:

But Little IA has only defined structures that relate to navigation, search, and way-finding. This gap makes sense when understanding the development and positioning of the field. Little IA emerged from library science, and librarians are largely concerned with the organization of books and records to help people find them.

With this focus on navigation Little IA architects have developed important concepts such as hierarchical structures, taxonomies, and matrices (2019, p. 1).

As can be deduced from this quote, little IA’s impact cannot be underestimated, and they have contributed to improving website’s findability, information architecture, and overall improved structure. This has led to an increasing level of maturity for the field of Information Architecture.

However, as with Big IA, Little IA also lacks something: “What Little IA architects have not done is to develop an understanding of how structure impacts online environments outside of navigation” (Jaffe, 2019b, p. 1). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something that Little Architects have not taken into account. SEO can be defined as an essential component of external-findability (Hendron et al., 2014). As Little Architects have concerned themselves with on-site findability and information architecture, they have left the element of external findability by the side.

Big IA and Little IA each have their own merits and vices, but the overall takeaway is that they are frameworks and thereby tools to create digital structures. The choice for a digital structure is permanent and has stark repercussions on design and the overall information system later on in the process of creation.

Jaffe identifies the third framework:

At the heart of the Structural language for information architecture is the search for a cohesive design language to give people more power to directly express what kinds of interactions they want to have. The Structural Information Architect fights for digital structures that can create emergent pockets for creative play, cafes for respectful debate, newsstands where people can purvey a broad range of opinions, reading nooks for quiet reflection. As we need public spaces in the physical world, so too do we need these kinds of spaces online (2019, p. 1).

The primary takeaway from these schools of thought and frameworks is that there exists a preeminent need to have a unified language for Information Architecture. As Information Architecture is the backbone and structure of many digital artifacts, it calls for a unified language.

Unified language

Context is the key to understanding how the world around us works. As described in the ‘current state of IA’, Information Architecture is the process of ‘making sense of things’ or sense-making in short (Resmini, 2014b). Hinton captures this in his book Understanding Context:

To make sense of the world, we’re always trying to place things in context, whether our environment is physical, cultural, or something else altogether. Now that we live among digital, always-networked products, apps, and places, context is more complicated than ever—starting with “where” and “who” we are (2014, p. 1).

Hinton’s explanation offers a perspective that pinpoints the importance of context with the creation of Information systems. This impacts how context plays a role in the way products and services should be designed so that they serve the end-user.

As Hinton’s work articulates the importance of context in design, so indicates Jaffe the significance of a unified language for the design of information systems:

Defining these elements is so important because unlike in architecture and urban design, there is no centuries-long agreement of what basic information units are in the digital world and how they function. . . . In the digital world, there are lots of different individual visual design languages created by different companies, but no general functional language that can be used across different products (2019a, p. 1).

For this reason, Jaffe proposes ‘A Unified Language for the Design of Information Systems’ (2019a). Jaffe explains the building blocks of her proposed unified language:

It begins with fundamental units like objects, channels, and groups (letters), that build into modules (words), which combine to form blocks (sentences) and coalesce into platforms (books). This shared language can help designers better build online interactions across many different products and companies (2019a, p. 1).

Objects

“The basis of digital structures are objects. Objects are anything that can be conceived as one. What is viewed as “one” changes based on the goal of the system” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1).

Object groups

“Objects can be structured in many different ways. Object groups are multiple objects that are linked together in a meaningful way” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1).

Channels

“Objects are connected to each other via channels. Channels are connections between objects that exchange information. Channels can be designed to transmit low or high levels of information between objects” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1).

Energy

“As a designer your system is in constant competition with all other systems that people can interact with for their time, attention, and energy” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1).

Levers

“Levers are tools to change the energy demand of a system or alter energy inputs. There are four different types of levers: affordances, mechanics, map generation, and games” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1) .

Base Dynamics

“The combination of an object, a channel, and a lever is called a base dynamic. Base dynamics are a one directional transfer of information. (Person or object) + channel + lever= base dynamic” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1).

Loops

“A loop is two connected base dynamics, or a user action and a response to this action. Base dynamic + base dynamic = Loop” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1).

Modules

“Modules are combinations of loops and objects into simple interactive units. They might be perceived as the equivalent of chairs and tables in the physical realm, or individual words in a language” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1).

Blocks

“Blocks are multiple modules organized to create emergent interactions” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1).

Platforms

“If modules are like chairs and tables, and blocks are similar to sidewalks and playgrounds, platform structures are more like neighborhoods or cities” (Jaffe, 2019a, p. 1).

The above-described framework offers designers the opportunity to create a unified language for the creation of information systems. By using the same language as a perspective to create products and services, designers will be able to communicate their ideas to other designers as well as clients more clearly and understandably. This framework can help designers with the creation of any kind of digital product or service.

Information Architecture framework for the Internet of Things

Information Architecture can be applied to any discipline where large amounts of information are involved. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a phenomenon whereby a plethora of devices that are connected to the internet, create information. Lacerda, Lima- Marques, & Resmini propose an information architecture framework for the Internet of Things (2019). The framework is made up of 16 principles that have been categorized into three high-level categories: Human, Architectural, and Systemic (Lacerda et al., 2019, p. 9):

Figure 7 Information Architecture for the Internet of Things

Human principles Principles belonging to the human perspective identify guidelines that support the design of Internet of Things artifacts considering their subjective characteristics, the emergence of meaning, and the potentiality for action through subject/object relationships (Lacerda et al., 2019, p. 9).

Architectural principles Principles belonging to the architectural perspective identify guidelines that support the design of Internet of Things artifacts considering their objective characteristics. The principles share the premise that every artifact or space has an ontological nature since its existence is independent of individual subjects (Tuan 1977), and that they all possess an underlying architecture that is also an information architecture (Lacerda et al., 2019, p. 10).

Systemic Principles Principles belonging to the systemic perspective identify guidelines that support the design of Internet of Things artifacts by considering them as part of the infosphere and of contextual information-based ecosystems. These principles address dynamics and behavior as a result of structure (von Bertalanffy 1998; Meadows 2008) and consider how information flows through artifacts, how actors and artifacts interact systemically, and with what consequences (Lacerda et al., 2019, pp. 13–14).

Information Architecture Summary

With the ever-increasing amount of information in today’s world, the need to arrange information has never been more in demand. Resmini & Rosati define Information Architecture as: “Information architecture is the discipline that: Information architecture (IA) is a professional practice and field of studies focused on solving the basic problems of accessing, and using, the vast amounts of information available today” (2011, p. 33). Information architecture was first brought to attention by Richard Saul Wurman, and this attention was further increased by the introduction of the book ‘Information Architecture for the web and beyond” (Rosenfeld et al., 2015). This book was written by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, and Jorge Arango, and pushed Information Architecture into the mainstream. Information architecture moved from the ‘classic period’ as a result of the pervasiveness and ubiquitous computing.

In today’s world, information architecture is past the point of being connected just to library science or aimed at web site design improvements. These were concerned with labeling, organization systems, navigation, search, and sorting systems. However, a ubiquitous blend of physical and digital space is the additional factor that has to be considered by current IA research and practice. E.g. social actors consume information in a different social and environmental context, through the usage of different mediums, devices, and technologies.

Three frameworks have been discussed with regards to Information architecture: Big IA and Little IA, a unified language for the design of information systems, and an information architecture framework for the Internet of Things. Big IA and Little IA stem from the early days of Information architecture, where the discipline had not crystallized yet. The unified language has recently been introduced and offers designers a shared perspective for their design-process. The IA framework for the IoT offers principles and heuristics which designers can take as levers to design artifacts for the IoT while having an Information Architecture at the back of their minds. The red thread through the previously summarized topics is findability. Therefore it will be discussed in further detail in the next chapter. 25

2.3 Social Informatics

The introduction of computers has had an immense effect on both society as a whole and the lives of individuals. Information Technology is a field that can be observed from its interplay with society. This interplay is defined in the discipline of Social Informatics.

Social informatics (SI) is “the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts” (Kling, 1999, p. 1). SI knows seven key aspects:

• The context of ICT use directly affects their meanings and roles • ICT are not value-neutral: their use creates winners and losers • ICT use leads to multiple, and often paradoxical effects • ICT use has ethical aspects • ICT are configurable • ICT follow trajectories; and • Co-evolution of ICT system design/development/use (Sadiku et al., 2019, p. 6).

SI is: “. . . a body of research that examines the social aspects of computerization” (Kling, 1999, p. 1). Computerization had a significant impact on the world and led to many socio- technical innovations. The most major of these innovations was the invention of the world-wide-web by Tim Berners Lee (Berners-Lee, 2000). This innovation eventually allowed people around the world to share information via, among other things, websites.

Fichman et al. explain the focus of SI as “relationships among people, technology, and context are dynamic, complex, and critically important to understand.” They also provide information on the focal area of academic SI-research “SI is an important and dynamic discipline that focuses squarely on this theme and is an approach within which researchers study these complex relationships from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives” (2015, p. 4).

History of SI

To understand the term ‘Social Informatics’ and explain what school of Social Informatics this research will use, its origin must be briefly introduced. The origin of Social Informatics can be traced back to seven different countries: “USA, the 26

USSR/Russia, the UK, Norway, Slovenia, and also the lesser-known Japanese and German concepts” (Smutny, 2016, p. 1). Smutny offers an in-depth analysis of how informatics “has developed differently in namely Europe, the USA, and Russia due to the state of computer technology in different parts of the world in the 1960’s” (2016, p. 2).

The research will use the USA approach of Social Informatics. This approach identifies four periods of development:

Figure 8 Social Informatics timeline

The current state of SI

The discipline of Social Informatics has been fragmented, and SI’s full scope is its Achilles heel (Smutny & Vehovar, 2019). The impact of this fragmentation can be seen in the number of articles that can be found when searching for ’Social-informatics’. 27

Articles that clearly state the term of Social-Informatics are sparse, even though research that contributes to the field of Social Informatics is still being executed today. Meyer, Shankar, Willis, Sharma, & Sawyer explain with the following quote:

As these articles demonstrate, the workplace continues to be a topic of great interest to social informatics, but the character of the workplace, computing technology, and the worker have all changed. Furthermore, as computing technology has evolved it has become an essential and ubiquitous part of people’s lives well beyond work. The hyphen in “socio-technical” has become blurry; there is no longer either one or the other, but both. In short, the answer to the latter half of Kling’s question two decades hence is that social informatics matters now more than ever (2019, p. 311).

The current state of Social Informatics can be described as segregated and of significant importance. As ICT’s have become increasingly important to today’s society, so has the relevance of Social-informatics research.

Frameworks

SI is a transdisciplinary study, and as a result of this, it can use frameworks and methodologies from other fields. Frameworks SCOT and ANT were developed under the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) but have an impact on the field of SI as they consider the social aspect of technologies (Meyer, 2014). The STIN framework was aimed and purposely developed for the field of SI by Kling, McKim & King (Kling et al., 2003).

Social Construction of Technology framework (SCOT) SCOT is a framework based on the idea that human actions shape technology, and it is a one-way relationship where technologies do not influence society. The other main idea offered by SCOT is that technology cannot be understood without knowing how it is embedded in society. As presented by Pinch and Bijker (Pinch & Bijker, 1984), the main concepts of SCOT are:

a. Interpretative flexibility – there is not only one interpretation of the artifact, but the meaning depends on the social context b. Relevant social groups – there is not only one relevant social group, but many can apply, including for example end-users, designers, programmers, sales reps, and any possible sub-group c. Design flexibility – one technology can be designed in many ways and to accommodate more target group d. Problems and conflicts – multi-context technologies and especially the ones designed to accommodate more social groups can and will result in a conflict, which may be complex and hard to resolve e. Closure – once a technology is developed and accepted (the target user’s problem is eliminated or changed), the Interpretative and Flexibility stage is closed. It will not be developed furthermore until the new user group is identified. The contribution offered by SCOT is that there is no single best technology for the given problem, but there can be multiple perspectives, context, and users, thus multiple solutions. The main shortcoming is the assumption that technology has little to no influence on human actors and society. This assumption is also one of the most criticized attributes of SCOT (Meyer, 2014).

Actor-Network Theory framework (ANT) ANT is used to analyze the network of social actors interacting with artifacts in their environment. Although ANT could be viewed as a subset of SCOT, it differs in a way that it puts equal focus on both human and non-human actors, for which it developed the term “actant”. Based on ANT, there are no actants nor artifacts that exist outside of relationships of a network, and thus everything needs to be considered (Meyer, 2014).

Another concept ANT brings over SCOT is Translation. Any actant is available to any other actant for communication, and this brings the need for them to understand each other, and to do that, sometimes, the translation might be necessary. If there is successful communication between actants, they will then form an alliance, which is a stronger type of relationship. Stronger relationships are what actants aim for, as it means they are heard in the network (Alexander & Silvis, 2014a). An abundant source of controversy is a claim that human and non-human actants have no differences and equal weight (Meyer, 2014).

Socio-Technical Interaction Network framework (STIN) Developed by Rob Kling in the 1990s, it is a framework specifically designed to satisfy the needs and requirements of Social Informatics. (Kling et al., 2003). Meyer states that:

The STIN strategy allows us to draw on the useful insights of SCOT and ANT but does not wholly embrace a relativist perspective and is skeptical of the possibility that non-human actants can exert agency in a social situation (Meyer, 2014, p. 63)

There are several assumptions when working with STIN:

1. The social and the technological are not meaningfully separable, at least not for the purpose of understanding how to design practice is usable and sustainable. 2. Theories of social behavior not only can but should influence technical design choices (and thus the STIN methodology has a normative dimension as well). 3. System participants are embedded in multiple, overlapping, and nontechnologically mediated social relationships, and therefore may have multiple, often conflicting, commitments. Further, the system plays roles of varying importance in the social or professional lives of system interactors. The sustainability of a system will depend on other systems and communication forums that the interactors already participate in; interactors may be bound only weakly to the forum under discussion. 4. Sustainability and routine operations are critical and must play a key role (Kling et al., 2003, p. 56) The heuristics of STIN for understanding socio-technical systems include:

Points that make STIN unique to other STS frameworks are (Meyer, 2014) as follows.

Point number 4: identify excluded actors and undesired interaction. STS models, such as ANT, involve everyone in the network but never consider the possibility that some actants might have been left outside of the network, either from the beginning or during the process of ICT development and introduction.

Moreover, point number 7: identify system architectural choice points. Meyer (2014) describes technologies as changing at points in time when a decision was made. Meyer also argues that by tracking these decision points, we can understand why decisions had to be made, what was decided, and why. At each point, we should also consider other heuristics introduced by the STIN model. That way, we can learn that the socio-technical configuration of technology was shaped (Meyer, 2014).

On the contrary, a weakness of the STIN model established by Meyer (2006) is that only the model was mostly adopted only by Kling’s students and colleagues. In order to be more acknowledged, it must achieve more widespread adoption. Meyer also points out the unclear labeling of STIN. Labels such as a model, a framework, heuristics, a type of entity, and a methodology are all used. This is in contrast with the previous work of Kling, where Kling managed to establish and clearly label the field of Social Informatics (Rosenbaum, 2013). The overarching term for STIN suggested by Meyer (2006) is a “strategy”. One weakness that has to be mentioned as well is the complexity of STIN and the heavy reliance on the skill of analyst that uses STIN, especially skills in eliciting and gaining access to the information from individuals and organizations (Meyer, 2006).

To put in contrast, Kling et al. (2003) conclude their research of STIN as the model that helps to understand some key aspects of technological advances, but at the same time are aware that this new perspective gained through STIN will not solve problems with sustaining technological advancements nor will solve the integration of technology into a social world. They view the STIN model as an advancement in socio-technical analysis and the basis upon which more research should be established.

Social Informatics Summary

Social Informatics (SI) is “the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses, and consequences of information technology that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts” (Kling, 1999, p. 1).

Social Informatics is a field of significant importance, and its perspective is needed in today’s design and implementation of ICTs embedded in a social context (Meyer et al., 2019). History of SI talks about different schools of thought, and for this research, authors have decided to focus on US school founded and developed by Kling, as it is the most dominant, advanced, and developed school (Fichman & Sanfilippo, 2014).

In terms of frameworks, we went through three major frameworks, two of them (SCOT and ANT) were developed in non-SI fields, but follow some of the shared principles. Consequently, these frameworks have managed to have an impact on SI and even managed to change the field. This further proves the transdisciplinary nature of SI. A framework that was created specifically for the field of SI with its principles in mind is the STIN model by Kling (2003). To summarize STIN, we can use its heuristics:

1. Identify a relevant population of system interactors 2. Identify the core integrator group 3. Identify incentives 4. Identify excluded actors and undesired interactions 5. Identify existing communication forums 6. Identify resource flows 7. Identify system architectural choice points 8. Map architectural choice points to socio-technical characteristics (Kling et al., 2003, p. 57) The above-mentioned transdisciplinary and frameworks should offer an excellent opportunity to establish a connection between Social Informatics with the field of Information Architecture presented in the upcoming chapter.

2.4 Proposed Integrative view

The literature review was split into three main topics: Findability, IA, and SI. The same structure was applied for the summary with the synthesis of the aforementioned fields as the last element.

Findability

As fundamental as Information architecture is for the web, so is findability. If a social actor is unable to find a website in the first place, then how does it add value? As previously stated, the adage of: “You Can't Use What You Can't Find” (Morville, 2005, p. 160), perfectly describes this conundrum. The impact findability has on digital platforms is immense and, as such, should not be underestimated. Designers should see this analysis of literature as an enabler for data gathering, analysis, and discussion, which leads to suggestions that include findability as the most prominent aspect of a designer’s checklist. Based on the review, the authors of the research decided to take into account the BerryPicking model by Bates (Morville, 2005) for further analysis.

Information Architecture

The literature regarding Information Architecture provides us with an understanding of how information and the way its structured for users plays a significant role in the design of digital platforms. Frameworks that have been discussed provide designers with necessary footholds and bearing that they can use to solidify their creative processes. Information Architecture presents us with the knowledge we require to look beyond the essential functions of knowledge and perceive the ever-increasing landscape of information with a big-picture mindset which we can utilize to fuel our thinking and ideation processes. Moreover, the impact of Information Architecture rings true to this day, which can be seen by observing websites all around the world wide web. Social actors must be given well thought out information architectures so that the websites they use can be optimally exploited. For that reason, we decided to use the IoT framework designed by Resmini et al. (2019) and also utilize the benefits of Unified language (Jaffe,

2019a). These frameworks were selected because they provide the authors with a deeper understanding of the field and how they can be used in combination with research results in order to provide insights.

Social Informatics

Social Informatics provides us with an overarching perspective about the connection between ICT, humans, and by extension, society as a whole. Kling et al. have laid the groundwork for generations of researchers to come, and the impact of their work are of great importance to the field of ICT. The proposed STIN-framework is of great value to the field of Social Informatics, supports the ideas that Social Informatics has brought into the world, and authors thus decided to use it for further analysis in the thesis.

Integrated view model

Based on the theoretical framework, the authors of this thesis propose a compounded perspective regarding findability. The below-described model synergizes Findability, Information Architecture, and Social Informatics into one integrated view:

Figure 9 Proposed Integrative View

This integrated view will be used as an anchoring point for data gathering and analysis.

3 Methods

In this chapter, the methods that have been used to gather the required data will be discussed.

3.1 Research Philosophy

Philosophy can be defined as: ”The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline” (Lexico.com, n.d., p. 1) or ”love of wisdom”. Concerning the research, the chosen philosophy impacts the way the authors think about their chosen topic and perspective. A person’s philosophy can be influenced by many factors such as, among others: cultural background, lived experiences, education-level, spoken language(s), and character.

A research philosophy provides the researcher with a tool to construct their reality. This affects how research results are interpreted and also knowledge contribution. Two essential elements of the research philosophy will be discussed: 1. Ontology (reality) and 2. Epistemology (knowledge).

Ontology

Scotland defines Ontology as follows (2012, p. 9) :

Ontology is the study of being (Crotty, 1998, p. 10). Ontological assumptions are concerned with what constitutes reality, in other words what is. Researchers need to take a position regarding their perceptions of how things really are and how things really work.

By choosing an ontology, the researcher provides themselves with a lens through which to perceive reality. This position influences the research design decisions and provides the researcher with a critical view of their research results, which constitutes their chosen reality.

Furthermore, the ontological perspective that a researcher chooses can be one of ontological materialism or one of ontological idealism. Ontological materialists: “. . . believe that material things, such as particles, chemical processes, and energy, are more real, for example, than the human mind. They argue that reality exists regardless of human observers” (Lofgren, 2013b, p. 1). On the other hand, ontological idealists believe the opposite: “. . . believe that immaterial phenomenon, such as the human mind and consciousness, are more real, for example, than atoms and physical objects. They argue that reality is constructed in the minds of the observers” (Lofgren, 2013b, p. 1).

Epistemology

Scotland defines Epistemology as follows (2012, p. 9) :

Epistemology is concerned with the nature and forms of knowledge (Cohen et al., 2007, p. 7). Epistemological assumptions are concerned with how knowledge can be created, acquired and communicated, in other words what it means to know. Guba and Lincon (1994, p. 108) explain that epistemology asks the question, what is the nature of the relationship between the would-be knower and what can be known?

Moreover, epistemology can be constructed through one of two ways: empiricism and rationalism. Each of these epistemologies uses different perspectives to justify claims and beliefs. Empiricism poses that for knowledge to be true knowledge must be based on input from our senses, experiences, and observations (Lofgren, 2013a). Rationalism is concerned with reason instead of experiences and observations and that the human mind (rationale) is where new knowledge stems from (Lofgren, 2013a).

There exist multiple types of ontologies and epistemologies. Walsham provides an overview of different ontologies and epistemologies (1995, p. 104):

Figure 10 Alternative stances on knowledge and reality

Ontologies and epistemologies are all part of a paradigm. A paradigm is a worldview/perspective and an overarching term for a collection of methods, ontologies, epistemologies, and methods (Scotland, 2012). Each paradigm has its advantages, disadvantages, underlying assumptions, and is suited for a different style or approach to research. It is the researcher's task to identify the paradigm that best suits their research.

Selected research philosophy

For this research, the paradigm of interpretivism has been selected. The interpretivist paradigm includes a relativistic ontology, which “is the view that reality is subjective and differs from person to person” (Scotland, 2012, p. 11). The interpretivist epistemology is that of subjectivism, which as above described by Walsham is: “each person constructs his or her reality” (1995, p. 104). Crotty elaborates on this definition by the following example: “We need to remind ourselves here that it is human beings who have constructed it as a tree, given it the name, and attributed to it the associations we make with trees” (1998, p. 44). Furthermore, the interpretive methodology is focused on: “understanding phenomenon from an individual’s perspective, investigating interaction among individuals as well as the historical and cultural contexts which people inhabit” (Scotland, 2012, p. 12).

This thesis focusses on reviewing existing literature on findability and identifying potetial perspectives which combined with designers' work experiences provide insights and contribute to an integrative view on information findability. This aim ties well with the above described interpretivist methodology as it allows the researchers to generate qualitative data through interviews, which will be analyzed.

However, by choosing the interpretivist methodology, there exist some drawbacks and disadvantages. Firstly, as the interpretive paradigm makes use of a subjective form of reality, the research results can be interpreted differently by the researchers than by the interviewees. This has implications on the validity of the research. Secondly, as the nature of data is qualitative, the results are highly contextual, and its interpretation subjective. Due to these factors, the transferability of the research can come into question (Scotland, 2012).

The drawbacks will be contained by matching the interpretation of the researchers to the interviewees, this will be done by sending the interviewees a summary of their respective interview to check if there are any discrepancies in the interpretation.

3.2 Research approach

Qualitative deductive analysis has been used to “determining the extent to which qualitative data in particular study support existing general conceptualizations, explanations, results, and/or theories” (Patton, 2014, p. 791).

3.3 Research strategy

Interviews with designers have been undertaken to learn more about their approach toward the application of findability within the design of digital platforms.

Before the interviews could be undertaken, a list of questions was structured, which can be found in Appendix 2. These questions were formulated and selected based on elements from the theoretical framework that the researchers wanted to discuss with digital- platform designers.

Furthermore, all the interview questions include an aspect of findability as the red thread. These decisions were made to ensure the representation of findability in the interviews.

This overview of questions provided the researchers with a structure during the interviews. Not all questions had to be answered, as a priority system was set in place to determine which questions were most important. Interviews were carried out in the way that one of the researchers was the primary interviewer, and the other one was actively taking notes. Recordings of the interviews were also made so that they could be used for future analysis and references. The results of these interviews have been used to create an understanding of the chosen topic and as a frame of reference.

The interviewees were chosen based on their background, position, experience, and they were considered as a relevant source of information regarding design practitioners. The aim was to acquire interviewees with a different combination of the above-mentioned criteria to gather a variation of answers. A further description of the interviewees can be found in chapter 4.1 Introduction

3.4 Research choices

The type of data collection that has been selected is qualitative. Qualitative data collection has been chosen because it suits the aim of: “to review existing literature on findability and identify potential perspectives which combined with designers' work experiences provide insights and contribute to an integrative view on information findability” better than a quantitative approach. The qualitative data offers the researchers the opportunity to gain more in-depth and rich knowledge about the topic. In the case of this thesis, this was an insight into the perspectives of the practitioners. For these reasons, the qualitative approach has been chosen.

3.5 Primary data

The first order data has been gathered by conducting five semi-structured interviews with designers of different backgrounds and experience levels. A further description of the

interviewees can be found in chapter 4.1 Introduction. A literature review has been conducted to gather secondary data regarding existing research.

Methods that can be employed to collect primary data are observations, questionnaires, sampling, and interviews (Saunders, 2016). In order to carry out the collection for this research, interviews were selected as the most suitable method, as the research aims to gather the data from practitioners, compare them to the theory and provide insights that should further improve the design process and results of practitioners.

One factor to consider is the reliance on the truthfulness of collected data as most of the questions were open-ended. Thus, respondents will be free to express what they wish to, meaning there will not be a possibility to verify most of their claims.

After the data were collected through interviews, the data were analyzed. The analysis of the data has been conducted by the systematic evaluation of the reports of the interviews. Such evaluation included processes of finding patterns, labeling themes, and developing categories: operationalizing data analysis. Atlas.ti (version 8) has been used to code the interview transcripts which made it easier for the researchers to analyze and identify reoccurring themes. The analysis of these results can be found in chapter 4.7 Codes.

3.6 Secondary data

The chosen literature review type is the integrative review. Snyder (2019, p. 335) defines the integrative as: “. . . an integrative review usually has a different purpose, to assess, critique, and synthesize the literature on a research topic in a way that enables new theoretical frameworks and perspectives to emerge”. The integrative review has been chosen because it is an approach that enables an integrative view of information findability to emerge, which suits the aims and objectives of this thesis. Furthermore, the integrative review is well equipped to point out gaps in the literature and identifying methodological-issues.

The technique employed to guide the search for literature was taken out of Webster & Watson (2002). Literature has been organized based on the main themes and concepts 41

presented by given articles. Three main academic database search engines were used: Scopus, JU Library-Primo, and Google Scholar.

Firstly, the results of the literature search were sorted by title, author, and cited by. Secondly, abstracts, introductions, and conclusions of the papers were analyzed, evaluated, and potentially added to the literature source document.

As a next step, the backward search technique was also employed, where a review of sources of found literature was used to find potentially interesting new sources of data. Forward search technique was also used during this stage to identify other interesting keywords, concepts, themes, and research provided by papers found.

Only English articles were considered in the search for literature. The following keywords were used for the search of relevant literature: Findability, information findability, Peter Morville, ambient findability, Information-architecture, Social-Informatics, Rob Kling. Datasets of sources and identified themes used for the thesis can be found in Appendix 1.

The above-stated keywords provided the researchers with a plethora of articles. The articles were filtered, organized in Mendeley (Reference Manager) and reviewed, which resulted in the following overview of sources that have been used for the analysis of literature:

Topic Amount of sources Findability 32 Information Architecture 21 Social Informatics 11

Table 1 Identified concepts in sources used for the thesis

Furthermore, the articles were categorized based on their focus on either theory/practice or both.

Topic Theory Practice Findability 30 8 Information Architecture 19 8 Social Informatics 11 0

Table 2 Matrix of theory and practice articles per IA, SI, and Findability

3.7 Ethical Consideration

For ethical research, there exist four main ethical considerations (Patton, 2014):

1. Avoiding harm (and doing good) 2. Informed consent 3. Right to privacy 4. Deception

Avoiding harm

Participants of this research cannot be harmed. Not only in a physical capacity but also not mentally. The researchers must stay neutral, friendly, and thankful to the participants of their study.

Informed consent

Informed consent must always be applied. Participants must properly understand what they are getting into, what that entails, what is expected of them, and how much time it will take.

Participants of the interview were emailed an Interview schema a few days before the interview took place so that they can familiarize with what will be discussed, adapt, and discuss potential concerns or suggestions.

Right to privacy

If a participant wishes to remain anonymous, then authors must grant them that right. All participants have the right to privacy and the right to decide what happens with their data.

To be compliant with the GPDR and the right to privacy, all interviewees were asked for permission to process the collected data from the interview and for permission to use their names in the thesis. All interviewees gave the GDPR permissions, and thus the results presented in the thesis are not anonymized.

Deception

The research must be conducted as described beforehand. Deceiving participants is immoral and potentially illegal.

4 Results

This chapter presents the results of the semi-structured interviews with designers. Five designers have been interviewed spanning four different companies. The overview of each interviewee includes their position, company, and findings. Furthermore, key-quotes and information are presented that were fundamental to these interviews. Lastly, all interview notes made are available in Appendix 3 and the audio recordings are available at https://tinyurl.com/y7287rnj

4.1 Introduction

The following table offers an overview of all the interviewees. Chapter 3.3 Research strategy explains why these interviewees have been selected.

Interviewee Job title Background Length of Experience Company Name interview Mohammed Project UX-student and 47 minutes 2+ years Societygal: Haashir manager & practitioner digital Chinnagani UX- marketplace designer for female entrepreneurs Arden Product Product design, 53 minutes 10 years &Partners: Klemmer designer app UX-design development, bureau freelancing, focussing on user research ethical and qualitative projects methods. Sabrina Director of Lead role in 40 minutes 13+ years &Partners: Fonseca Design discovery and UX-design Strategy research bureau projects. focussing on Experience in ethical healthcare and projects governmental projects. Nick Mulder DevOps Communication 35 minutes 3,5 years TKP web and multimedia Pensioen: application design student, pensions developer front-end administration developer & designer.

Carlos Jarque Lead UX, Digital and 31 minutes 3 years Pilotfish: Antolí Designer mainly Design and Industrial Innovation Design consultancy practitioner company

4.2 Project manager & UX-designer at Societygal

The interview was held with Mohammed Haashir Chinnagani, a project manager and UX- designer at Societygal.

Haashir currently works for a company called Societygal, which is focusing on a website that connects female entrepreneurs. At the moment, he has multiple roles, primarily project manager and UI/UX designer. He joined the company in the founding phase (end of 2018) and oversaw the wireframing, sketching, assembling teams, and other tasks. Haashir has been with the company for 1,5 years now.

Haashir makes an app that serves a niche market. In the process, the scope has been narrowed down as much as possible. Users come to the application to find new people and not to connect to existing people. It is important to look at the main goal and have a defined focus. In Haashir’s case, female entrepreneurs find it challenging to go through strangers and find the right business partners, e.g. for this purpose, Facebook is not the right marketplace. The main intention is to create a long-lasting relationship with users.

There are different parts to the app, one part is the social aspect where other people’s posts can be viewed, and one where new people can be searched. The user space is confined to North America and Europe, and the app is serving this community. For one year only American users, but now also expanding to Canada and the UK. Predominantly people selling services on the platform, users offering the products are a minority. This is due to 90% + of the user base looking to have a service-oriented marketplace.

Import aspect of the design and creation of the user journey is that once users have an account, they have different sections clearly marked out.

One section asks to introduce the user on the onboarding screen. Users can also find there the newsfeed, connections, etc. Another section displays what the user working is, what are the user’s posts, etc. This serves almost like a chat-like interface. To leave feedback about other participants, users have to use the platform for a little bit of time. When it comes to comments on the apps, the users are very reserved and do not want to leave negative reviews. For this reason, the rating and feedback system has been redesigned several times.

The company also holds regular conferences and events. Mainly targeting networking events, exhibitions to show user’s company, for example. “Digital Podium” to connect and talk about business among users.

User behavior is monitored and gathered via Apple’s TestFlight. Usability wise the users were not given a guide on how to use the app at the start. This has changed, and an explanation of how to use the sections was implemented to smoothen out onboarding. It is vital to slowly take the user through the platform, explain aim and features.

As for communication in the team, Haashir experiences the cultural difference, which makes it more challenging to speak to communicate. However, when a designer understands the difference, then the designer can approach communication in a more informed way. When it comes to the jargon of design, Haashir uses different terms and content with different people. “With a developer you make use of more technical language, implement this and that etc. they’re not interested in the contest, get straight to the point. Communication, CEO is very different, how I came up with the decision, impact? Developer doesn’t care about that.”

Haashir works in a small team and communicates with the CEO, who is in the US. The topics contain mostly of a design. With his developers in India, topics are more of a technical nature. Communication tools that Haashir uses are not very scalable as he could see a noticeable difference going from team size of 2 to a team of 3 developers.

The systems methodology was a method that helped Haashir in his work. “Some systems don’t have a good structure. We all make our perspective and then we compare it. If there’s theory that helped me in this process; it’s systems methodology.”

It is crucial that users feel that everything is very predictable. Haashir’s design output tries to use communication language users already know, whenever it is possible. “When we started with the app we knew we had to split up the information into three categories. The UI guidance was the only reference point we had, along with the iOS guidelines.”

Folksonomy is very important for Haashir’s work, as the app is a marketplace, and users are encouraged to describe their profiles and contribute the content. In the upcoming version, one of the ideas is to enable users to create a profile in a website-like style and also to give the user the ability to create different user groups. People from work, friends, family, other connections etc.. Self-expression is one of the key ingredients of our platform. “With the existing social networks there’s always polarization. When you post something on Instagram you always see the perfect image. We constantly filter out pressure, we want the user to not force themselves to keep posting”.

When it came to the searchability of content, a standard search function is, of course, in place, the platform also allows people to browse based on proximity. Haashir states that he is open to anything that will improve his toolset as well as making the product as good as possible, including improved findability.

4.3 Product Designer at &Partners

The interview was held with Arden Klemmer, the Director of Product Design at &Partners.

&Partners is a digital design firm that focusses on ethical technology projects. Their customers include both private and government organizations. The emphasis of the work is on ethical, considerate, and human-centered design. In the projects, Arden and her team strive to created smart and creative solutions. Internally, the aim is to create a supportive environment for other designers, colleagues. 48

Before &Partners, Arden worked for Fortuny for seven years. Among other tasks such as product and fabric design, Arden oversaw the development of the company’s app. Then moved to the position of Director of Operations for the US, where she was able to apply many principles used in design processes and broaden her perspective in terms of technology, business, and design. Between work at Fortuny and &Partners, Arden was a Freelancer, got introduced to human-centered design, user research, and qualitative research methods.

When it comes to findings of the interviews, discussion regarding the topic of Social Informatics mainly concerned taking advantage of user research, knowing the user perspective is a great tool to have, but not always accessible. The general problem that frequently occurs is that clients need to be convinced to approve user research because they do not see the benefits of it. They believe that they are the user and know the best what is needed. Furthermore, if user research is missing, it is tough to create a design of good quality.

In connection to findability, knowing users inherently embraces better findability of information on the platforms. Users’ voice is heard and included in the design, thus the interactions between the user and the platform are improved. When designing, the UX principles are a useful tool, but not always necessarily relevant, e.g. fewer clicks are not always better than a well-structured path to the desired information. A designer always needs user research to answer questions of what, when, and how.

A necessary step in user research is the creation of user groups. The groups should be based on behavior, not demographics. Demographics are only useful for verifying if a sufficient sample of the population has been gathered. The categorization of the sample should then be done based on an individual’s behavior and is always dependent on the goal of the project. The exclusion of some users is unavoidable, but designers should always try not to exclude and think of users’ relevance to the project. Three key indicators, apart from behavior, to keep in mind when creating groups are attitude, aptitude, and ability (Marcus, 2013, p. 296) of the user.

To improve the internal findability of a website, one should track consistent, systematic metrics and review them from the beginning. Conduct review with stakeholders: CEO, marketing, tech, users. Iterate and fix quickly. Even when the solution is working well, designers should find room for improvement. Designers can always learn from users, get their feedback. Giving feedback might be annoying, but designers should find a way to encourage users to do it. Suggest features and see if users like it.

When we discussed employing already existing solutions and connecting them to existing platforms, Arden expressed it is employed any time designer uses API. Nowadays, designers always use API for something, some features, for example. Designers are not able to do everything perfectly themselves. It is important to utilize existing products. E.g. process of registration online usually uses software (platforms) of third-party companies.

Another major area of discussion was a Unified language and its potential impact on the design process and subsequently findability.

&Partners deal with a lot of external professions who use their jargon, so the team involved must learn it to understand, communicate, and design appropriately. A principle of verification of communication and learned jargon is to try to reflect jargon back to clients or colleagues. From Arden’s experience, learning abbreviations means you are in the inner circle and understand clients and a team. Internally, &Partners employees use jargon and abbreviations. Not knowing specific jargon can be a trigger to ask more questions to understand an individual. Furthermore, learning their jargon helps establish trust, and shows a bit of respect, too. Furthermore, this type of industry-specific language certainly makes research challenging.

When it comes to communication with the user, their research, interviews, and feedback, researcher or designer should not give much out and see what users say. In a nutshell, not give users something they could use in their answers. One should create a space for the users to express themselves. During interviews or other direct data collection methods, be direct and brief, prepare a clear set of questions that need to be answered. 50

Once user research is done, the design process can start, and it always changes according to the project. It could start with branding, wireframing, research, what technology already exists, or something else. Do research first, then present it to other stakeholders. The main idea should always be to understand the underlying problem because features to solve the problem are usually already existing, but the designer must know the problems first. Depending on the situation, pick tools with high customizability. The result must be easy and quick to learn and use.

Clients and users have ideas but lack the means to express and explain them adequately. Designers, on the other hand, need to understand clients and users and are usually better equipped for expressing and explaining the content.

If you do not have enough user research data, then present the best, most feature-rich mock, where everything is included, then verify if all needed and working, scope down, iterate. Ask your users to do the verification of meeting the demand for you. See if the design is going in the right direction. Prototyping before coding. Build as flexible as possible, to be able to fix/improve/change afterward. To verify you met the demands put result in the field. Use open-ended data collection methods when getting data. Iterate a lot, especially for complex systems.

One of the last discussed points was folksonomy. From Arden’s point of view, it seems only useful when working with projects with a large user base, which means a lot of data. With smaller user base projects, there might be too frequent inconsistencies of user- defined vocabularies, and it would be too resource expensive to verify users' inputs.

4.4 Director of Design Strategy at &Partners

The interview was held with Sabrina Fonseca, the Director of Design Strategy at &Partners.

&Partners is a digital design firm that focusses on ethical technology projects. Their customers include both private and government organizations. The emphasis of the work is on ethical, considerate, and human-centered design. &Partners strive to create smart and creative solutions. Internally, the aim is to create a supportive environment for other designers, colleagues.

Sabrina works mainly with government clients and has experience in the healthcare sector. Sabrina takes the lead in her projects. Her position requires work on discovery and research. The aim is to try to understand users and apply design principles to the project.

When it comes to user perspectives, Sabrina is a jack of all trades. She started with wireframing, etc., but then quickly moved to discovery and user research as the methods with which the design process should start. The main point is to get enough user perspectives. Sabrina's approach when it comes to research is to combine qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative and qualitative methods complement each other. Qualitative brings in-depth knowledge, but cannot be accepted as a general fact, because the sample can be comprised of outliers. However, this method is useful for answering why questions. Afterwards, use quantitative methods to support these claims/information by statistics and numbers.

Findability: “whether something can be found. Must be targeted for specific items.”

Use user perspectives to find interests and behavior, use that info in your design process. E.g. is to change the sitemap or other visual elements in the navigation.

Synthesize from the combination of qualitative and quantitative data gathered. Start with a hypothesis, then bring people, observe their behavior and personalities, synthesize. There are several ways to group people. Always depends on the project, segments based 52

on the project questions. Create groups that can spark most actions. They must be actionable for the problem that is being solved. Criteria for segmentation: access and user demands (e.g. how much attention/time users require). Generalization cannot be avoided, too much generalization is bad, and a designer must find a balance.

When it comes to touchpoints, ask indirectly, e.g. how do you get this task done? If they don’t answer, you should figure out why are they not answering the question? Use user interviews to try to find the behavior. This should be part of user research.

Synthesize the data to the conceptual and actual design. Use storyboards to find out what is an obvious problem to users that should be the main focus of the design. One might also want to discover why other problems users experience are not being said or displayed and act according to the found answer.

When we discussed employing already existing solutions and connecting them to existing platforms, Sabrina specifies that there is always an idea in our mind how to use something without reinventing the wheel. You should use something that already exists and then build on top of existing solutions, if necessary.

Regarding the topic of jargon and communication, miscommunication happens all the time: “UX design is a weird field of people being nerdy about definitions, they all have their definition, but nothing is unified and they will argue why their definition is the most appropriate”.

There is not a single way to describe a process in design. A designer should always check if they are being understood. The shared language of design is impossible because everybody would disagree. To verify communication, one should create slides with deliverables to confirm what is expected with stakeholders. Jargon makes communication complicated. Unification would not solve the problems. There would always be people disagreeing, which is not a bad thing. Terms are not hard defined in the design. The definition of the term can be changed the mid-design process.

Sabrina’s design process generally looks like this:

1. What are the questions? 2. Verification 3. Who are the users? 4. Desk research 5. Expert interview 6. Synthesis 7. Interview/research guides development 8. Recruit people (includes getting sufficient representative sample) 9. Get responses 10. Transcripts and coding 11. Rough design 12. Validation with people from the field 13. Design.

Conduct a workshop in the meantime, which includes clients (from different professions).

Concerning information structure within design and findability, Sabrina says that the most critical question to ask yourself is “Does the IA of solution respond to the people defined in user research?” A method that can be used to create a folksonomy is the card sorting technique. This method lets users create the information architecture for you. You can even use open-ended sorting, so the users even create labels for you.

According to Sabrina, designers should lose the fear of complex problems. “Become comfortable with not knowing the answer, because you can’t know everything and you can learn something later on in the process”. When designing for hospitals, you do not need to be a doctor to create a design for a hospital environment. For the design, you can employ clients to mitigate a lack of knowledge.

If you are designing for a project you do not know much about, talk to involved stakeholders in a given position and learn what the steps of their process are, you do not need to know every detail. If the work is simple, you do not need to design the solution. Main is giving users tools they can use, not having to understand them.

4.5 DevOps web application developer

The interview was held with Nick Mulder, a DevOps web application developer at TKP Pensioen.

Nick currently works as a DevOps web application developer at TKP Pensioen. His main aim is the support of communication processes, optimization of services, and the development of new features.

When it comes to user perspectives, Nick does not use them. Another department of UX uses them. Nick does a lot of designing and programming. It is important to get a good user experience as an outcome of the work. Tasks are delegated to Nick via the product owner. Nick has to report what they need for accomplishing the task and what kind of outcomes they expect after implementation. The product owner provides the user perspective.

Nick’s design process looks as follows:

1. Receive task 2. Propose a design solution 3. Get people of what they think of the design 4. Develop it further on

User testing is challenging to execute at his position. Nick receives design from another UX designer. The company was probably not doing any user tests before. Lately, the company has started user testing and trying to improve the usability of their websites.

The main touchpoint Nick identified was the live chat on one of the pension funds websites which he developed. It is an important feature to attract users. The live-chat was created with Angular components and has been his primary focus. Statistics are tracked, but Nick does not have access to them, another department has the data, and he would have to request it. Nick is uncertain if a process is in place to ensure if criteria are being met.

When we discussed the usage of already existing components, Nick mentioned that they collaborate with other services such as Gitlaband others. Each department uses multiple third-party platforms for its convenience.

Regarding findability, Nick provided the following definition: “comes from find and able to, like usability. More like reaching a goal. That would be called findability. Reaching a goal.”. Nick believes findability is essential. When there is a lot of information, and a user cannot find a specific piece of information, it is a problem. There must be a good flow of navigation to the desired information.

New platforms at the TKP Pensioen have usability tests. Nick manages old platforms, and it is a work in progress. Old platforms have many components, but Nick is not sure if he knows how to improve the overall platform. Nick’s current focus is to create a lean fundamental code base for the live chat and to bring a lot of new features. There are big plans to add new UI elements to smoothen the experience (e.g. collapsible menus). Always room for new features and additions to the platform.

There exist no problems with communication. Information is usually not that specific, nor is it hard to understand. If there were issues with communication Nick would need to talk to colleagues to receive proper information, but it is not a difficulty. The key to useful information is to specify.

Nick’s approach to creating the live chat was mainly concerned with a small collaboration with other developers. However, it was mostly his effort. Nick spent 4 – 5 months on the live chat before it was implemented to production. When you develop a feature, then you get ideas about what to do next for the future, you should track these ideas.

Nick works mostly alone but has experienced colleagues that can help him to solve a problem. To get more specific knowledge, you need to ask colleagues to explain what the feature should do, where to implement etc.

The department of communication controls the content and information structure. Nick believes it is important to control the content. To achieve good usability, there needs to be a lot of cooperation with good content and usable components. The Ownership of communication needs to be robust.

When it comes to user perspectives, Nick believes it is essential to give the user a feeling that it is easy to get the right information, product, and services. Responsiveness and the performance of a platform are aspects that Nick finds important to improve. Furthermore, the usability of a platform should be optimized. Nick’s approach would be to make sure all the elements follow usability standards and practices.

When it comes to personal development, Nick would like further to improve his Angular, HTML, and CSS skills. Nick also points out that it is essential to know that there are more tools available and always be open to using new tools.

4.6 Lead Designer at Pilotfish

The Interview was held with Carlos Jarque Anatolí, a lead designer at Pilotfish. This company focuses on the creation of unique user experiences. Pilotfish is specialized in the development of intelligent products for the consumer, professional, medical, and automotive industries. Carlos’ responsibilities are the definition of steps needed to finish the design of both digital and physical products, as well as the execution of it. At University, Carlos has studied UI, UX, and Industrial design and did a couple of internships where he designed UI elements for different mobile applications.

Carlos believes that the discipline of design is all about problem-solving, and every problem has a context and users. ”As a first thing, it is absolutely important to define the problem as well as the users: personas. Understand the problem and to do that you need to understand the users.”

Carlos understands the problem of findability as: ”looking for something and finding it”

When asked about the connection between findability and design, he answered: ”Understanding the user that interacts with anything that is related to a user is something super important”

Furthermore, if there is a product with which user interacts, a touchpoint should be defined in the form of, for example, user journeys. At the same time, there is rarely only one user, and it is crucial to define all the different user groups and design accordingly. ”One user is not enough, you need multiple users, more is better.” and to determine the number of users,”My opinion is that you need to understand the context of the product, company and users company is approaching.” More challenging at the start, defining the product and user groups. Maybe not a product to find the user, but the other way around.

Once the design is completed, you need to do user tests, and it needs to be tested with people that do fit the target user description. It is important to track the interactions and flow of use, catch the pain points, and fix them.

During the design process, Carlos applies principles of Information Architecture, but at the company, it is called system architecture, with systems and subsystems, different blocks, and components. When asked if this is applied to both physical and digital products: ”Absolutely, to solving any problem. In order to solve problems you need to get all the information and re-arrange it. There is no differences between physical and digital.” There needs to be a plan behind any problem-solving process.

When discussing ideas of folksonomy in relation not only to digital but also physical world: ”I don’t have any example, but physical products nowadays are completely linked to digital products, maybe a product that is more modular, allows you to interact with applying changes via the user. At the end, this is just a different way of understanding the user, the product is for the user right? Maybe you just create the system and then you get to know the user. I think it can be useful.”

One of the observed problems, according to Carlos, was the usage of abbreviations and jargon, primarily if you practice in English, but come from a non-English speaking 58

country. Even though Carlos studied the design in English, this language is not taught. It would be beneficial because it makes communication much more accessible, and it is entirely general and transferable among companies and other designers. For example: ”Going to the supermarket, bakery directly talking with you, the customer, if you have a problem you let them know. The relationship with digital services could be more open, that’s the feeling I have.” Now it is difficult for both parties, for the users to have their problems solved and the designers solving the problems.

When it comes to other barriers, the most common one is missing information. When you get the information, you can then select the appropriate tools and the appropriate approach. Another barrier mentioned as of now is connected to events caused by the pandemic of Covid-19. Carlos planned to do user research in the supermarkets to collect data for the upcoming project, but due to lock-down, it is not possible.

To answer the question of whether all these issues translate to all designers: ”Definitely, we face similar problems/barriers.”

When it comes to barriers from the user perspective: ”Problem users can’t understand is the fault of the designer. These people that don’t know how to interact with the product is information we need to receive so we can improve.” Usually, users when they use something, they feel very disconnected with the people who bring it to them.

4.7 Codes

By coding the interviews, an overview of the findings can be made. A total of twelve codes were selected based on their relevancy to the Research Questions and occurrence in the interviews. The codes are described and analyzed to understand their value and meaning. Furthermore, the codes were categorized into one or more of the analyzed fields (Findability, Information Architecture, Social Informatics), or as belonging to on-site information findability, as this category is overarching.

Code Category Quotes Aim Information “Key to good information is to specify” Architecture Nick Communication On-site information “Jargon makes communication complicated” findability Sabrina Design On-site information ”Generalization can not be avoided, but too findability much generalization is bad, a designer must find a balance”

Sabrina Experience On-site information ”Designer should lose the fear of complex findability problems. Become comfy with not knowing the answer”

Sabrina Issue On-site information “Barriers? It is missing information” findability Carlos Methods Social Informatics “Must be actionable for the problem that is being solved”

Sabrina 60

Perspective Social Informatics, “We all make our perspective and then we compare it” Information Architecture Haashir Philosophy Social Informatics, ” Design is about solving problem”

Findability Carlos Process Findability “Defining the different steps in the process.”

Carlos Research On-site information ”Combine qualitative and quantitative findability methods”

Sabrina User On-site information “Three principles: attitude aptitude ability to findability define groups”

Arden Verification Findability ”See if users were following the right flow through the app. From there we caught the problems and we fixed them”

Carlos

Aim

Any design of a findability solution should have a precise aim of what problem it should solve, meaning it is always particular. For that, the designer needs to understand and translate the problems of social actors. Generic examples could be creating a long-lasting relationship between the website and the user; or creating a platform that aims for one- time interaction. In the end, the aim of any design should be a solution to a problem.

Communication

The way the designer communicates with colleagues is a considerable part of the work. Not only is the jargon used of importance, so is the ability to communicate thoughts and ideas. Moreover, jargon can be seen as both a barrier and a key to enter the design field. Jargon should be taught earlier in university, especially to give non-native English speakers more opportunity to learn jargon before the start of the career.

Design

Design is the most used keyword throughout all of the interviews, with 156 mentions. All designers are problem solvers and use design as a way to tackle the problems they encounter in their work. These problems also include findability, as it is one of the main aspects of the design process. Furthermore, design processes and perspectives differ from one designer to the other, but the red thread that can be analyzed with regards to design is problem-solving.

Experience

By interviewing people with different backgrounds and different levels of experience (see 4.1 introduction for an overview), insight was gathered about the lessons they learned and shared. Most notably: “Become comfortable with not knowing the answer” & “Designers should lose the fear of complex problems”-Sabrina are lessons acquired by experience.

Issue

There are multiple issues identified in the design for findability and design in general.

1. No or insufficient user research 2. Missing definition of a problem and solution acceptance criteria 3. General lack of information 4. UX and other design principles might not always apply to a specific problem 5. Getting sufficient feedback and verification of said feedback 6. Coworking with designers of a different background or culture 7. There is not a single unified method to design and communicate, which creates a disconnection between product owner, designer, solution and social actors 8. Business pressure: time and budget Moreover, one of the interviewees also mentioned the barrier for user research presented by the current epidemy of Covid-19, which makes it hard to gather data.

Methods

Methods used vary from designer to designer, but a commonality is that all methods are tailored to the requirements of their users. The user perspectives are the most used method by the interviewees, and it allows them to understand the problem better and, more specifically, to the research, how a user navigates and finds desired information. “Understand the problem and to do that you need to understand the users” -Carlos.

Perspective

One of the essential topics of discussion was the perspective of a designer. These perspectives were on human-centered design, considerate design, user-oriented research, and design. A designer should consider the perspective of every actant in the system, and this also means being open-minded to actants that were not previously included in the findability systems. The design is the self-expression of the designer. However, in contrast, it is also important for the designer to understand the problems and needs the user is facing, in general, and in findability focus systems.

Philosophy

The vision and philosophy of the designers regarding their work were different, but the commonality was that all tools, methods, and perspectives should be considered when undertaking a project. The philosophy of “Design is about solving problems” & “Every problem has a context and users”-Carlos can be seen as the red thread. Furthermore, social actors should always be the focal point of design whereby more information about them is better and thus allows for the more focused design of information findability systems.

Process

The design process should always be based on the task at hand. However, generally speaking, a designer should start with problem analysis, which usually includes, but is not limited to, desk research and user research. Once the proposed solution is confirmed, it is a good idea to do the prototype first, then design a minimum viable product then the complete findability solution. Consequently, from the process point of view, functional pieces of navigation should be introduced to social actors gradually, so that it is easier for them to understand. The whole design process should facilitate the proper information exchange of each actant.

Research

To understand the users whom experience problems with navigation, research is required. Both quantitative and qualitative methods should be combined to achieve the best possible result. Qualitative methods bring in-depth knowledge and are useful at answering why questions, quantitative methods provide statistics and numbers to verify the qualitative data.

User

Users are the target group and should always be the main focal point of any design project. Understanding users is an essential aspect of design. Without a proper understanding of

the social actor’s problems, designers are not capable of designing suitable navigation. “One user is not enough, you need multiple users, more is better. “Carlos

Verification

Verification of information retrieval can take many shapes and should be executed during multiple stages of the design process. Verification examples include: to measure a concrete flow or process of a social actor getting to desired information, to track metrics and crashes during the process, to verify ideas for solutions. Sometimes, actors might not want to give feedback, but a designer should encourage them (smart questions, ease of reporting, rewards, …). A designer should check the validity of the received feedback. Impersonating Personas is a method for cases where user testing is not available.

5 Analysis

In this chapter, the primary and secondary data will be analyzed.

5.1 Findability

Although the term is not very well known among the practitioners. Most of them were able to understand what this could mean. E.g. “comes from find and able to, like usability. More like reaching a goal.”-Nick

The importance of findability is mainly of the essence in digital platforms that offer a lot of information and many interaction points where it might be hard to navigate to a desired piece of information. Search systems, navigation systems, and UI elements were identified as aspects that mainly support good findability. These systems are always specific to a digital platform, the problem it is trying to solve, as well as the benefit it is trying to offer to social actors. As has been stated by Morville, “You Can't Use What You Can't Find” (2005, p. 160).

The general idea behind designing for quality findability was that it is a part of the design process of any digital platform that is user-friendly. Moreover, interviewees reasoned that

by mainly understanding the user and by executing proper user research, they are more equipped to design better UI, search, and navigation systems. Thus, users have a good flow of retrieving information, which essentially means that the findability is good.

The flow mentioned above needs to be monitored, and if the quality is bad, it needs to be expanded or re-designed accordingly to users. This flow of navigation to the desired information was mentioned in the theory of the Berry picking model.

The interviews also led to a discussion about the topic of folksonomy as a tool to improve Findability. Although folksonomy was not a well-known term by the interviewees, they understood the concept and applied it without knowing the term. Folksonomy is a concept that could be introduced to the platform but does not fit into every. Correctly done folksonomy, especially in some large projects, can potentially lift some time-consuming work off of a designer and controlled dictionaries, by transferring the workload to social actors. They will then feel more connected to the platform as they are contributing to its development. Additionally, a designer should introduce a system that ensures the user input is correct and should serve as input for search and navigation mechanisms.

Designers should see the provided integrative review as a frame of reference, which they can utilize to understand the importance of findability.

In conclusion, there exists a stark need to improve the findability of websites. In general, the quantity of information that is ever-expanding cannot be solved by quick-and-dirty fixes. Architectural change is required to increase the findability of websites.

5.2 Information Architecture

Information architecture can be understood in a multitude of different fashions. The practitioners that have been interviewed had both a somewhat similar understanding of information architecture, but also their different viewpoints.

The red thread through the results is that an information architecture exists to serve the user. Designers can verify their information architecture by answering this question: Does 66

the IA of the solution respond to the people defined in user research? Furthermore, including users through the method of card sorting to create an information architecture is the right way of gathering user input. User research is always required when designing an information architecture to answer the questions of what, when, and how? Along with having a primary focus on users, the systems methodology can be used to untangle complex systems and create an information architecture. As provided by the literature review, the example of theory aiming to help with specific complex networks could be the IoT framework from Resmini et al. (2019), which would offer suggestions and a point of reference for systems dealing with IoT.

With regards to the topic of shared language, the way that language is used changes from person to person. Each group of people, depending on their role, requires a different approach and use of jargon. A shared language for User Experience or Information Architecture would not be possible, nor would it be beneficial. Discussions and disagreements are the triggers for growth, and if all practitioners and researchers would agree with all aspects of a field, it would become stale and would not progress.

5.3 Social Informatics

The topic of user research was observed as the most common during interviews as well as it is emphasized in the Social Informatics theory. Not only the practitioners talked about user research in the sections of the interview that focuses on social informatics, but in the whole interview. All practitioners agreed that it is the core of their work, and to create a design of adequate quality, they have to know the user. A selected framework that emphasizes this is the STIN-model (Kling et al., 2003).

User research is especially applicable to findability. The user is not a designer or developer and has an entirely different approach when it comes to navigation and finding information within a digital platform. It is tough to design a solution that supports quality findability without knowing the user first. However, even though the designers realize the benefit of doing user research, their clients do not. The clients need to be convinced of the benefit of doing user research before they decide to approve it. 67

Additionally, the client, more often than not, believe that they are the user. However, this is not always the case. Identifying users and interactions is one of the elements of the STIN-model (Kling et al., 2003).

Creating user groups and segments through demographics and user behavior does have a drawback of the loss of some information about social actors. However, it is vital to the feasibility of the project. Demographics and user behavior are key indicators to create segments from, as they are the primary factors that distinguish one user from the other. Demographics are used to ensure that the sample of the population is sufficiently represented. Behavior is the key factor used for the actual segmentation (creation of groups). Generalization of users is expected and an unavoidable phenomenon, nevertheless designers should always try to mitigate it and find a balance between generalization and specification. User groups should always be created with the idea in mind that the users should be actionable in a way that can be handled by the design process. During this process, incentives or, more accurately, motivation should be considered, as based in the STIN model. It is also good practice to try to think of users that might be excluded, analyze why they were excluded, include these findings in the design, and to possibly find a new unexpected user group.

Once the design solution is released, it is a good idea to start tracking user reactions and opinions. Designers should track consistent, systematic metrics and review them from the beginning. As based in the STIN model, resource flow, architectural choice points, and its connection to social-technical characteristics can be used to enhance this process.

The users might omit some feedback on purpose, and designer or user researcher should focus on finding out what users do not say, and more importantly, why? There are always ways to encourage users to give such feedback. Another possibility, as per STIN, would be the identification of other communication forums, for example, the ones outside of the official platform communication methods, such as revealed by Haashir, who identified an unofficial Facebook group of users based on which he developed the SocietyGal platform.

As per comparison of practitioners analysis and STIN model, the secondary data indicated that points 1, 2, 3, and 6 of the STIN model are well represented in practice, while points 4, 5, 7, and 8 are not and should be more emphasized in the user research.. That being said, the design process of each interviewee was different, and therefore the recommended points should be approached on an individual basis.

5.4 Integrative view analysis

Based on the results of the analysis, the authors expanded the integrative view model on On-site Information Findability from chapter 2.4.1 Integrated view model. The integrative view model is observed from the main perspective of on-site information findability and includes a categorical overview of the codes of chapter 4.7 Codes.

Figure 11 Integrative view model on On-site Information Findability 69

6 Conclusion

This thesis aimed to review the existing literature on findability and to identify the potential perspectives, which combined with designers' work experiences, provides insights and contributes to an integrative view on information findability. Furthermore, the two formulated research questions will be answered.

RQ1: What perspectives and frameworks can be derived from literature that provide insights into on-site information findability?

However, SI and IA are not the same. While Information architecture is focused on the broader perspective of information, SI’s focal point is that of social actors and their interaction with ICT’s, nonetheless both fields are beneficial regarding optimized findability and its design. For this reason, the field of IA can be seen as a broader perspective than the view that SI offers. While SI offers a more in-depth investigation of the relationships between social actors and technology. Social Informatics and Information Architecture have provided us with helpful lenses through which to perceive findability. These perspectives offer information and levers toward the better design of the findability within digital platforms.

Based on the analysis, the STIN-model (Kling et al., 2003) has proven to be a suitable tool, although not completely represented in practice, for improved user research and inherently improved design of findability of digital platforms.

Findings suggest that designers take findability into account in their design scope, and it is a part of user research as well. Findability and Information Architecture are closely related, and thus designers can be confident that the findability of their platform is well implemented by asking similar questions as in Information Architecture. Furthermore, good findability is defined by users having a good flow of retrieving information from a website. This flow is described in the theory of the Berry Picking model, which replaced simple retrieval mode. A folksonomy can be an excellent tool for designers as it allows

for social actors to add their input into the information architecture and further stimulating the connection with the website.

RQ2: What conceptual elements, which are being used by designers, exist and how do they provide insights into on-site information findability?

First of all, designers should remember that they are problem solvers, the practice is not about aimless creativity. Each designer has a different design process and methods used. To some degree, these things can be based on a designer’s preference, but more importantly, they should always be appropriate to the problem that needs to be resolved.

Even when designing for optimized findability, design starts with problem analysis, for which qualitative and quantitative methods should be combined for optimal results, if possible. An analysis usually includes, but is not limited to, desk research and user research, followed by prototyping. After that, the minimum viable product should be confirmed to proceed with the complete solution design. The whole design process should facilitate the proper communication of each actant. During every stage of the process, verification methods should take place, e.g. user feedback, user behavior tracking, crash reporting, etc. It is important to systematically measure these metrics from the start. An Agile methodology offers a great approach, however, only a full release will show all the problems. Sometimes, users do not want to give feedback, but a designer should encourage them.

An important aspect is also that the designer should use tools that support their methods and processes. A good idea to keep in mind is not to reinvent the wheel, as there is no one able to do everything on their own and perfectly. Tools selected should offer upgradability and reusability, if possible. Authors of the tools or other third parties sometimes provide UI guidelines, which is a great, but non-academic source of information to consider for design a solution to the problem.

More often than not, the client who requests the creation of a website for their company believes they are the end-user of said website. This is frequently not the case and leads to 71

misidentification of problems, aims and information retrieval journey. To tackle this issue, user research is required to find out who the actual end-user is and to understand better, not only problems with findability, but problems in general. The designer should be open-minded when it comes to identifying user groups, and needs to find a balance between generalization and specification. Furthermore, it is the designer’s task to understand, translate, and transform the findability problems of a platform into a meaningful solution. Communication issues may arise when designers speak about creating a digital solution, therefore designers should understand the audience and change the use of the jargon accordingly.

To be certain that a digital platform has an information architecture that users understand, designers can ask the following question to validate: “Does the IA of the solution respond to the people defined in user research?”-Sabrina.

Similarly, a findability-oriented design should consider and respond to the findings of user research and the optimal journey users would undertake in order to locate and retrieve desired information. Morville’s definition of quality of findability should be kept in mind:

(2005, p. 4)

7 Discussion

This chapter serves as a discussion about weak points and blind spots in this thesis. General points of improvement will be discussed as well as the specific critique of the theoretical framework, methods, and results & analysis chapters.

7.1 General points

The goal of this thesis initially was to create a framework that designers could use when they were trying to improve the findability of their digital platform. However, this goal was too ambitious, and thus providing an integrated view of findability became the primary goal.

Scope creep became an issue. Due to the author’s ambition, the theoretical framework became too large and included too much information that was not relevant to the reader. Initially, the authors intended to include the theory of Digital Platforms in the literature review, however deciding to leave it out was a necessary decision to improve the quality of the thesis.

Furthermore, the thesis, apart from creating a framework, did not have an end-goal in mind. On the one hand, this resulted in the authors solely focusing on the problem, which led to a good level of content without falling into the trap of solution-oriented thinking, but on the other hand, this lack of an overarching goal created confusion for the readers due to an unclear red-thread.

7.2 Theoretical framework

The amount of pages is the most notable point of improvement in the theoretical framework. As previously mentioned, the theoretical framework became too big. This issue was perfectly illustrated by a student that provided the opposition for this thesis in the following quote: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” (Twain, n.d.). Moreover, the authors could have improved the amount of synthesis for the theoretical framework. The authors should have re-written the theoretical

framework earlier on the process and distilled the actual content much sooner which would have improved the overall readability of the thesis.

The theory of Social Informatics is too general and is not tailored toward the main topic of findability. Even though the perspectives offered by the theory of SI are valuable, it could have been more targeted by tailoring it more towards the main topic of findability. This improvement would have provided the thesis with more specific knowledge as opposed to more general and generic information.

7.3 Methods

The methods chapter should have been created sooner instead of finalized after the fact. This is another situation where the lack of decisiveness of the authors shows, and they took much time thinking about potential methods instead of deciding and writing it down. Moreover, potential interviewees should have been contacted much earlier. Even though the authors knew that the interviewees would be available on shorter notice, they should have planned and scheduled interviews to guarantee results. This mistake was especially noticeable when it came to approaching Spotify designers, as they were targeted in earlier stages of the thesis. Setting up an interview without personally knowing someone who works at a targeted company is difficult and takes time to achieve. For this reason, the authors should have contacted the potential Spotify interviewees as soon as possible. Even though Spotify did not make it into the final version of the thesis, the illustrated point should be seen as a lesson to the authors.

7.4 Results & analysis

Coding and categorizing the interview reports could have been improved by making use of a more systematic approach. Codes were created on the spot as the authors progressed through the interviews, codes that were introduced later on were not included in interviews at the start. The authors should have organized all their codes, discuss if they were all necessary and beneficial. Afterwards, recode all the interviews again.

7.5 Suggestions for future research

The suggestions for future research are based on several points made in the thesis, including the 2.4 Integrated view, and the discussion mentioned above, but they are not limited to it. Additionally, the authors believe that elements surrounding the Integrated view can be further researched and possibly expanded by the inclusion of other relevant fields.

The first suggestion for future research would be to conduct research focused on the user's point of view. This research should explain the feelings of users regarding the quality of findability while using a range of available digital platforms. Furthermore, it should identify the correlation between findability and user experience. Such research would benefit from both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Moreover, a detailed study of why some platforms achieve better or worse results in the area of findability would yield beneficial insights into what variables influence findability. This would allow for research aiming to create a findability evaluation tool for digital platforms. The findability evaluation tool would allow designers to measure the quality of the findability.

Also suggested, follow-up research to this thesis that would focus on verification of suggested outcomes in the conclusion chapter could benefit academia as well as practice. If suggested outcomes would prove to a positive influence, the authors of the thesis propose to conduct research aimed at the creation of a framework for improved findability. The framework would contain elements of instruction that guide designers towards creating a digital platform with improved findability.

Lastly, a case study with companies and practitioners is proposed. This study would include businesses and designers willing to include suggested recommendations or framework in the creation of their digital platform. A report on that process would yield information about how feasible, such a process is, compared to a process without targeted findability.

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Appendix 1 Literature review

Main Topic Theme Contribution Author Social Information Findability Theory Practice Informatics Architecture (Alexander & Silvis, 2014b) x x x (Berners-Lee, 2000) x x x (Besseny, 2019) x x x (Burford, 2014) x x x (Degler, 2014) x x x (Fichman & Sanfilippo, 2014) x x x x (Fichman et al., 2015) x x (Gibson, 1986) x x x x (Hendron et al., 2014) x x (Hinton, 2014a) x x x x x (Hinton, 2014b) x x (Jaffe, 2019a) x x x x x (Jaffe, 2019b) x x (Kling et al., 2003) x x x (Klyn, 2010) x x x (Lacerda & Lima-Marques, 2014) x x x x x (Lacerda et al., 2019) x x (Meyer, 2006) x x x (Meyer, 2014) x x x (Morville, 2000) x x x x (Morville, 2005) x x x x (Pinch & Bijker, 1984) x x x (Kling, 1999) x x x x (Rennie & Law, 2009) x x (Resmini & Rosati, 2011) x x (Resmini, 2014a) x x x (Resmini, 2014b) x x x (Rosenbaum, 2013) x x x (Rosenfeld et al., 2015) x x x x x (Smutny, 2016) x x (Šrejber et al., 2019) x x x x (UX Collective, 2017) x x x Table 3 Analysis of literature

Appendix 2 Interview template

Stakeholders: Rients van Blanken, Zdeněk Šrejber – students at Jönköping University

interviewee

Interviewee: Length of interview: 60 minutes Structure: Semi-structured:

Introduction > Social Informatics > Information Architecture > Findability > Digital Platforms Reporting: Results of the interview are processed in the thesis Anonymity: The interview can be anonymized on request. Questions: Do you have any questions about the above? Interview questions: Introductory The following questions are about your job questions: 1. What company you work for, what doest it deliver?

+ 2. What is your job description and how long have you had the job?

+ 3. What responsibilities do you have within your job?

+ - Please take us through a regular day of your job Social Informatics 1. Do you use user perspectives in your design?

++ 2. Do you know the term “findability”, if not, what do you think it means? + The quality and degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate and the quality and degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval. 3. How do you use user perspectives in your design to support findability? ++ 4. How are you supporting or facilitating users interaction with your platform when they are seeking information? +

5. Which opportunities or possibilities do the users have when seeking information? +

6. How do you discover and define user groups? How do you assign priorities to groups? Are there any excluded actors? ++

7. How do you discover touchpoints between users and platform, if at all? +

8. Do you monitor user behavior? Do you analyze user’s decisions? User journey? +

9. Do you measure or quantify how well users are able to find the information they look for on your platform? +

10. What methods do you use to ensure that users can find the information they require? +

Digital Platforms 1. How would you describe the term “digital platform”?

+ 2. Do you know what network-bridging is and its effect? How are you employing of network bridging and network effects in your + digital platforms? 3. How important do you think findability is within a digital platform? +

4. How would you support and/or improve the findability within your digital platform? Could you take us through your ++ approach? Information Architecture 1. Have you encountered problems with communication, e.g. miscommunication when speaking about design with your + colleagues?

If yes, why do you think so?

Is there an established jargon for the design of information systems?

2. What are your thoughts about a unified language for the creation of information systems? + 3. Could you take us through your design-process?

(think of: ideation, brainstorming, roadmap, process, execution) 4. What principles or methods do you use to create an information structure in your digital platform? ++ 5. Do you have a specific way to label items on your digital platform? + 6. How do you categorize these items?

+ 7. Could you describe in what way users are searching for desired information? ++ 8. How do they navigate to the information?

+ 9. Have you considered employing folksonomy in your design, e.g. user generated tags, playlists, descriptions? ++ 10. Do you plan to expand your toolset ? If yes, do you have any specific sources to use which you could share with us? -

Table 4 Interview Schema

Not all the questions have to be asked or answered

Appendix 3 Interview transcripts

Interview notes: Hashir – 3-4-20

Semagic: focussed on marketing app

Position: multiple roles atm, primarily project manager, UI/UX designer. Joined very early on even on the founding phase, in charge of the wireframing, sketching, assembling teams, many tasks. Company age? December 2018, has been 1,5 year now.

Social informatics

User perspectives: marketplace application so from a technical standpoint nothing is completely brand-new. What were doing is were making an app that serves a very niche market. We narrowed down the scope down as much as possible.

Findability: users find information. Speaking about our application within our development team. People come to our application to find new people and not to connect to existing people. Looking at the main focus/goal of our app, female entrepreneurs find it difficult to go through strangers and find the right business partners. Facebook is not a marketplace. Main intention is to create a long lasting relationship → business. Finding: sort of different parts to it 1 traditional social part, other people’s posts 2 searching new people, north America and Europe we confine it to those spaces → community.

User groups: quite interesting. American userbase. For 1 year only American users but now also expanding to Canada and UK. Predominantly people selling services on our platform. Products is less. 90 + percent of our user base people are looking to have a service oriented marketplace.

User journey: the first step is you basically sign up with your fb or other contact info. Once you have an account you have different sections. Our company holds regular conferences and events. Networking events/exhibitions. Show your company etc. Podium to connect and talk about business. One section; Asked to introduce yourself on the 85

onboarding screen, you have the newsfeed general connections etc. other section; product you are working etc. you can browse through the other persons post. Pretty much a chat like interface. Not everyone can leave a rating unless you have used the platform for a little bit of time.

Rating: when we started; just a simple like, but that didn’t work. Ratings tell you how much you approve this item of the service. One of the things is that sometimes women here are very formal they don’t want to let the other person get negative comments, don’t give comments. With a rating system they can at least tell you what they’re happy about.

Users and their behaviour, monitoring: We had one year of testing. If we have crashes then we track them. User behaviour: we do have the sample of the data. Everybody who joins the network follows the account of our company. We have sufficient data to understand users. Apple has TestFlight where al the crashes get reported.

Include usability findability? When we started we had no guides for users. In every other social networks that women were using there was a simple section for it. We have multiple sections. It’s a community. When people came on the app they asked us what icons were for. One icon on the homepage where you could switch between viewing posts from connections to people from all over the network. We introduced the onboarding screen. Some people highlight specific sections or icons of the app to make new users more comfortable with the service. A simple animation explaining what’s what and basic controls. This section is for this, and this one for this. One item that we had. Common complaint: practical thing; the newsfeed. Very important for us to slowly take the user through the platform.

Impact of intro: community existed 3 to 4 years before the app. If something didn’t work people would screenshot and send it to us so we can fix it. People aren’t here for the technology aspect they’re here for the social aspect. Bug where peoples notifications didn’t work → 1300 at the same time. It made people really happy that there are people whom are very active within the app and trying to improve it. We started with the basics.

Miscommunication: only three people in the tech team, including interviewee. Senior and junior developer. All three of us have a different background, one from the us. Time zones differ between us. One thing that happened is that the cultural difference. We hired a senior developer I sort of understood how he understood design. Based on his cv he had a good amount of industry experience. I am the only designer over here. I communicated with the junior developer. Apart from the testing I don’t have that much feedback loop. CEO is in Us he gives me feedback. CEO said the change was oaky and then applied his own idea. Don’t make changes while you are implementing it.

Design language: communication with different people use different terms. With a developer you make use of more technical language, implement this and that etc. they’re not interested in the contest, get straight to the point. Communication, CEO is very different, how I came up with the decision, impact? Developer doesn’t care about that. I start with random images, I’m not physically present, I do everything digitally. A lot of photos and screenshots → into vision board. Some idea about that gives me what they want and how they think. The most important features → wireframe, problem that we see, possible solutions, keep drawing wireframe . not presentable to the users. With the CEO I talk to her first preferably because she understands the objective of the user more.

Users don’t get the wireframes, the stuff that I’m doing. 5 – 10 minutes to discuss. Small team, have a call and explain.

How do you track tasks and ideas? Time zones are different, developers in in India, management in us. In the morning I work with on the design side. I only communicate with the founder herself, not so much with the other founders, CEO communicates with them. Very small team, easily to manage it. Communication is not that much of a problem.

Bigger team bigger challenge? Third person that was already a challenge. We were communication through GitHub, slack and GitHub. Slack has good integration with other

tools, Trello, especially with the senior developer. We have integrations we have them in place, but as far as challenges are concerned we are not profitable yet as we are quite new.

Approach: look for inspiration how other people have done it. Design a profile page they could use as their own website, it should work like their own of sorts. I look for real implementations and real projects and I take inspiration and ideas from that. Then I try to implement the same thing, if it works we go ahead, if it doesn’t we change it. More often than not I design it I present it and if it goes well I make the prototype. With the presentation I make a clickable wireframe.

Methods: systems methodology helped me in a way. Some systems it’s don’t have a good structure. We all make our perspective and then we compare it. If there’s theory that helped me in this process; its that.

Digital platform misunderstanding, labelling:

Yes it’s very important that the users feel that everything is very predictable. We try to use terms as much as possible from media that they already know. Slowly implement our own features. Upcoming feature → own sub communities within the app → scribe, specific name they’re comfortable with.

Menus: structuring, approach?

It goes like this; before we started with the actual application thee was a MVP of sorts that’s where I started, we understood that there is an importance for 3 categories of information. IOS guidelines, segmentation shouldn’t be more than five categories. Taking into considerations those aspects → UI guidance, only reference point we had. If the UI guidelines allowed us to have that then we would take inspiration from events as well.

User content: different people and different stuff. Standard posts, Facebook posts, stickers, images, videos etc. right now the profile is very standard. In the upcoming version one of the ideas of the profile is to have your own website and to give the user the ability to create different user groups, people form work, friends, family, other 88

connections etc. blocks like system. Experimenting right now, doing it in a different app now. Drag and drop. Add blocks from your profile. Make every individual post customized from the same profile etc. Self-expression is one of the key ingredients of our platform. With the existing social networks there’s always polarization. Someone likes something that is then elevated. There’s always polarization and limits and jealousy etc. When you post something on insta you always see the perfect image. We constantly filter pressure we want to allow the user to not force themselves to keep posting, → status quo. They can make any post com on the top, whatever it is about.

Options as a user: searching, finding information → discover section we want to open you up to new people and connections. We allow people to browse based on proximity. Normal searching is obviously there, keywords, CEO’s, bio etc.

Toolset: keep options open, open to anything make our product as best as possible.

Interview Notes: Arden 7-4-2020

Intro

Company: &Partners, digital design firm, ethical technology projects, for private and government organizations,

Position: Director of product design, aims to deliver design that is human centered, smart, creative. In her position must be multifunctional, does a lot of research and improvements of processes. Wants to create supportive environment for other designers.

Before: Fortuny – a fabric company, 7 years, company decided to make their own app and Arden was in charge, and then it rolled on to product design, fabric design. Moved to position of US director in newly founded company of Fortuny focus on creating a space for designers. In her new role, Arden still applied design principles, learned to worked with CRM, she was introduced to design, technology and business perspectives. Then started career in freelancing, getting into human centered design, considerate design, user research. Freelanced for student loan platforms company. Found out that no one is doing 89

user research or recording it. At the time quantitative research was more popular. Then joined &Partners. Introduced to qualitative research and fact checking, recording and verifying.

User perspectives: how do you apply it? Its core of what they do. Easy to use UP. Hard process of design if you do not use UP. Clients need to be convinced to use UP, they don’t like it in the beginning. Takes months of user research, but it must be done to come up with good design. Clients think that that are the users and know everything about users, but this is not true. Core of the work at &Partners. Not always possible, but always worth pushing for and doing.

Findability: “how easy you able to locate thing on app or website.”

Connection between user perspectives and findability: knowing users perspective embraces findability, because it empowers the language of users. Improved interactions of users with product. UX principles might not always apply, less clicks are not always worth it, sometimes better path design is better. You can only know that from user research. Take into account everything to support findability.

User groups: create based on behaviors, not demographics. Demographics used to ensure that you are not leaving someone out and you had variety of users. Categorization should be based on behavior (easily frustrated, excited, etc.). Always dependent on primary tasks of design. Three principles: attitude aptitude ability to define groups.

Do you exclude people: by nature, you are excluding, even when you are trying not to. Make it as inclusive as possible. Most projects &Partners do not exclude users. There is always a way to include people. E.g. hair product bought by bald people for their friends.

Touchpoints: not sure about specific approach. Depends on the product. Keep open to touchpoints you haven’t considered. Touchpoints vs conversion points. Usually obvious, then pick most important, narrow down, validate. AB testing.

Do you measure how users find information: not really but should measure how quick and easy get to the desired info. Did more qualitative. You have to define specific goal that should be measured.

Tools and methods to ensure findability: start with goal before wireframing and flows. Back and forth with content and you need to develop understanding before you start designing. Users have extensive content, but hard to put it on paper, designer has opposite problem, a little content, but good at putting on paper. Iterate a lot, especially for complex systems.

Platforms: “support system on which you build app or web…”

Network bridging: interconnecting platforms, bridging them, e.g. connecting databases.

Do you employ it: it is employed any time you use API. Plenty of work they design with making a platform uses input from other platforms. Nowadays you always use API for something, some feature Elaborate: many platforms and for anything that will be added must be connected. Cybersecurity steps in registering and logging to service includes different companies and platforms, which take on different steps during the process of login. It’s important to utilize existing products. You are not able to do everything perfectly yourself.

How to improve internal findability: track consistent systematic metrics and review from beginning, review with stakeholders: CEO, marketing, tech, users. Long load times, etc. Iterate and fix quickly. Even when working well, you should find a room for improvement. Users always know best, get their feedback. Giving feedback might be annoying, but you should find a way to encourage users to do it. Have a suggestion features and see if users like it.

What language: not give much to user and see what they say, do not give them something to say and use in answer. Be direct and brief, prepare clear set of questions. Create a space for them to express whatever. But it always on the type of interview. Depends on

personality of user: get to know them and ask appropriately, formal of informal, it depends.

What language for designer, jargon with colleagues: language is specific to users. &Partners have internal jargon. Users do not hear it. &Partners deal with a lot of professions and they use their jargon, so Arden and others have to learn it and understand. Good thing is to reflect the language and document the terms. Acronyms are funny, if you know them, you are in the inter circle. A lot of acronyms used in &Partners.

Describe your design process: service blueprints. Depends on the projects. Could be branding, wireframing, research what already exists, define roles. Product owner and manager has a word in the process. Do research first, then present to other stakeholders. Research what are the features and why are they needed. Then verify it with stakeholders. Understand the problems, not proposed solutions. Features to solve problem are usually already existing but know the problems first. Get to know the frameworks, tools or available technologies. Maybe custom solution is not ideal…sometimes use existing, then slight edits, rearrange the pieces, to cover the need of stakeholders. Really needed to know tools offered by technology. Strive for minimal impact project from engineering and user perspective. Easy and quick to learn and use.

Meeting the demand of user: put it in the field. Open ended data collection methods when getting data. Present sexiest mock, all included -> verify if all needed and working? -> scope down -> iterate. Ask your users to do the verification of meeting demand for you. See if the design is going in the right direction. Prototyping before coding. Build as flexible as possible, to be able to fix/improve/change afterwards.

Folksonomy: Arden didn’t know, confused. Depends on the product, not every product can utilize it. Not useful in her project. Must be in large project where users can generate it. User tags might be useful, but it might be irresponsible for some people to write them. There must be check and verify systems. E.g. >10 occurrences of the word or other verifications method. Not useful for small to mid-size projects. Arden was curious how it would work, but it’s for large scale projects only, because they have enough users. 92

Personal goals, toolsets, learning: become a good team leader and learn how to manage team and projects. Create infrastructure where designers are supported and have available tools and information. Research how to support transferring knowledge between team members. Improve collaborative design and synergy within team.

Interview Notes: Sabrina 9-4-2020

Position: Sabrina is working at &Partners as Principal of design strategy. Customers include both private and government organizations. Sabrina works mainly with government clients and has experience in the healthcare sector.

Sabrina take a role of lead in her projects. Her position requires work on discovery and research. The aim is to try to understand users and design principles that apply to the project.

User perspectives: Sabrina is a jack of all trades. Started with wireframing etc, but then moved to discovery and user research. The main point to get enough user perspectives. Sabrina's approach when it comes to research is to combine qualitative and quantitative methods. Use quantitative to ground the problems found by qualitatively. Deliver perspectives to personas, journeys and service blueprints.

Findability: “whether something can be found. Must be targeted for specific items.”

User perspectives and findability: use user perspectives to find interests and behavior, use that info in your design process. E.g. is to change sitemap maybe or other visual elements in the navigation.

User groups: synthesize from combination qualitative and quantitative data gathered. Start with a hypothesis then bring people, observe their behavior and personalities, synthesize. There are several ways to group people. Always depends on the project, segment based on the project questions. Create groups that can spark most actions, they must be actionable for the problem that is being solved. Criteria for segmentation: access,

and user demands (e.g. how much attention/time users require). Generalization can not be avoided, too much generalization bad, a designer must find a balance.

Touchpoints discovery: ask during the research process. Ask indirectly, e.g. how do you get this task done? If they don’t answer, you should figure out why are they not answering the question?

Comparison of qualitative and qualitative methods: they complement each other. Qualitative brings deep knowledge, but cannot be accepted as a general fact, because the sample can be outliers, but this method is useful at answering why questions. Afterward, use quantitative methods to support these claims/information by statistics and numbers.

Monitor user behavior: Use user interviews to try to find the behavior. This should be part of user research.

User research methods for findability: synthesize the data to the conceptual and actual design. Use storyboards to find out what is an obvious problem to users that should be the main focus of the design. One might also want to discover why other problems users experience are not being said or displayed and act according to the found answer.

Digital platforms: Wikipedia definition is ok. Quora has a definition that is too narrow and aim for salespeople.

Network-bridging: Rients must have explained with an example of Uber and Uber eats. There is always an idea in our mind how to use something without reinventing the wheel. You should use something that already exists and then build on top of existing solutions, if necessary.

Communication: miscommunication happens all the time. UX design is a weird field of people being nerdy about definitions, they all have their definition, but nothing is unified and they will argue why their definition is the most appropriate. There is not a single way to describe a process in design. A designer should always check if being understood. The shared language of design is impossible because everybody would disagree. To verify 94

communication one should create slides with deliverables to confirm what is expected with stakeholders. Jargon makes communication complicated. Unification wouldn’t solve the problems, there would always be people disagreeing, which is not a bad thing. Terms are not hard defined in the design. The definition of the term can be changed the mid- design process.

Steps in design process: discovery projects x evaluating projects. What are the questions -> verification -> who is users -> desk research -> expert interview -> synthesis -> interview/research guides development -> recruit people (includes getting sufficient representative sample) -> get responses -> transcripts and coding -> rough design -> validation with people from the field -> design. Workshop in the meantime, includes clients (professions).

Information structure within design and findability: User journeys and personas. Does the IA of solution respond to the people defined in user research?

Folksonomy: “Crowdsourced taxonomy.” Card sorting techniques – let the users do it for you. You can even use open-ended sorting so the users even create labels for you.

What are the important skills: Designer should lose the fear of complex problems. Become comfy with not knowing the answer, because you can’t know everything and you can learn something later on in the process. Design for hospitals, you don’t need to be a doctor to create a design for a hospital environment. For the design, you can employ clients to mitigate a lack of knowledge. How to designing if you don’t know -> talk to involved stakeholders in a given position -> learn how the steps of process work, but don’t need to know every detail. If the work is simple you don’t need to design the solution. Main is giving users tools they can use, not having to understand them.

Interview Nick Mulder 23.04.2020 Company: Pension company, delivers service connected to pension funding. Nick has been working for 8-9 working at the company.

Job Description: DevOps web application developer, main aim is the support of communication processes, optimization of service and development of new features.

User perspectives: Nick does not use them. Another department of UX uses them. Does a lot of designing and programming. It is important to get good user experience as an outcome of the work.

Process of resolving tasks: tasks are coming from product owner. Nick has to report what they need for accomplishing the task and what kind of outcomes they expect after implementation. User perspective is provided by product owner.

Design process:

1. Receive task 2. Propose a design solution 3. Get people of what they think of the design 4. develop it further on

User testing: it is difficult to execute at his position. Nick receives design from another UX designer. Company was not probably doing any user tests before. Lately they started and improved usability test

Touchpoint: Nick works on livechat feature (bplpensium). Important feature to attract users.

Other applications he worked on: none. only live chat, angular component, cool to see feature working

Tracking statistics: they do track them, but Nick does not have access, other department has the data and he would have to request it.

Ensuring criteria are met: not sure if there is such a process

Digital platform: platform where users buy products, do some research about digital products. Handy for user to buy or seek products.

Network-bridging: network separated into different devices? ---Must have been explained, that its collaboration with other services--- They do collaboration with other services. Gitlab, etc. Each department uses multiple third-party platforms.

Findability: “comes from find and able to, like usability. More like reaching a goal. That would be called findability. Reaching a goal.”

Importance of findability: important, when there is a lot of information and user cannot find specific one, it’s a problem. There must be a good flow of navigation to the wanted information.

Findability of their platforms: New platforms at the company have usability tests. Nick manages old platforms. Its work in progress. Old platform has many components, not sure if ne can answer how to improve overall the whole platform. Lean basic code base for the life chat and plan to bring a lot of new features. Big plans to add new UI elements to smoothen the experience (e.g. collapsible menus). Always room for new features and additions to platform

Communication: no problems with communication. Information are usually not specific, and they are hard to understand. To solve this, he needs to talk back to colleagues to receive proper information, but it is not a difficulty. Key to good information is to specify.

Process to create livechat feature: smaller collaboration with other developers, mostly only him. When you develop a feature, then you get ideas what to do next in the future, you should track it. 97

Collaboration: works mostly alone but has a good experience colleagues help him to solve a problem. To get more specific knowledge you need to ask colleagues to explain what the feature should do, where to implement etc.

Personal development: angular language skills. Slack for tracking, now all online because of Covid-19

Importance of tools: important to know greater Range of tools available

How long to develop livechat: 4-5 months

Information structure: department of communication, important to control the content, to achieve good usability there need to be a lot of cooperation, good content and usable components. Ownership of communication needs to be good.

Nick as UX designer, how important are user perspective: important to give the user a feeling that its easy to get the right information, product, services. But again, UX is done by someone else, Nick does not have a proper answer.

Nick as UX designer: Involved more in UX for smaller feature. Responsiveness and performance of platform was poor and needed improvement. Example: not optimized usability but doesn’t think its relevant to our conversation.

How would you optimize it: example, chat element with button and text. Button is in the block on the left side, but good usability is from top right to bottom left. Busy with ERcanning, secured method for logging employees into pension funds. Next year not allowed to use login and password, so it the new feature needs to be designed, but Nick lacks the big picture to describe it in more details.

Future expansion of skills: improve angular, css, htms. More specigic feature of mentioned languages.

Interview Carlos 27-4-2020

Company and position: working for Pilotfish, design company. Company works in development in products, physical to digital: UI apps. Company is having different locations in the world; international. Now in Amsterdam, more approaching the design process, berlin, Taipei is more focused on production related to our products and also coding/developing. Position is lead designer; more specific project right now. Defining the different steps in the process where the beginning is focused on electrical components. Right now is the defining phase to take it to market. We need different expertise, electric engineers, coding people. When I was in uni I was studying UI design, UX and that’s something I really liked, so during the summer I was working with a startup, I designed the UI design, I was in contact with the developers. Developers were developing it, later I had another internship in Malmo, more into digital design there I was working on designing the UI for a videogame on a smartphone. Defining the user flows.

User perspective: Design is about solving problems. Every problem has a context and users. If the problems aren’t defined then those need to be defined as well as the users: personas. Understand the problem and to do that you need to understand the users.

Findability: looking for something and finding it. User perspectives and findability connected? Understanding the user that interacts with something is super important with anything that is related to a user.

Defining touchpoints: If I have a product and the users has an interaction, define the touchpoint all the steps; user journey.

Grouping users: defining different users. One user is not enough, you need multiple users, more is better. When enough users? My pov you need to understand the context of the product, company, who is company approaching. More difficult at the start, defining the product and user groups. Maybe not a product to find the user, but the other way around.

Monitoring: After the design is completed we do user tests, very important. The app was already designed and we were doing user tests, people with migraines. Very important that the users for the test had migraines. We did the test, see if they were following the right flow through the app. From there we caught the problems and we fixed them.

Communication issues: Working in a team, doing teamwork you usually don’t need the same opinion, is normal, taking and discussing and finding a common point.

Jargon? Common that they use long words and make shorter with the capitals, very confusing. For me I was studying in Spain so talking in English is completely different for me. Poc, proof of concept, didn’t understand that one. Fut, friendly user test, lot of times I need to ask, what is that?

Translated to other companies? Completely general. Starting to do this, its common to make it shorter and faster. Talk with clients they understand the terms.

Learning these things is beneficial in school? Totally. Super stupid that makes you understand stuff faster.

Information architecture? Maybe about building systems, defined and understand the users, its basically a system. Categorize items, label them, etc. Systematic and easy to understand. Something you are trying to do? Actually right now the product we are working on, it has an architecture, we call it system architecture, sub systems and more sub systems, different blocks, components. Translated into digital? Absolutely, pov: solving problems, in order to solve problems you need to get all the information and rearrange it. No differences between physical and digital. Participate in process? For example right now the system architecture we are defining, we have a sensor and this wants to be implemented into the market. Has a lot of electrical components, not yet a product, but in the future will be. Right now just satisfy the primary function. Black box full of bolts and electrical components, define what was needed, from what provider, assembling it. A plan behind.

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Folksonomy? Example: Spotify, people can categorize the song. We have a physical product we are going to let the people implement changes in it, I don’t have any example, but physical products nowadays are completely linked to digital products, maybe a product that is more modular, allows you to interact with applying changes via the user.

Can add value, at the end this is just a different way of understand the user, the product is for the user right? Maybe you just create the system and then you get to know the user. I think it can be useful.

Define digital platform? Digital platform is something that is not tangible, usually I can understand its part of a screen interface, maybe not necessarily. Purpose? To make our lives easier, to provide services, not all the services have to be physical, new type of product, everything is a product. Benefit to designers? Versatile, easy to implement, everyone has a smartphone or interface/screen, it feels very easy to reach a lot of people, service is totally different depending on what you want to do.

Network bridging? Connecting people, I don’t know. Absolutely beneficial, fit connecting other apps with smartphone devices. Not something I have used as a digital designer right now. Add value? I think so, because nowadays we have a lot of different services that are not connect but are super related. You can get an uber and pay with apple pay, why not with Spotify, already knows your favorite music, connect all these service we can get a whole experience.

Next steps? Focus more on the user. Not too technical. Tools, methods? I am using a new app, mural, get input from user online, brainstorming online, but its nice.

Happy how a product turns out? I am still starting to going through, this market wants results very fast, not enough time to know the user, it tries to go too fast, at the end we can miss research sometimes and that is very important.

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Barriers? Missing information. Getting the information you need the right tools. For example right now we are working with this project in retail environments. Study it, see how people interact with it. Right now not the best moment to do that.

Barriers translate to other designers? Definitely, we face similar problems/barriers.

Barriers from user point of view? Problem they cant understand something is the fault of the designer. These people that don’t know how to interact with the product is information we need to receive so we can improve.

Recommendations? Usually users when they use something they feel very disconnected with the people who bring it to them. But they don’t feel that maybe there’s a small team behind it that they can give feedback to. When I use a product or an app, the relation I have with it, I think the pov, the designers are too far away from us, to be more open might be better. Going to the supermarket, bakery directly talking with the person there, if you have a problem you let them know. The relationship with these services could be more open, that’s the feeling I have, makes it more difficult for both parties, for the users to have their problems solved and the designers solving the problems.

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