UI Web: The myth of discoverability

Scott Berkun, a soon-to-be former project manager and usability engineer at Microsoft, makes a cogent point about how much an interface can let itself be discovered by its users. Discoverability is the designers' term for the ability of users to figure out how an interface works.

From an online marketing and e-commerce perspective, his essay is well worth pondering. Various teams and managers will want to attract attention to "their" content or feature, and it's indeed a healthy concern to make things easy to find on a commercial site. But what Scott reminds us is that someone needs to have a holistic vision of what your interface is there for, to deliver a consistent and predictable experience.

We have that kind of discussion ourselves, and frankly this is a struggle. For instance, some of the Up2Speed Daily subscribers were not aware that we have an always-up-to-date front page on the web. How do we make sure search engine visitors, who most of the time arrive directly deep in our archives, realize the depth and breadth of what we have to offer? How do we let our front page visitors know we have more than 1,800 articles commented, categorized and archived for their convenience?

Those are not easy questions. As marketers, we have to prioritize the information objectives, and not ask web pages to sell more things than they can, lest we diminish our actual ability to sell anything. As Scott Berkun reminds us, we "have limited screen real estate [and] users have limited attention."