Types of Labeling Systems
In web sites, labels come in two formats,
textual and iconic. We typically find them used in two ways: as links to chunks
of information on other pages (usually within the context of navigation
systems, as index terms, or as labels for links), and as headings that break up
and identify the chunks of information on the same page (much like the heading
on this printed page). Of course, a single label can do double duty; for
example, the link Contact Us could lead to a page that uses the title label
Contact Us.
1. Labels Within Navigation Systems
Navigation system labels demand consistent
application more than any other type of labeling system. Navigation systems, as
we described in Chapter 4, occur again and
again within a web site. Just as users rely on navigational systems to be
positioned on a page consistently and look the same throughout the site, they
rely on their labels to work in a consistent, familiar way, as in Figure 5.1. Effectively applied labels are integral
to building this sense of familiarity, so they'd better not change from page to
page. That's why using the label Main, on one page, Main Page on another, and
Home elsewhere will surely destroy the familiarity that the user needs when
navigating a site.
Figure 5.1. The labels Interact, View, Browse, and
Search are part of a site-wide navigation system. This labeling system uses
consistent verb-based terminology.
Some conventions have emerged for navigation
system labels. You should consider using these, as they are already familiar to
most web users. Here is a non-exhaustive list:
•
Main,
Main Page, Home, Home Page
•
Search,
Find, Browse, Search/Browse, Site Map, Contents, Table of Contents, Index
•
Contact
, Contact Us, Contact Webmaster, Feedback
•
Help,
FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions
•
News,
What's New
•
About,
About Us, About <company name>, Who We Are
However, each example has two or more textual
variants used to represent the same information. So these conventions aren't
completely conventional; use them with care! At least use them consistently
within your site, as in the example in Figure 5.1.
Conversely, the same label can often represent
different kinds of information. For example, in one site News may link to an
area in a site that includes announcements of new additions to the site. In
another site News may link to an area of news stories describing national and
world events. Obviously, if you use the same labels in different ways within your own site, your users will be
very confused.
To address both problems, navigational labels
can be augmented by brief descriptions (also known as scope notes) when
initially introduced. For example, when a user first encounters these
navigational labels on a site's main
page, he or she will get a sense of their meaning from their accompanying
descriptions:
After this initial introduction, the user
should easily understand how to use the following navigation bar that appears
on all the other pages in the site:
Search/Browse | Contact Us | News | Help
The labels are now familiar, and if used
consistently, will work effectively. Usability tests run on many major sites
have confirmed the contextual value of providing descriptions.9 The
Argus Clearinghouse provides a more extensive example of the use of scope notes
(Figure 5.2).
Figure 5.2. Each category and subcategory is described
further by a scope note.
2. Labels as Indexing Terms
Labels are increasingly used as indexing terms
for classifying the contents of large sites. They work in two ways: enhancing a
document's chance of getting retrieved by a searching system, and supporting
browsing within a site.
To support searching, keywords are assigned to
a document, whether within the <META> tag or in an accompanying database
record that describes the document's contents. These labels are usually heard
but not seen; in other words, they aren't necessarily visible to the user, but
instead work in the background to ensure a search engine appropriately indexes
the document. For example, we inserted the following code in the main page for
International Furniture Rentals (http://www.rent-ifr.com):
<META
name="keywords" content="IFR Furniture Rentals, International
Furniture Rentals, IFR Rentals, relocation, furniture rental, furniture
leasing, interim housing, furnished apartments, executive suites, residential
furniture, office furniture">
These indexing terms are keywords that
describe the company's services and locations, as well as synonyms and name
variants (e.g., IFR Rentals) that we anticipated might be searched by users.
Search engines, whether Web-wide (e.g., Alta Vista, Hotbot) or specific to this
site would then include these terms in their indexes, thereby improving user
searching.
Indexing labels effectively within a page's
<TITLE> tags can similarly improve a searcher's chances of retrieving the
right pages in your site. In fact, we've found that Web-wide search engine
relevance ranking algorithms seem to consider terms in a document's
<TITLE> as very indicative of the document's content, and so these
documents often end up ranked quite highly on result lists. In our own site, we
included these descriptive labels within the <TITLE> tags:
<TITLE>Argus
Associates. information architecture design, organization, labeling,
navigation, searching, indexing, intranets, Web sites</TITLE>
It's surprising that labels as indexing terms
are not used more. Site sponsors do crazy things to get their sites noticed,
including advertising their URL on banners flown over football stadiums, but
they don't always bother to insert accurate, descriptive terms in their site's
pages.
Besides enhancing searching, index labels can
also improve browsing. By using keywords to manually index a site's content,
you can provide additional means for accessing its content beyond its main organization scheme.
For example, the Henry Ford Health System's site (shown in Figure 5.3) contains many records
for each department, division,
hospital, program, and so on. Because those are the major entities of the
health system, they constitute the main organization system for that content.
However, we also added topical keywords to each record (e.g., heart, kidney,
liver, lung, skin graft, and transplantation) to allow users to access the
site's content by topic. This approach allows users to cut across the grain of
the site's main organization system and browse the content in a completely
different mode.
Figure 5.3. Content already accessible through a major
organization system (e.g., organizational designations such as Departments
& Divisions) can also be made accessible by indexing terms (e.g.,
keywords). In this case, each keyword serves as a link, allowing users to
access other content indexed under the same keyword.
3. Link Labels
Labels are also used as textual links within
the body or text of a chunk of information. These aren't as difficult to create
because, unlike navigation system labels, they are naturally used in the
descriptive context of their surrounding text. See Figure
5.4 for an example of link labels.
Figure 5.4. In this example, the link labels are
services, houses, directory, and added. When people describe hypertext, they're
often thinking of link labels.
Just because they're relatively easy to create
doesn't mean they necessarily work well. For example, take the following list
of link labels:
Amalgamated annual report Bob Pobjoy
ButtMaster 5000 forty percent
Here, we have no clue what these labels mean
because there is no context. Without context, these aren't part of a system at
all. Certainly, if they were being used as part of a navigation system, they'd
never work.
However, as we see these labels as links
within the context of the text, they start to make sense:
...Amalgamated employees believe in the
products that they manufacture, market, and sell. For example, forty percent of
the company's employees religiously work out on Amalgamated's ButtMaster 5000
at least once per work day. According to Bob Pobjoy , Amalgamated's Chief
Morale Officer, "It's a great stress reducer, healthful, and good clean
fun. And if you read our annual report , you'll know that Amalgamated is firmly
behind firm behinds" quips Pobjoy....
Systematic consistency isn't an issue for link
labels. These labels are glued together by the copy, not by a particular
system. However, consistency does become an issue between these labels and the
chunks of information they link to.
For example, the link "annual
report" may take the user to a page with the heading Financial
Information. Most users won't have a
problem with this, but at least a few will be confused. But if the link
"Amalgamated" leads to a
page labeled Acme Corporation, most users won't bother reading the copy far
enough to learn that Amalgamated is really a division of Acme.
Avoiding the problems associated with
inconsistencies between link labels and where they lead is difficult. We'll
never be certain, for example, what we get if we select the link "Bob
Pobjoy." A biography? A photo? A personal home page? A mailto:? An entry
in a corporate directory? Will "forty percent" lead to a simple pie
chart, or the results of a rigorous scientific study of Amalgamated employee
exercise habits? These problems can be minimized by asking yourself, "What
kind of information will the user expect to be taken to?" before creating and labeling a link.
Then, apply your answer consistently. For example, consider having all
references to personal names (e.g., Bob Pobjoy) lead to the same sort of
destination (e.g., always to a mailto: link).
A note of caution about link labels: links
embedded in text can be difficult for the eye to scan. They are fine for ad hoc
links that cannot be easily separated from surrounding text, but don't rely on
them for frequently used links such as navigational links.
4. Labels as Headings
Links are often used as headings that describe
the chunk of information that follows the heading. For example, the label for
this part of the page you are reading, "Labels as Headings,"
represents the chunk of information between it and the next heading,
"Iconic Labeling Systems." To some degree, a heading label, like a
link label, also relies on the text that follows to convey its meaning (see Figure 5.5). However, unlike link labels, there is no
guarantee that the user will read the associated chunk of text. So there is
extreme pressure on heading labels to draw the user's attention to the
accompanying chunk of information.
Figure 5.5. The obvious heading labels here are Submit a
Guide, Comments & Suggestions, and Opportunities. These were designed so
that users could understand what the labels represent without reading the
actual copy. Navigation and Contact Information could also be considered
heading labels, in this case for broader areas.
To ensure that your heading labels work well
as a system, display the heading labels from each page in your site as a single
outline. Look for two characteristics: consistency
in terminology and consistency in
granularity. Consistent terminology
means that the wording used among labels is uniform and cohesive. Consistent granularity means two
things: 1) that the chunks of information represented at each level of labels
are roughly of equal importance, and 2) that the levels of labels don't vary
greatly in how deeply they cover parts of a site.
In the following example, we see the outlines
for a site's main page and two of its component pages:
Heading Labels from Main Page
GPSC: Global Psychic
Services Corporation
Call our Telephone
Hotline
GPSC Publications for
Sale
For Prospective
Employees
Search This Site
Questions/Feedback
Heading Labels from "GPSC Publications for Sale" Page
#1
GPSC Publications for
Sale: The Bon Vivant's Guide to Nouvelle
Psychic Cooking
What is "Psychic
Cooking"? Synopsis
About the Author
What People are Saying
About The Bon Vivant's Guide to Nouvelle
Psychic Cooking
Testimonials
Reviews
Ordering Information
By Fax
By Telephone
Via the Internet
Heading Labels from "GPSC Publications for Sale" Page
#2
Publications for
Sale-"Your Psychic Pet" How to Order This Book
The main page's problems with consistent
terminology are due to a poor organization system. These labels are a mix of
tasks (e.g., Call our Telephone Hotline, Search This Site), audiences (e.g.,
For Prospective Employees), and general topics (e.g., GPSC Publications for
Sale, Questions/Feedback). Because the organization system is poorly designed,
the labels that represent it are confusing.
The two GPSC Publications for Sale pages have
inconsistent labels for the main heading and the ordering information:
GPSC Publications for Sale: The Bon Vivant's Guide to Nouvelle Psychic
Cooking vs.
Publications for Sale-"Living with
Psychic Pets"
Ordering Information vs. How to Order This
Book
One echoes the original heading on the main
page, while the other omits the GPSC. One uses a colon, the other a dash to
separate the generic label from the publication's title. One uses italics,
while the other encloses the title in quotation marks. Also, these two pages
have radically different sets of headings for no particularly good reason.
Mightn't users also want a synopsis and author information for Your Psychic
Pet?
Lastly, the first publication's page goes into
much more detail than the second. The first has a much finer level of
granularity than does the second. For example, on Page #1, there are heading
labels for ordering By Fax, By Telephone, and Via the Internet, but on Page #2
the granularity is coarser: we only know How to Order This Book without mention
of how it can be ordered. Is there any good reason for this? This sort of
problem is caused by carelessness or, in other words, lack of planning.
5. Iconic Labeling Systems
It's true that a picture is worth a thousand
words. But which thousand?
Icons can represent information in much the
same way as text. We see them frequently used as navigation labels.
Additionally, icons occasionally serve as heading labels and have even been
known to show up as link labels, although this is rare.
The problem with iconic labels is that they
constitute a much more limited language than text. Consider the concept home page. You'll find that there are
icons that are commonly recognized as representing home pages. Here are a few
examples:10
But what about when you want to represent
something more complex? Like, for instance, a link to Press Releases? You may
have occasionally seen a newspaper or cascaded trio of icons, like these:
Does it work? Would you automatically know
that these icons represent press releases? Or would you have guessed that it
represents a report? Or something that's already in print? Or something else
altogether?
English has over 610,000 words.11
Remarkably, English speakers have generally agreed to certain conventions about
its syntax and semantics. In other words, there isn't much doubt what is meant
by the textual label Main Page.
Iconic languages, however, are a bit more
constrained. Because we're not all artistic, it's harder to convey a concept
visually than it is in text (see Figure 5.6).
For example, if I drew an image of a house for use as a main page icon, it's as
likely that you'd interpret my drawing as representing a home page as you'd
interpret it as a dog chasing its tail.
Figure 5.6. Jakob Nielsen of Sun Microsystems and Darrell Sano
of Netscape Communica-tions conducted an interesting study of how users
interpreted the icons Sun was considering using on its intranet. Our favorite
results: the icon for "Benefits" interpreted as "Clinton's
health plan," the icon for "What's New" interpreted as
"Laundry," and the icon for "World Wide Web" interpreted as
"dimensions of the planet."
Even more than text labels, iconic labels rely
on consistent positioning on a site's pages. Moving them around from page to
page can sacrifice the user's ability to scan the page quickly and understand
what the labels represent, thereby negating much of the benefit of using iconic
labels.
Icons are fine for representing a few key
concepts in a web site. We've all seen a few conventions, such as a house icon
for a main page, a question mark for a help page, a magnifying glass for a
search page, and so forth. But there aren't too many more that conform to
convention, so using icons to represent a large, complex site is an approach
that won't scale well. How large is the language of standard web icons? A
dozen, perhaps? Certainly no comparison to its textual counterpart, English. In
fact, you'll notice that very few web sites bother to use iconic labels without accompanying textual labels, if
they use icons at all.
So why use iconic labels, especially if you
can't use them without textual labels? Two reasons: 1) they can contribute to a
consistent, attractive graphic identity for a site, and 2) they are familiar
and easy for the user to find on a page (if
they are drawn from the small group of concepts conventionally understood and
are used consistently on all the site's pages).
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