Comments on The Big O: IA Lessons from Orienteering

Annie Rex — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:02 GMT

Thanks for this! I sent this piece to my husband, who still doesn’t really know what I do after 7 years of doing the user experience consulting thing. The extended analogy really seems to fit. I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to understand at least this aspect of my work since we’ve been addicted off and on to watching Eco-Challenge and he’s quite fond of trail blazing with his mountain bike. Good stuff, Gene.

Gene — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:40:08 GMT

There’s an anecdote on the Amazon page for Inner Navigation (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743222067/qid=101… that reminds me of being in San Francisco last year. For the whole trip I had North and South reversed and even though I knew I was wrong I couldn’t shake my inaccurate mental model.

Anyway, thanks for the tip Sarah. Looks like an interesting book.

Sarah White — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:02 GMT

Have you read Erik Jonsson’s book “Inner Navigation” (Scribner, 2002)?

If you liked this article, you might just love this book by an elderly orienteer.
[quoting from book jacket] “A lively, engaging account of subconscious mapmaking”.

Not one mention of website navigation in the book, but a host of interesting thoughts that lead in the same direction Gene Smith has us strolling.

Enjoy!

andrew — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:40:09 GMT

Nice article! This is the kind of cross-disciplinary thinking that I used to get so excited about three years ago, when it seemed like smart people with varied interests had a real place shaping the web. B&A is an old-skool stronghold in that way.