Monday, November 5, 2007

CRAIGSLIST


I've decided to integrate my previous research from another class into this site-assessment - Be Forwarned...This will be a bit more verbose and in-depth than average; all normal info is included, it's just in amongst my Information Architecture discussion. Note also that Formatting did not transfer consistently (bold, underline, italic, etc.)
Design Consistency:
In order to best evaluate the Information Architecture of Craigslist, it is best to first visually understand the layout of the site. After which we will overview the IA Context, Content, and Users as implied by the site owners. Then knowing the layout and site-intent, we will assess the GUI and its performance with regards to the IA components of Labeling, Navigation and Searching Systems, with Organization discussed within each. Finally, we will conclude with a brief summary of the site assessment and recommended changes.
On the bottom-half of this page is the what seen by the user via the Graphical User Interface (GUI ), as provided by the browser. It is important to note that the differences between Microsoft’s® Internet Explorer® (IE) and Firefox® are negligible, and will share the same assessments below. The page is broken down and labeled as 13 different information areas: the browser’s title-bar; site logo; user-location; select new location; post to site; user account; site information; search box; event calendar; miscellaneous internal and external links; classifieds; forums; and the browser’s status-bar.

Ease of Use:
Overview of Context, Content, and Users
Context The site’s name is Craigslist and has an URL of ‘www.craigslist.org’ (Craigslist, 2007). First thing we notice is the .org. Typically, this is associated with a non-profit group of some sort. The site began in 1995 as a hobby by Craig Newmark (FAQ – Craigslist, 2007), in order to share event information with fellow San Francisco users, but was incorporated as a ‘for-profit’ in 1999 (FAQ – Craigslist, 2007), for reasons not addressed. When addressing why they still use a .ORG domain they note that it symbolizes their relatively un-commercial nature, as well as their service mission and non-corporate culture of 25 employees (FAQ – Craigslist, 2007). The sites mission can be simply stated: People Helping People (About Us – Craigslist Foundation, 2007). Their budget is unknown, but the income is via only a handful of cities in which they charge for Job Postings, and for brokered housing listings in New York City (FAQ – Craigslist, 2007). How does knowing this IA Contextual information help us assess the website? By providing us with a background of how the site came to be, it’s intent, and how many people they have on-hand to make the website functional and ‘pretty’ – that being one person. Craig is also noted as a web-developer (FAQ – Craigslist, 2007), but given his Founder, Chairman, and Customer Service Representative duties, we’ll just assume his time is not likely spent coding HyperText Markup Language (HTML).
ContentOwnership: The ownership of the content is in the hands of the user posting the content.
Format and Structure: The layout conforms to preexisting templates; hence the user-posts have little control over how their information will appear. The users enter most data via free-text in what a database might see as a “memo” box, allowing text, symbols and numbers. There are also a few text boxes, radio buttons, and checkboxes during user submission but this data becomes formatted via the template. Users can upload photos only in JPG format. These limitations allow for consistent, simplistic and fast-loading posts.Metadata: Metadata tags within the site are limited to description, which includes: craigslist; SUB-AREA NAME; classifieds for CITY-SEARCHED, and keywords: CITY; SUB-AREA craigslist, classifieds, want ads (Craigslist, 2007). Items in CAPS are dynamic data. Within the user-posts themselves, the only named meta datum is robots with its content only stating “NOARCHIVE”.
UsersAudience: Anyone interested in providing or receiving information within their own community*. Everything from selling your car to finding out about unlisted concerts. There are no registration requirements, and everything is virtually anonymous if a user so desires.
CTRL+Scroll to increase text size

Accessibility: For people of a non-disabled capacity, the site functions well via its GUI, which is navigated by a mouse, and has data-input by both mouse and keyboard. Glancing at the ‘code’, the site would seem rather user-friendly, given its reliance on rather simple HTML (no Java®, Flash®, etc.). For people with Partial Visual-Impairment, the site is successful; the user can utilize the CTRL+Scroll function to successfully raise/lower sizes of the text and photos, jointly. The Colors of the site are nothing exciting, merely shades of blue, grey and white. A plus side is that they have not done foolish things like red on blue or green on orange, or any other abuse of color-diversity that results in user headaches. As you can see, for color-disabled users, the colors do provide sufficient contrast, though they could be better. When assessed for those people who are Blind, the site fails. While using Microsoft’s Narrator it can only read the browser title bar, and if the user is lucky enough to click on something, it will then read the text upon which they clicked before it rereads the title bar of the newly loaded page. Additionally, even if a narrator would function on this site, no tags or even photo alternative (ALT) text exist to be read. Thus a person without sight can seemingly be afforded NO benefit from Craigslist. Upon testing the site at http://webxact.watchfire.com/, the site was deemed acceptable on Priority 1 (essential to meeting goals), but failed both 2 and 3 (important and beneficial) (Watchfire, 2007). Given Watchfire’s limited information, not much additional clarification was available.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE COMPONENTS
Labeling Systems: The site has rather cogent labels, allowing the user to understand what to expect under the given category or sub-category, but there are a few significant exceptions. Under areas four (4 – Select Location) and eleven (11 - Classifieds), the categories and subcategories are straight forward, leaving little, if anything for the user to question. One problem a user may encounter is merely differentiating that these are, in-fact, separate areas. There should be a group area label and a visual differentiation between the area, at a minimum. I would actually completely remove the ‘locations’ from this page, as well as relocate the ‘forums’ section away from the surrounding ocean of ‘classifieds’. The ‘locations’ section will be discussed more in-depth in the Navigation Systems portion of this paper, below.
The forums have a distinct ‘intra’ labeling problem. In the images to the right, you see: the discussion forums section, as it currently appears on the main-page; and the forums as they appear when a user clicks the ‘discussion forums’ title/link. I have yet to figure out the methodology behind the labeling of these sections. To put it simply, the main-page links are truncated and cryptic, while the page dedicated only to forum titles are less-so. It is however not understood why 72 forums are listed on the main page, while 111 are on the dedicated page. Obviously they had run out of room, or did they? They had no problem cramming everything else on one page, why change it for the forums? Perhaps they are newly added and yet to be put on the main-page, we do not know. Digressing back to the naming, it is not obvious which link on the main page matches with the link on the dedicated forum page. Some you can figure out quickly, others with time, and at least one “1099” is on the main-page, but I see nothing related to it on the dedicated page. Are you thinking the associated-link must be ‘tax forum’? No, sorry, that links to a discussion about 1040’s; nice try though. In fact, ‘1099’ links to an area called Self-Employment; not exactly the most obvious relationship: one implying “tax time!” the other implying “I’m a go-get-‘em-entrepreneur!” Thus, it is obvious to note that standardization should commence thoroughly within this area. For the sake of time, my inclusion of discussion forums on my recreated homepage will look the same as currently, but it is now implied that those would actually follow logically labeling in a real deployment.
Navigation Systems: Let us first begin by noting the lack of logical ‘Global’ and ‘Local’ Navigation links options. Referring to my initial labeling of items 1-15, such sections could be used as Global Navigation options, while their sub-categories would be the content filling the Local Navigation area on the left, and the User contributed information could then populate the center of the screen. It has innumerable links off of the first page, and that linked page will only go one level more deep to access the user content, thus showing that their site structure is a broad and shallow one. It is seemingly designed for the user to access almost any possible page within the site, short of the user-added content, from the index page; thus all categories and subcategories are all displayed on that main page. If this is not crowded enough, it also has links to: 72 forum categories; every supported city around the world; miscellaneous advisories; legal points; an event calendar; your account; Wikipedia’s[1] info about your selected city; as well as including an embedded search-box. Needless to say, information cannot all fit on one screen, thus resulting in the requirement to scroll down in order to see the approximately 40% hidden material(noted by the diagonal lines within the adjacent image). Currently, when a user clicks on a local-navigation area or the user-added content there-in (i.e. classified ad), the user only maintains navigation-ability via breadcrumbs or his browser’s ‘back’ button. The breadcrumbs do assist with Bottom-Up navigation, allowing the user to digress back to the main Craigslist page. The change I would impose is a consistent template that has the Global and Local navigation elements. I have chosen to combine the Global and Local on the left side utilizing something like Java to expand Global areas, and keeping the forums, ever-present in a scrollable portion of the same side, given its unique use in comparison to the rest of the site. An example is on the right (Community Activities – Craigslist, 2007). Aside from the barrage of information from main page, a first time visitor would not likely notice that upon entering www.craigslist.org, the user is redirected to the San Francisco Bay area-site (see 3). This re-direct may have made sense when 80% of the users were still from San Francisco in 1997, but it is now 2007 and this site is servicing 30 million users a month from 450 Cities around the World! There should be no redirect at all; instead it should default to a ‘Location Selection’ page. After its first use, the site could then redirect these users to the saved location in their cookie. The current site does actually supply a separate page for location-selection, but it can only be reached via clicking the ‘craigslist’ site-logo (2) (Current Location – Craigslist, 2007). The Location Selection page is adequate, though its main problem is that the user is never directed to it to begin with. It would be sufficient for the current site to replace its redirect to point to the location-selection page; this would benefit all first time users, over the current redirect. If I were to redesign the Location-Selection page, I would use a more modern and clean approach, and also include a Zipcode search that would allow the user to select the location closest to them, if his/her city was not listed. Additionally, to remedy the barrage of information pummeling the user on the default-page, the location options should be removed. Most users only need to select their location one time. Users should need no more than a single-link back to the location selection page (see example). While navigating, poorly designed sites will leave a user feeling lost, do to either poor-design, or an overly imaginative/metaphor-type design. Even within these logic-deserts, there is often even the smallest oasis of logic, known as a ‘Site-Map’. In order to maintain the apparent anarchy of its current disjunctive site setup, Craigslist has not supplied such a haven.
Searching Systems: The search-box only allows searching within the user’s current city. Do you, the user, want to search for a specific item across all cities? Sorry; if you want to do that your options are limited to third party searching. For example, a user could use Google to search for a Billy Jo Bob Rookie Badminton Card via a search string like this: “site:craigslist.org ‘Billy Jo Bob Rookie Badminton Card’ ”. Though I could not find a reference this time, I had read previously that the authors noted that searching is only limited to your community, because this is a site for communities. One could assume it is possible that it would also limit the affects of spam upon user searches. Though I would likely not exclude a Global-Search option on a site of my own, given that they have a rationale for excluding such an option, I, as the IA, must accept such a decision and design accordingly. My alteration to the search would be to provide an ever-present Global-search (8), that would also include the Forums, which the current does not. The Local level already offers local searching, which I would maintain within the content area.
Usefulness of content: Craigslist is a very simple, almost primarily text-based site. It performs necessary functions to user satisfaction but maintains some needs for reform. They could broaden their base of support by integrating tagging and better labeling both for easier navigation of the average user, as well as those with ‘accessibility’ needs. They drastically need a consistent template that has a more logical organization, minimizing the users breadth of scanning and scrolling for information. Below you will find a finalized version of how I would redesign the site. All areas are numbered the same as the original, but one would notice the minimization of clutter and standardization of design consistency. In my re-creation, the only area that changes after the initial page-load is the area within the red border. There the user sees only in-depth material on the category selected. No more information overload for Craigslist.

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