How You Can Design for the Scan Reader.

"As the volume of information rapidly expands, the time to read this information remains relatively static. There are only twenty-four hours in the day; only so much attention to go around. How are you going to get people to read your content? Understanding and planning for how people scan read on the Web is a good start.

A Sunday edition of The New York Times contains more information than was published in the entire 15th Century. Every year, there are 60,000 books and 18,000 magazines published in the United States alone. The Web contains some 600 billion documents.

To survive information overload, people have become incredibly selective in how they consume information. The Web is the ultimate information overload environment and to be effective on the Web, people have developed 'scan reading' behavior." [Gerry McGovern, via LucDesk]

This is very true, and it's one reason I'm so high on news aggregators. So in that spirit, I've set up a poll on OpinionPower asking Should I Truncate My RSS Feed? I know the point of a news aggregator is to scan, but I personally like not having to go to each site to read a whole post.

[The Shifted Librarian]

Here's one example of how technology can provide an equalizer for dealing with some of the problems of scale that are also partly created by that same technology.  A news aggregator such as Radio provides uses technology to eliminate some of the time-wasters in our environment. One implication is that for sources of information to be useful may depend on how well they can fit themselves into my evolving information/knowledge environment. This runs contrary to most current design thinking that attempts to exert complete control over your information experience.

For my purposes, I much prefer to get Jenny's stories in full form. It allows me to integrate the considerable value of her insights into my information environment. I have been working to bring more sources under the umbrella of Radio's news aggregator. I want to be able to exert control over my information environment, not be subject to the varying design sensibilities of different web sites.

11:33:09 PM •  • comment  

I was thinking about getting a group of us in the Chicago area together at some point... there's Jenny, Prof. McGee, me, and I'm sure a bunch of others. It just seems like a natural extension of the community that's forming here in Radio-land.

And I think Prairie Blogs is a great name. (For those of you outside of Chicago, some in the tech community here like to refer to the area as "silicon prarie".)

[tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]

Certainly sounds like a fine idea to me. So, do we all add "...a Prairie blog" as a tagline on all our sites?

9:42:47 PM •  • comment  

Babble: What's the difference between an Amateur and a Professional? [Sam Ruby]

An excellent distinction - well worth contemplating from time to time

5:09:22 PM •  • comment