Joe Lamantia.com

Though it’s com­mon prac­tice, think­ing of infor­ma­tion retrieval exclu­sively as ‘search’ is an arbi­trar­ily nar­row way of fram­ing an area of capa­bil­ity with strong impact on over­all per­cep­tions of user expe­ri­ence qual­ity and effec­tive­ness. In the long term, it lim­its oppor­tu­ni­ties to offer cus­tomers more effec­tive solu­tions to broader and more fully under­stood needs that involve infor­ma­tion retrieval, but are moti­vated by other goals. This nar­row view is espe­cially lim­it­ing for the user expe­ri­ence archi­tect, as it implies an imme­di­ate focus on the search aspects of infor­ma­tion envi­ron­ments.
A bet­ter way of fram­ing infor­ma­tion retrieval is in terms of oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet gen­uine user goals and objec­tives by sup­port­ing more var­ied modes of activ­ity. Users often have broad goals in mind while they pur­sue infor­ma­tion retrieval activ­i­ties; buy­ing a car, mak­ing a good invest­ment deci­sion, or learn­ing how to man­age their health care plans. And yet the infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture of many envi­ron­ments still overem­pha­sizes search­ing as a way of accom­plish­ing goals.
Address­ing broader goals with an effec­tive infor­ma­tion retrieval expe­ri­ence will likely mean sup­port­ing modes of inter­ac­tion beyond just search­ing. But pro­vid­ing these addi­tional modes and user expe­ri­ence capa­bil­i­ties can open new oppor­tu­ni­ties for ser­vices, fea­tures, rev­enue, improv­ing rela­tion­ships, etc.
Even in sit­u­a­tions where a wide range of users need to select very spe­cific mate­ri­als from a large archive or pool of con­tent (the tra­di­tional library model), a search-centric infor­ma­tion retrieval model that offers no/few other capa­bil­i­ties is reduc­tive and overly sim­plis­tic.
Instead of imme­di­ately focus­ing on the scope or func­tion­al­ity of a search expe­ri­ence and sys­tem instal­la­tion, look for the pat­terns in user goals and needs that imply com­mon modes of inter­ac­tion with infor­ma­tion, and use them as a basis for defin­ing capa­bil­i­ties the envi­ron­ment must offer.
Here’s a list of com­mon types of user goals that involve infor­ma­tion retrieval — think of them as root goals that take on dif­fer­ent spe­cial­ized forms in dif­fer­ing environments:

• review­ing sum­maries of items
• exam­in­ing details
• com­par­ing multiples
• under­stand­ing con­texts and situations
• learn­ing about peo­ple in the environment
• per­ceiv­ing trends
• pre­dict­ing implications
• mon­i­tor­ing sta­tus or activity
• iden­ti­fy­ing by criteria
• estab­lish­ing similarity
• obtain­ing infor­ma­tion for reuse

None of these explic­itly includes the activ­ity of search­ing, though many do imply some level of find­ing.
For a recent project, we defined four infor­ma­tion retrieval or inter­ac­tion modes that would meet the goals of our expected users:

• seek­ing information
• vis­it­ing sta­ble destinations
• mon­i­tor­ing notifications
• receiv­ing deliv­ered assets

These modes range from more active seek­ing, to less active receiv­ing deliv­ery, and per­sis­tent set­tings (sta­ble des­ti­na­tions) to fluid set­tings — mon­i­tor­ing or seek­ing. Together, they define pos­si­ble kinds of infor­ma­tion retrieval expe­ri­ences and capa­bil­i­ties that will meet the vary­ing needs and goals of users when prop­erly com­bined.
Infor­ma­tion Retrieval Modes

Seek­ing
The seek­ing mode focuses on tra­di­tional search­ing, but includes other activ­i­ties such as nar­row­ing sets using cumu­la­tive para­me­ters, find­ing with/in faceted sys­tems, and . A clas­sic exam­ple of seek­ing mode is a user who poses an ad-hoc query via a search inter­face, and sorts through the list of search results returned in response. This list may incor­po­rate many dif­fer­ent kinds of items from many dif­fer­ent sources, a com­bi­na­tion that no other user ever encoun­ters again.
From an infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture per­spec­tive, the key char­ac­ter­is­tic of seek­ing mode is that, users bring the sit­u­a­tions and con­texts (like search results) they encounter into exis­tence by seek­ing them out. When seek­ing, users encounter fluid des­ti­na­tions within the larger infor­ma­tion envi­ron­ment based on what they are look­ing for, and how they are look­ing for it.
Another char­ac­ter­is­tic of the seek­ing mode is that users will not know in advance what they will encounter, even though they may have a very good idea of what they need to meet their goal. When seek­ing, users might be pre­sented with a mixed set of con­cep­tu­ally related items of many dif­fer­ent types, from unknown sources, with diverse con­tents / struc­ture / com­po­si­tion.
Of course, users may not know what they need, or how to ask for it, as Donna Maurer’s 4 Modes of Seek­ing Infor­ma­tion and How to Design for Them points out, but this was a less impor­tant fac­tor in the way we framed seek­ing within our envi­ron­ment than whether users would know what to expect as a result of their seek­ing activ­i­ties, and whether they could retrace their path to a par­tic­u­lar step of their jour­ney.
Vis­it­ing Sta­ble Des­ti­na­tions
When vis­it­ing sta­ble des­ti­na­tions, users encounter sta­ble places within the infor­ma­tion envi­ron­ment that exist regard­less of the user’s activ­i­ties. Where seek­ing invokes tem­po­rary con­texts do not per­sist, a sta­ble des­ti­na­tion is per­sis­tent. Per­sis­tence could be con­cep­tual only, reflected in nav­i­ga­tion ele­ments, or made part of the user expe­ri­ence via any num­ber of mech­a­nisms. All des­ti­na­tions have a focus of some kind, such as a topic, or prod­uct, or event, and may be defined by the inter­sec­tion of sev­eral focuses, such as prod­ucts or doc­u­ments cre­ated by one per­son that are related to a topic or event.
Des­ti­na­tions could take the form of many kinds of pages — includ­ing the A-Z indexes Donna men­tions — but could also con­sist of pre­de­ter­mined com­bi­na­tions of con­di­tions and con­text that users can revisit with­out choos­ing them again. In an envi­ron­ment of known con­tents, des­ti­na­tions offer users a set of things they under­stand in advance and expect (after ade­quate oppor­tu­ni­ties for learn­ing). Des­ti­na­tions will likely change based on busi­ness rules and user con­text, as well as changes in the items avail­able within the envi­ron­ment.
A good exam­ple of a sta­ble des­ti­na­tion is the Arts page of the New York Time online; the arti­cles and the art they con­cern change con­stantly, yet users know what to expect when they visit. The page is a vis­i­ble part of the envi­ron­ment con­cep­tu­ally (as a cat­e­gory) and in terms of nav­i­ga­tion, and is eas­ily acces­si­ble directly from out­side the envi­ron­ment.
Mon­i­tor­ing
The mon­i­tor­ing mode is a more fluid and less active infor­ma­tion retrieval mode wherein the envi­ron­ment sends users noti­fi­ca­tions of events, activ­ity, sta­tus, or changes tak­ing place within it’s bound­aries. The key char­ac­ter­is­tic of mon­i­tor­ing is that users can accom­plish goals with­out enter­ing the envi­ron­ment, or with only lim­ited entry that takes them to a known set­ting.
Mon­i­tor­ing effec­tively extends the user expe­ri­ence and infor­ma­tion retrieval capa­bil­i­ties beyond the bound­aries of the orig­i­nat­ing envi­ron­ment, and allows users to know in advance what they will find or encounter when they enter the envi­ron­ment.
Mon­i­tor­ing nat­u­rally requires mes­sages or com­mu­ni­ca­tion tokens, com­monly email, RSS, or SMS, but could take many other forms as well. A good exam­ple of mon­i­tor­ing is the con­fig­urable alerts that many travel ser­vices pro­vide to indi­cate when prices for air­line tick­ets to spe­cific cities change, or match a price point.
Receiv­ing Items via Deliv­ery
Receiv­ing deliv­ered items is the least active mode we defined for users, allow­ing them to retrieve infor­ma­tion with­out actively seek­ing, vis­it­ing a des­ti­na­tion, or mon­i­tor­ing the envi­ron­ment. In this mode, users do not have to enter the envi­ron­ment at all to retrieve infor­ma­tion, enabling them to fur­ther goals with­out increas­ing acqui­si­tion costs or effort.
Deliv­ery implies mech­a­nisms to man­age the nature, rate, and for­mat of the infor­ma­tion to deliver, as well as the chan­nel: email, attach­ments, RSS, pod­casts, vlogs, etc.
Good exam­ples of deliv­ered infor­ma­tion are the iconic stock ticker, RSS feeds for blog post­ings, and email pub­li­ca­tions.
Com­bin­ing Modes: User Goals and Cus­tomer Life­cy­cles
It’s nat­ural that user goals will span modes, and that the pre­ferred mode for accom­plish­ing a goal may change over time to reflect shift­ing usage pat­terns and needs.
As an exam­ple, a sin­gle user might shift among dif­fer­ent modes that reflect learn­ing more about the struc­ture and con­tent of the envi­ron­ment. From ini­tial seek­ing activ­ity focused on search­ing for infor­ma­tion related to a topic, a user may switch to vis­it­ing a known sta­ble des­ti­na­tion that addresses that topic, enter­ing the envi­ron­ment from the out­side with­out ini­tial seek­ing.
This des­ti­na­tion may include tools to estab­lish mon­i­tor­ing for a spe­cific type of item, which a user who under­stands the domain will appre­ci­ate and take advan­tage of as a way to reduce the num­ber of required vis­its while remain­ing aware of activ­ity or sta­tus. Even­tu­ally, this user might shift from mon­i­tor­ing to direct deliv­ery of a few spe­cific and very valu­able infor­ma­tion assets, through a chan­nel and in a for­mat of their choos­ing.
IR Mode Life­cy­cle

In the same way that pat­terns in goals allow expe­ri­ence archi­tects to iden­tify com­mon modes of infor­ma­tion retrieval, pat­terns of cross-mode usage will emerge in pop­u­la­tions of users or cus­tomers. Once under­stood, these kinds of flows present oppor­tu­ni­ties on many lev­els; user expe­ri­ence, busi­ness model or process, and tech­ni­cal architecture.