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Article Review: Designing for the Scent of Information

Posted May 1, 2007 By Manoj Thomas |

Ready to drive users through your site and to the content they’re looking for? Jared Spool, Christine Perfetti and David Brittan – the authors of Designing for the Scent of Information and leading usability experts – reveal that a robust web site doesn’t necessarily guarantee users will be confident in finding the information they’ve come searching for.

“Simply put, good and thoughtful design will help communicate scent extremely well.”

The Hunt for Information

Users on the Web want each of their actions (or clicks) to lead to more specific information with the expectation of finding the content they need. Researchers call this trail the “scent of information”. So how can we help these “informavores” reach their end-goal?

Design Communicates Scent

Simply put, good and thoughtful design will help communicate scent extremely well. It’s important to keep in mind that users need visual cues to keep them on track and Designing for the Scent of Information outlines several suggestions that can ensure a strong scent for the content a user is driving towards:

Trigger words. These are the words or phrases that users associate with the content that they want and click on. A well-designed page will have trigger words that jump right out and grab our attention even with other substantial content on the page. Ideally, these trigger words will help users pick up the scent and move forward in their hunt.

Meaningful links. Research has shown that links work best when they are between seven and twelve words long. Why? It’s just long enough to include descriptive trigger words, but short enough so these words aren’t clouded by surrounding text.

Don’t Block that Scent!

Location of these links plays a crucial role, too. Unless part of a navigation system, it’s better to avoid positioning links at the very top of a page since the average user generally assumes this portion is where banner ads are (“banner blindness”). Also, users are willing to scroll down a long page to find the information they’re looking for, but only if the scent sends them in that direction.

For example, if there’s irrelevant content or marketing right above the fold – the imaginary line on the page where users need to scroll below to find more information – the scent is effectively blocked because most users will assume that the unseen content below the fold will be more of the same type, which in this case would be more marketing tactics (“iceberg syndrome”).

Attend to the Content and the Structure will Take Care of Itself

Don’t lose focus on the goal of your site, which is to provide content to users. The authors of Designing for the Scent of Information explain that starting with the most important content and creating a set of the most effective trigger words will get the process going and will help you ask the right type of questions. By focusing on content, you’ll end up creating a structure and scent that will guide the user through your pages and to the very information they’re after.

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