Book Review: Ambient Findability

AmazonAmbient Findability
As a person who appreciates usability and the web, there is one statement that resonated with me when I read Peter Morville’s book– “You can’t use what you can’t find.”

Findability refers to the an object’s “quality of being locatable or navigable.” And this book presents a very deep and informative topic on how people find and retrieve information. While terms like search and search engine optimization (SEO) came to mind when I got a hold of this book, Ambient Findability defied my expectations by delving into more underlying information such human behavior on search and information gathering.

That “unexpected” turn turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It gave me a better insight on how people viewed information and puts SEO in a bigger perspective. Designers will appreciate the chapter called “Push and Pull” where web design elements are dissected from varying viewpoints like marketing and engineering. The book also touches on the taxonomy vs. folksonomy angle, a debate amidst the Web 2.0 buzz.

All in all, Peter Morville’s Ambient Findability is definitely a good read and a must for SEO professionals.

This entry was written by Regnard and posted on November 21, 2006 at 4:11 am and filed under Reviews. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
  • This book is a very thought-provoking read about what should be a major theme in information retrieval and in interface design -you cannot use what you cannot find.
    There are plenty of books that will teach you information retrieval algorithms, and plenty of books that will teach you about human-computer interfacing and interaction, but none of them seem to be looking at the big picture.
  • Thanks for the heads up on usability - I'm good at SEO but that's only part of the picture
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The Author

Regnard Raquedan

Regnard Raquedan: I'm a web & usability consultant from the Philippines. I help companies build their websites, make their sites easy to use, and ensure they reach their intended audience online via internet marketing.