Maya on Interaction

Yesterday was a high findability day. This is not to say that I’ve stopped getting lost on the way to the neighbourhood Tesco (sorry Dionisis.) It means that people who were looking for me found me.

I’ve been scoping out information architecture jobs in a few countries for a month or so. The tactic has been low-noise: For interesting jobs or companies, grab the hiring manager by the collar and see if sparks fly.

Still, I wanted to let in some noise to hear what it sounded like and feel what resonated. I called my Monster profile ‘Information Systems Analyst’ because

1. I wanted it to be vague enough to let in different kinds of response
2. That’s what the other kids in my class were doing

In 4 weeks, the profile, so named, generated 12 requests from recruiters and 52 hits. Unremarkable.

Meanwhile, off-Monster, the most exciting conversations I was having was about my old scene: information architecture and user experience. I took this as a sign from my soul and from the universe to roll with it and it feels right.

So, without altering the content of my CV- which is already all about IA and UX - I changed my profile title to ‘Information Architect / User experience Consultant.’ Within a day and a half, I got as many views and more requests than I’ve had in a month.

Peter Moreville, author of Ambient Findability, points to an obvious sense in which findability precedes usability since you can’t use a thing until you find it. Still, the relationship between findabilty and usability is elaborate. It’s not just than that the former is a precondition to the latter. These virtues are intertwined in the sense that a system is usable if it supports you in finding what you need to find.

Let me wade through the sea of chicken fat - job specs in which ‘arcitect’ is misspelled, unreadable web pages about my potential employers’ accessibility expertise and glam work-at-home schemes. I’ll keep you posted on the utility of my new found findability.