VideoEven those on the cutting edge, however, say that one key to information overload is to simply tune out some sources. Brown doesn't own a television, and chooses reading material based on the amount of time that has gone into preparing it — preferring books, for example, to daily newspapers. Walker is similarly choosy, and also delegates knowledge consumption. "You don't need to know everything that goes on in the organization," he says. "There needs to be a letting go and a trusting of co-workers." And, of course, a handy lunch table.
Alix Nyberg is a staff writer for CFO.
Show or Tell?
Transforming text-based information into some sort of visual representation can make Web sites easier to navigate, an important step in fighting information overload. Visualizations "help keep you located in a complex space, so you know where you've been and where you might want to go next," says Xerox researcher John Seely Brown. This is a driving principle behind products like Inxight and ClearForest, as well as Room 102, an Internet search engine that presents results in a slideshow version of Web pages as well as text-only summaries.
Computer users may balk at that approach, however, because they think that graphical representations of data will take longer to download. But according to User Interface Engineering, or UIE, a Bradford, Mass.-based company that researches "what people find frustrating about technology," perceptions of "fast" and "slow" are influenced far more by whether a user can complete a given task. A well-organized site that loads slowly due to heavy graphical content is often perceived as fast, while a quick-loading site that frustrates users with its poor navigation scheme is perceived as slow. UIE's director of instruction, Lori Landesman, says users often don't realize that their (mis)perceptions of slow versus fast are shaped by factors other than download times.
Graphics can help, but they aren't a cure-all. UIE has found that even Web sites that get the most positive responses, like amazon.com and cnn.com, satisfy users' missions only 42 percent of the time at best. Onsite search engines actually decrease the chances of a user finding desired information by half, usually because it's hard to anticipate what terms he or she will choose. One answer, ironically, is to use more text, in the form of links. Landesman says that descriptive links, versus cryptic words or phrases, greatly enhance a site's navigability. It's not that graphics don't help, she adds, but the key is to use them to present information, not simply to dress up a site. "What we find," she concludes, "is that people think a site is fun if they can find what they're looking for." —A.N.
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