Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Another excellent interview with Peter Morville, this one in BusinessWeek about his book, Ambient Findability. Here's a snippet:

I use the term findability to encompass wayfinding in natural environments, as well as navigation and retrieval in digital spaces. So, in the physical world, that aspect of findability has existed for eons. [In my book] I explore the skills that enable ants, birds, bees, sea turtles and humans to wander without getting lost.

What's new is the use of technology, much of it coordinated through the web, to create trans-media wayfinding experiences. We're importing huge volumes of data about the physical world into cyberspace, and at the same time, we're designing all sorts of new interfaces to our digital networks — Google Earth, Smart Phones, Intelligent Toilets, Web on the Wall, GPS Watches, iPods — and the beat goes on. To borrow a term from Ted Nelson, physical and digital are increasingly "intertwingled." We really are at a pivotal point where things are beginning to get weird.