Trapped within patterns and paradigms

We all become accustomed to patterns in our life. Whether these patterns manifest themselves in daily routines, procedures we follow at work or ways we interact with each other, patterns exist nonetheless. The same holds true with the way we search for information. Two things happened recently which were an eye opener to this.

I walked into the British Council Library, a library that I frequent often and headed to a shelf where advertising related books usually reside. To my trepidation I discovered that the books had be re-arranged. As I went through the rest of the library I discovered that the reshuffling was like a plague that was slowly seeping through the entire library shuffling things here and there. This paradigm shift lead to me having to re-discover the library all over again, a not too bad thing.

Later I witnessed something similar online. A social networking site that I frequent – italki decided to expand its wings and add more features. What this meant however was (as in the case of the library) some information needed to be reshuffled and the global navigation re-thought. The site seems to have stepped in the right direction with an L-shaped navigation, resulting in a layout that was very Facebookish. Unfortunately the new layout, like a re-arranged library can be confusing. The mind naturally leads you to a particular shelf or an area in the navigation and when you land there and do not get what you want it can be disconcerting to say the least. The most popularly used navigation items shouldn’t be shifted to a new location.

Consistency in re-design has never before been so critical. We take if for granted in most of the revisions of sites that we visit that when it works we think nothing of it. The Amazon’s and MSN’s of our world have evolved into streamlined offerings that we think hey its not big deals. Yet it is times like this when re-designs are a little inconsistent that you sit back and wonder why is it that things not where they are supposed to be… logically.