Archive | Murmurings

What your search metrics are actually telling you

Apr 22, 2026

Most people look at their search metrics and see numbers. What they should be seeing is a conversation their customers are trying to have with them. Here's how to read it.

When your website speaks the language but misses the person

Apr 5, 2026

When customers can't find what they're looking for, they don't complain, they leave. Here's what that's quietly costing you.

Why "People Chips" is a taxonomy nightmare

Mar 21, 2026

Google recently named a new Sheets feature "People Chips." It's caused a stir, and not in a good way. But the real question isn't whether the label is odd; it's how a company with Google's resources ended up there in the first place.

What's actually inside your search engine?

Nov 29, 2023

Your site search is broken. Before you can fix it, you need to understand what you're actually fixing. Here's a plain-English guide to what's inside a search engine and why each component shapes the results your customers see.

When information architecture meets service design, you finally see the whole picture

Nov 22, 2023

Information architecture tells you what a product contains and how it connects. Service design tells you why it works the way it does. Most projects use one or the other. The ones that use both are the ones that avoid expensive surprises.

The cost of a broken search

Nov 15, 2023

When customers can't find what they're looking for, they don't complain, they leave. Here's what that's quietly costing you.

Your website has a findability problem. Here's who fixes it.

Nov 8, 2023

Information architects have been quietly solving one of the web's oldest problems: people can't find things. The job title is obscure, the discipline is misunderstood, and most businesses don't know they need one until something goes badly wrong.

Why your navigation tests are probably lying to you

Jun 1, 2022

Navigation is the thing your users should never notice. So how do you test something that's supposed to be invisible? The answer is simpler than you'd expect, and it changes everything about how you set up your research.

You can't measure success if you never measured the problem

May 9, 2022

Most navigation projects start with a complaint and end with a guess. Benchmarking gives you a before-and-after you can actually defend, evidence that secures budget, and a way to know whether what you built is better than what you replaced.

Your users can't find what they need. The clues are already in your data.

May 9, 2022

Your website isn't broken by accident. Something specific went wrong, and somewhere in your data, your users are trying to tell you what it is. The trick is knowing where to look, and what counts as a signal rather than noise.