What SEO means for User-Centred Design
Short Session, presented by Justin Tauber & Judd Garrett.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet… wouldn’t it?
It’s tempting to think of SEO as pure marketing, as pulling eyeballs, and as completely unrelated to the noble pursuit of producing a site that doesn’t suck. After all, popularity is rarely the handmaiden of usability.
But there is more in common between usability and SEO than it may first appear, especially when it comes to designing an information architecture. IA and SEO both exist to satisfy customer expectations. Both concerned with finding the right names for things. But the sort of expectations in play, and the kind of language games involved are - and should be - completely different.
In this talk we’ll consider what IAs and UXDs can learn from an understanding of SEO. We’ll also discuss the challenges involved in including Google as a user, and catering for users that google.
Justin Tauber
Justin comes to
UX from a background in philosophy and educational design. He has taught
on phenomenology and media studies at Sydney University and has
published on existential phenomenology and cognitive science. Justin has
worked on projects large and small for Macquarie Bank, Optus, NRMA
Motoring & Services and Pizza Hut. He works as an Experience
Architect at Profero Sydney, where his ping pong form is
irrepressible.
You can find Justin on twitter as @brtrx.
Judd Garrett
Judd works as an Experience
Architect in the UX team at Profero Sydney, where he
has recently worked on projects for NRMA,
AstraZeneca, Pizza Hut and Clean Up Australia. Prior
to falling into UX, Judd specialised in search
engine marketing. He is now an advocate of
integrating search engine optimisation principles
into information architecture.