Every page is still page one
Learnings from a chat with Mark Baker, author of the classic Every Page is Page One
Word of the day
solecism
noun
an ungrammatical combination of words in a sentence | also: a minor blunder in speech
something deviating from the proper, normal, or accepted order
a breach of etiquette or decorum
It comes from the city of Soloi, in present-day Turkey, that had a reputation for bad grammar.
(Source: Merriam-Webster)
Says who
“Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.”
Bertolt Brecht - German playwright and poet
Learnings from a chat with Mark Baker, author of Every Page is Page One
“People use information in a very goal-oriented way,” Mark Baker told me in the first episode recorded for The Manu<script>, some months ago. And that’s not at all a web or even a digital-specific behavior. That’s just how people deal with information. The user wants to do something with it as soon as they can.
“We’ve known for a long time that people don’t sit down and read a book,” says Mark. “So the web comes along, and it is the perfect environment for this way that people are already working.”
This was a powerful insight for me. When we talk about the user, we tend to picture an entirely new creature in human history, born and raised within the internet. But then you listen to Mark’s words and think: hey, people have been using things since always, including information. And much of the behavior we attribute to the internet user is just human behavior. For me, this perspective humanizes the user and brings us closer to understanding their pains and motivations.
It also connects to the central idea in Mark’s first and foremost book: Every Page is Page One. By enabling us to work the way we always wanted, the web changed the dynamics between the user and the content. It let us search for specific answers and find them in isolated form — be it a Youtube video, a Wikipedia article, or a Stackoverflow thread.
But for this to work, the mental model translated into the content structure must no longer derive from books. Because if you open a book on page 113, you’ll be lost. There’s not enough context for the user to infer where they are and where they can or should go next. To really be goal-oriented, being online isn’t enough. You must think of every page as a landing page.
Every page is not only page one. Every page is also a hub, the starting point for the next leap that the user is going to take.
That’s where the fundamental change in Information Architecture is, says Mark. You don’t start at the top and work your way down through multiple layers of menus to finally get a page (meaning, the answer you’re looking for). You search, get a bunch of links, choose one, and then go from one link to the next. It’s a bottom-up architecture.
This structure fits better into human nature. And one of the reasons is that users don’t know what they don’t know. So it’s inefficient to try to give them a map of the information. Instead, an efficient architecture brings them to the best possible answer and opens new paths from there. ⚫
💻 Techy Nugget
How to pronounce SQL
If you’ve listened to more than a couple of developers talking about SQL, you probably heard it in at least two different pronunciations: “S-Q-L” [ˈɛs kjuː ˈɛl] and “sequel” [siːkwəl]. What is the right one, then?
Well, starting at the beginning: SQL was initially developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce, according to Wikipedia. This version was initially called SEQUEL, which stands for “Structured English Query Language.”
However, this acronym had already been registered by the Hawker Siddeley aircraft company, which raised a trademark violation. So the name was changed to “Structured Query Language” and abbreviated as SQL. That is part of the reason why you find it pronounced both ways.
The MySQL official docs say:
The official way to pronounce “MySQL” is “My Ess Que Ell” (not “my sequel”), but we do not mind if you pronounce it as “my sequel” or in some other localized way.
But then you often find Microsoft and Oracle using “sequel.”
Anyway, not much of an answer, I know. But at least now you know the source of each pronunciation. Feel free to choose yours. 🤷♂️