Site Structure of Independent Lens
Independent Lens’ site structure makes it simple for any user to find exactly what he or she is looking for. Horton and Lynch note, “In crowded home pages, it’s often good practice to provide only the lead and perhaps a ‘teaser’ sentence, with the body of the article available through a ‘learn more’ link to another page” (Structure). To make it easier for people to find content on their site, Independent Lens uses the inverted pyramid style to structure their text.
One of the advantages that Horton and Lynch point out about the inverted pyramid style is that “important information comes first, where it is more likely to be seen and remembered” (Structure). Independent Lens uses the titles of the film for the titles of their links and articles, so users won't get confused. Users who skim web pages, will benefit from the conciseness of the sentences and headings on this site. The different segments of the text and content on the home page make it easy for the user to quickly scan the page for what they want.
Chunking on Independent Lens
According to the Web Style Guide, “Chunking can help organize and present information in a modular layout that is consistent throughout the site. This allows users not only to apply past experience with a site to future searches and explorations but also to predict how an unfamiliar section of a web site will be organized” (Chunking). Independent Lens effectively uses chunking to provides users with a brief bit of information on each video for the site, much like the first sentence of a newspaper article condenses the main facts of the story. To find out more information about each video, the user can click on the video’s website and read more of the video’s synopsis.
This borrows from the world of cinema and books, both of which provide short descriptions of the work on the back of the video box or the back of the book.
The page above gives us a good example of chunking by providing the user with a concise description of the movie and then breaking up additional information into the tabs at the top: "The Film", "The Making Of", and "The Filmmaker". As WSG reminds us, “The user of a web link usually expects to find a specific unit of relevant information, not a book’s worth of general content" (Chunking). Too many words would prove frustrating and useless for a site that is mainly concerned with video/film content.
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Jennifer Sawyer
Clayton State University
Updated: 13 April 2009