Designing the perfect information portal

Volume 17, Number 2 • February 2000

Designing the perfect information portal — Pros need a reliable, honest, and user-friendly information service
by Barbara Quint

QUINT'S ONLINE column lays out the design and features and figures out how to fund a portal for information professionals. Presents design rules, including: build a portal that works as comfortably and as effortlessly as possible; move the mountain (of data), not Mohammed, which means the site should offer layers of approaches based on user experience, field of interest, and vendor resources; and feedback, which says the site should bubble and boil with communication, and surveys should constitute a major activity. Says the extensive design work will not stop the day the portal launched, since it will require extensive ongoing effort to maintain quality. Explains why charging the users for using does not work on the Web. Says vendors, advertisers, and sponsors will pay for all this. Hopes the designers devote as much care and consideration in designing advertiser-related presentations as they do designing content.