Rosenbaum 5.9.01 SLIS@IU IA means Information Architecture: But what does it mean to web developers,...

Rosenbaum 5.9.01 SLIS@IU

IA means Information Architecture:

But what does it mean to web developers, systems analysts, educators, and librarians?

Howard Rosenbaum <[email protected]>

School of Library and Information Science

Center for Social Informatics

Indiana University

I-ASIST Spring Program

http://www.slis.indiana.edu/hrosenba/www/Pres/iasist_01


IA means information architecture

I. What is information architecture?

• Information science? Social science?

II. Elements of IA

• Social

• Technical

III. Putting IA to work

• Team based web design



A professional role in web design and the design of digital media collections

IAs are responsible for the overall structure and organization of the site

It involves organizing a site's content into categories and creating an interface to support those categories

Also designing navigation and searching systems to help people find and manage information

A systematic, question-based process for creating digital products to communicate meaning and improve users’ performance

It is user-centered


Information science:

Social science

Argus Associates. (1998). Information architecture defined http://argus-inc.com/design/architecture.html

[It] involves the design of organization, labeling, navigation, and indexing systems to support both browsing and searching. It plays a central role in determining whether users can easily find the information they need.

[It] begins with research into mission, vision, content, and audience. This ... provides a foundation for the development of a successful information architecture design that supports long-term growth and management


“Proper World Wide Web site design is largely a matter of balancing the structure and relationship of menu or ‘home’ pages and individual content pages or other linked graphics and documents. The goal is to build a hierarchy of menus and pages that feels natural and well-structured to the user, and doesn’t interfere with their use of the Web site or mislead them.”

Lynch, P. J. (1995). Yale University C/AIM WWW Style Guidehttp://info.med.yale.edu/caim/StyleManual_Top


What does an IA have to know?

Information science: information organization and access

Computer science: programming and databases

Usability engineering: understanding how people use the site

Graphic design: developing imagery that supports the site’s mission

Writing: to explain this to peers and decisionmakers

Marketing: developing the site so that is can be sold to its intended audience

Psychology: understanding the intended audience


What does an IA have to do?

Thinking

What are the relevant content domains?

Given the constraints what can be done?

Planning

How are these domains related to each other?

What is the structure of these relationships?

Designing

What arrangement best supports the structure and organizational requirements?

Managing

What people, tools, and resources are available?


An IA should

Enjoy working with information: gathering, evaluating and organizing it

Like research: interviewing stakeholders and analyzing results

Be curious about tools and processes of site development

Want to improve performance

Be ready to fight battles to help users

Have a good working know edgle of organizations

Be interested in communicating complex ideas clearly


A broad view of IA

It involves developing and communicating a holistic view of a web site

It includes the overall social and technical structure of the site and the relationships among its elements

It requires the classification of site goals and objectives

IA places the web site into a larger social context

How will it affect the work flow, communications patterns, and distribution of power in the organization?

How will it appear to its users?


IA means information architecture



II. Elements of IA

• Social

• Technical




II. Elements of information architecture

Social: Doing the research

What are the mission, vision, and goals for the site?

What will be the central metaphors for the site?

How will the site grow and change over time?

What will be the impacts on the organization?

Technical: Design and build

How will the site be organized ?

What content and functionality will the site contain?

What types of navigation, labeling, and searching will be used?


Doing the research

Preparation

Site goals

The audience

User experience

User scenarios

The competition

The design document


Consider this question:

“What should our team create to give people experiences that are useful, usable, and desirable, that create value for our business and our clients?”

How can we answer it?

Rettig emphasizes the importance of an ethnographic approach

“Go where people work, learn, live and play. Discover unexpressed or masked needs. Let your design be driven by genuine understanding of the people you are trying to serve.”

Rettig, M. (2000). Ethnography and information architecture. http://www.enteract.com/~marc/asis/slide0009.htm


In practical terms, this means:

Observation: go into the setting and watch people

Shadowing: follow them around

Examining artifacts and their uses

Interviews: interview people in their workplace

This can be structured or unstructured

Sampling: can involve time or task sampling

They fill out activity diaries on your schedule

Self-reporting: they have the greatest amount of control

Ask them to take pictures or keep journals


Site design begins well before the first page is ever coded

This early stage requires considerable research

The first step is to understand the goals of the site owners

How well do you understand their business?

What are their main products and services?

What are their business rules?

Then work to understand the audience for the site

Who do they sell to?

Write user profiles and scenarios

Conduct needs requirements


Determining the goals for the site

Can be done informally with conversations with key stakeholders

Can be done formally at meetings with clear agendas

Questions to consider

Who should you talk to or include in the meeting?

Who has to buy in to the concept?

Goal

To achieve a group consensus


The basic set of questions should include:

What is the mission or purpose of the organization?

Check the answers you get against company literature

What are the goals of the site?

As people talk about goals for the site, categorize them into short term and long term goals

Who are the intended audiences?

Check these answers against the company’s market research

Why will people come to the site?

What are the main tasks that people are expected to perform?


What is the relationship between the organization’s business strategy and its web site architecture?

“Business strategy and information architecture are closely inter-related. For most organizations, the days of slapping a web site on top of an existing business strategy are gone. Web sites, extranets, and intranets play key roles in defining relationships between a company and its customers, investors, suppliers, and employees. The structure and organization of these sites [are] critical to success.”

Moreville, P. (2000). Information Architecture and Business Strategy http://argus-acia.com/strange_connections/strange006.html


Gather all of the data and begin analyzing them

This involves sorting and categorizing

Goals, activities/tasks, main content areas

Prepare a preliminary listing of these and use “member checking”

Be prepared for conflict, disagreement, and compromise

There should be a deliverable (a design document)

It summarizes the key points of the site and acts as an initial blueprint

The major stakeholders should all sign off on the document


Learning about the audience by attempting to define the user experience

This helps to establish a clear definition of the audience

It also helps in understanding how users will react to the site

This involves another round of conversations and/or meetings

Get them to rank the range of potential audiences

Ask them to describe the needs and goals of the most important audience members

Use these results to create user scenarios

These are stories about how people will use the site


Learn about the competition

Find out who the main competitors are

Analyze their sites

Criteria #1 #2 #3 #4

Design

Navigation

Look and Feel

Search

Personalization

Scripting

Currency


Technical: Design and build

<html><head><title>Web page</title><script language=javascript></script></head><body>Text<IMG SRC=image.gif”></body></html>

Code

Scripts

Words

Images

Presentation: visual display

Structure: Organization of content

Behavior: What people do on the site

Basics of web architecture


Site design and basic questions

Where am I?

What can I do here?

Where can I go?


IAs work with four kinds of systems

Organization/structural systems

These constrain the ways content can be grouped

Labeling systems

Artifacts of taxonomies that determine logical relations among content groups.

Navigation systems

Provide means of moving through the site based on the scheme for the labeling

Searching systems

Help resolve user problems with navigation, labelling and organization


What do IAs deliver?

Site map

This is a visualization of the taxonomy and structural relationships among content domains

It also provides an overview of the navigation scheme

Content maps

These are detailed depictions showing what is on each page and how content on some pages is linked to content on other pages

Page view

A drawing or block diagram showing what information, links, content, promotional space, and navigation will be on each page


What else?

Prototypes:

An outline or storyboard of a functional prototype

Could also be a working prototypes with HTML, Flash, Director, or PowerPoint

Written reports

A narrative description of the site linking it to organizational mission, messages, and marketing constraints

Change management

How will the site grow and change over time?

What will be involved in maintenance?


Test, test, test

Track down participants through customer lists, related organizations, discussion lists, conferences

Pay them if you can afford it

What should you ask?

Get their name and use it

Find out their web skill level and familiarity

Ask other questions essential to viewing the results

What should they do?

Give them tasks, watch, and listen

Let them browse, watch, and listen


Introduction to information architecture



II. Elements of IA

• Social

• Technical




The process of information architecture

Planning and strategy: predesign analysis

Information organization: Content development

Launch

Conceptual design: prototyping

Production: Navigation systems Search tool

Labeling systems Operations

Testing: Quality assurance

and usability

Feedback and redesign

Maintenance and updating


Goto, K. (1999). Web Design Workflowhttp://www.thunderlizard.com/tlp/tlp_pdfs/wd_goto3.pdf

Putting IA to work: Team based web design

Define the site goals (client) Set up over-all concept

Organize content information Determine site functionality

Create budget and schedule

Assign team responsibilities


Production: main activities

Begin building the site

Develop and refine content

Get graphics production underway

Produce HTML and scripts

Deploy database and server-side programming

Organize server administration and hosting


Set team boundaries and procedures

What are the benchmarks and deliverables?

Will they work on-site or remotely?

Will they QA their work or will someone else?

The kickoff

Get the project off the ground with an initial meeting

Review the scope in detail

Assemble detailed specifications

Create preliminary project schedules

Establish lines of communication

Build enthusiasm and a sense of team identity


Develop “site architecture”

Map out the site

Show lay out and functions Show all pages of the site with each having its own name

Establish navigation and site flow

Review and define technical needs


Once the team is assembles and work begins

Schedule regular meetings

Assess progress according to benchmarks

Seek client input

Maintain constant communication between meetings

Gather documentation of all phases (including problems and resolutions)

Set up a project documentation library accessible by the team

Pay close attention to “versioning”

Save all iterations and prototypes

Handle conflict immediately


Managing the team

Set clear guidelines for each task

Disseminate widely so every team member knows what other team members are doing

Include benchmarks and description of deliverables

Be clear about the work flow process

Set up a development server

Have a review site accessible to the team

Include all relevant information about the project

Contact information

Schedules and work flow diagrams


Interface design: Digital artist worsk with the producer and programmer to ensure that design elements work to web standards

Technical engineering aspects of the site, including forms, databases, frames, etc. are developed and tested

Publishing and marketing begin


Launch: main activities

Aggressively test site for cross-platform, cross-browser compatibility

Review code for consistency and functionality

Check all links

Review site for spelling and grammar concerns

Upload site to the live server where it will reside


Begin an ongoing assessment, collecting and analyzing a reasonable set of metrics

Try to demonstrate:

Lowered costs: distribution of sales materials, press releases, phone calls

Improved business development: new leads in existing and new markets

Improved customer service: use of forms, email, other feedback, sales

Improved public perception: user feedback, mention in the press, links from other sites

Better site performance: hits, page views, new and repeat users, downloads

Improved usability


Post launch activities

Test, evaluate and make appropriate changes

Perform routine maintenance

Or set up a clear plan for maintenance and train appropriate people

Add regular updates and additional content to the site as needed

Or set up a clear process by which new content can be added and old content removed

This can involve a plan for archiving and dogital document management

Promote site to the public (or within the organization in the case of intranet development)

Discuss future expansions and redesigns

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