Tags // Information Architecture
Designing collections for the web
Designing collections for the web - my new article over at PebbleRoad. The idea of the article came up when the team was discussing how best to leverage and surface homogeneous information. We were doing a redesign of a hospital website and found out that patients wanted to be connected with getting care in many different ways - by clinic, by doctor, by diseases and conditions etc. This idea let us to investigate collections, first as used by libraries, and then modified and as used by social media. This article compiles our experimentation and learning on the subject.
“A collection is a list of homogeneous items. A collection on the web can be as simple as a blog (a list of posts) to as complex as a library collection (multiple lists of different library materials). Collections are an integral part of many websites, but not all collections are designed with ease-of-use and ease-of-retrieval in mind. In this article, I’ll cover some theory and give practical advice on designing online collections for the websites and intranets.”
information architecture, intranets, interface, social media Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 01, 2010
Fantastic Information Architecture and Data Visualization Resources
From Noupe. Good starting points to get more on IA and infographics. (via Infodesign)
infographics, information architecture Add tag Permalink | Friday, January 15, 2010
Web project team roles
Kristina Halvorson has put up an interesting diagram that shows how the different roles in a we project team relate to one another.
information architecture, content strategy, web content Add tag Permalink | Saturday, January 09, 2010
The Information Architecture of Behavior Change Websites
This research report looks at the IA of sites that are designed to influence behavioral change, for example, giving up smoking. The report identifies 3 types of structure: hierarchical, matrix (hypertext), tunnel (linear) and the hybrid (a mix of the other types).
“The Internet has rapidly become an accepted part of daily life for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. As a result, it is reasonable to conclude that these revolutionary advances will act as a catalyst to expand the scope and impact of both persuasive technology, in general, and of Internet-based health behavior change programs. We have highlighted the important role that IA designs can have upon the design and likely impact of online behavior change programs.”
Via Adaptive Path’s Signposts.
information architecture, health care Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Why Are Web Sites So Confusing?
Andrei Hagiu assistant professor in the Strategy unit at Harvard Business School tries to rationalize why websites are so confusing:
“Thus, consumers coming to the supermarket to buy daily staples (say, bread and milk) might be induced to also get expensive chocolate if they have to walk past the corresponding aisle anyway. Shoppers visiting a mall for its anchor store (say, Macy’s) may decide to stop by a small design store while walking around the mall. And while flipping through the pages of a magazine in search of the article promised on the cover, readers are exposed to advertising, which produces most of the revenues.”
“In the same way, Google faces a subtle issue in designing its search result pages: consumers are mostly interested in the “objective” (i.e., middle) search results, but all revenues come from the sponsored search ads on the right hand side. The result is a compromise between what users want and what produces more revenues. For any given search, the 11th objective search result might be more relevant than any of the sponsored search results displayed on the right; yet it will be displayed on the second search page only—well beyond the reach of most users.”
information architecture, usability Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Large documents: PDF it?
Ginny Redish explores when to PDF large documents, and more importantly when not to.
“However, realize that, with most PDF files, you are providing a paper document on the web rather than web-based information. If the document looks like a paper document or if it is large, people are likely to print it rather than read it on the screen. You have distributed the document; you have saved the printing and shipping cost; you have shifted the cost and effort of printing to your audiences – but have you really met their needs?”
information architecture, content strategy, content management Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Google enhances search results to include page sections in snippets
Google announced yesterday that they’ve enhanced their search results page to include page sections of long pages in the snippets area. Here is an example they’ve given.
The rationale is that we can do directly to a section in the page if that’s what we’re interested in. That’s a nice idea—it’s an attempt at auto-indexing the page using page sections. It provides more information on the page, assuming that the page sections are labeled properly.
But what’s really interesting that is the fact that this is another opportunity to reveal sequence, like in a table of contents. Showing a sequence in a page really gets to the guts of what the page is all about. Google already shows a sitemap in the search results, which gets to what a site is all about.
Now the only thing Google needs to figure out is how to reveal sequence across pages and sites. So for example, if I were to search for “diabetes” then I should get a sequence that links to different pages and sites and the sequence includes what is diabetes to treatments to living with a diabetic to home remedies. Guess that was what the Knol was supposed to do.
information architecture, taxonomy, google Add tag Permalink | Saturday, September 26, 2009
Zombie home page chronicles
Now this is serious fun. I’ve seen this happen so many times. From Tales from Redesignland.
Read the entire episode.
information architecture, interface, interesting, governance Add tag Permalink | Monday, September 21, 2009
DITA 101
The Rockley Group has published DITA 101, a guide for authors and managers to understand and use DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). I’m reading it now and so far its been simple and easy to understand.
“DITA 101 is designed for authors and managers. We’ve taken our years’ of experience helping organizations to move to DITA and training our clients in creating DITA content and distilled it into an easy to read and understand format. Combined with our expertise in developing effective reuse strategies and adopting content management, this book covers everything you need to know to understand DITA from an authors or managers viewpoint.”
information architecture, content strategy, content management Add tag Permalink | Sunday, September 06, 2009
ASIS&T Bulletin current issue focuses on IA
The ASIS&T Bulletin current issue is on information architecture. There are a number of articles including one by Colleen Jones on The Debut of Usable, Influential Content and another by Christian Crumlish on The Information Architecture of Social Experience Design.
information architecture Add tag Permalink | Thursday, September 03, 2009
How I draft an information architecture
Donna Spencer has written a simple yet comforting piece on how she thinks through the draft IA for a small website.
"When you have made something up – and I don’t care whether you do it on a whiteboard, in a spreadsheet or in your head – then start thinking about whether it will work for the users, and whether it will work for the content. Revise and play with your idea until these things start to fall together."
information architecture Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, August 05, 2009
30 Examples of Attractive Nav
Web Designer Wall has put up a collection of appealing navigation systems:
"Web designers always have to strike a balance between usability and visual appeal when designing a website. Without this balance, a website might be nice to look at or difficult to navigate. Or, it might be easy to navigate, but not easy on the eyes. With this in mind, balancing attractive navigation with usability does not need to be overly difficult. To help you generate new ideas and inspiration for user navigation, here are 30 great examples of attractive and usable navigation."
information architecture, usability Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes
Jakob has grouped his article around two issues: structure and navigation. His views around structure are the same I come across in IA projects: Why focus so much on structure when we have such an fantastic (read 'expensive') search engine?
"The most notable structural problem is when designers treat a site like one big swamp with no organizing principle for individual items. Yes, users can fish the swamp using search or by following links from current promotions or outside sites. But whatever they dredge up is it. No opportunities for understanding the site's other offerings or locating related items."
information architecture Add tag Permalink | Sunday, May 17, 2009
We’re hiring - User Experience Lead
My company PebbleRoad is actively looking for a User Experience Lead to join the team in Singapore. PebbleRoad is a design firm specializing in design research and strategy. Projects include intranet redesigns, large corporate websites, web applications and e-learning.
The person should be able to:
Plan and conduct design research activities
Sketch and brainstorm ideas and scenarios
Create prototypes and test them out
Present design to clients
Experience in information architecture and interaction design is definitely a plus. But what is more important is having a passion for problem solving and learning and taking the responsibility to engage the client and deliver a quality service.
If you are in Singapore or even in the US or Europe and looking for a fast-paced and exciting stint, send a message to maish-at-pebbleroad.com. Here's more about Singapore.
information architecture Add tag Permalink | Saturday, October 25, 2008
The SEO Guide to Information Architecture
Adam Audette has written an extensive guide to blending SEO practices with IA.
"This article will explore the basic concepts of designing optimized site architectures for efficient spidering by search engines. Building an easily spidered site has ramifications in how pages, sections of a site, and entire domains are topically understood and categorized by bots, which influences indexing and rankings."
information architecture Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Drawing the lines - effectively structuring government online teams
Craig Thomler write about the different ways to structure an online teams (web teams). From my experience, many government initiatives seldom look into the area of 'what next' after the website or intranet is launched. A key reason being the rigidity of the group structure and responsibilities. This is why it it difficult to get buy-in for lateral disciplines like usability or information architecture -- everybody wants parts of it but nobody wants to own the whole. This article may explain on why there is a need to have an "integrated" structure.
[Via ColumnTwo]
information architecture Add tag Permalink | Thursday, July 31, 2008
Getting Started in Information Architecture for the Web
A good IA primer by Tom Watson at Blue Flavor:
"I hear all the time that there isn’t one “correct” way to do a process, and that’s true but not thinking about information architecture is like setting sail on creating your website without charting a course. The site will get built, and it will likely go astray, get lost or never reach port. Without at least thinking about the information architecture your site will likely not be that useful, fun-to-use, or exciting to users. Setting that course is critical."
information architecture Add tag Permalink | Friday, November 30, 2007
Intranet Information Architecture
Latest by Jakob Nielsen on intranet IA:
"In our study, task-based structures often endured better than intranets organized departmentally. In our user testing of intranets, we've also found that task-based navigation tends to facilitate ease-of-learning. Thus, the benefits for IA durability are just one more argument in favor of adopting a task-based structure for your intranet."
information architecture, intranets Add tag Permalink | Thursday, November 29, 2007
Step Two: Intranet redesign for Canon Australia
Nice case study of the Canon Australia intranet. The problems faced and the methodology to solve these problems are explained well. For example, there is the typical taxonomy problem - you create two seemingly distinct levels but then find items which can occupy both levels. The solution they went with was to use the levels as the organizing principle and provide cross-links as the safety net.
There are, however, some topics that do not fit cleanly into either section. Examples include: health and safety, environment, facilities and corporate philosophy. The information architecture attempts to address this by separating these subjects into the aspects which directly affect staff (placed in Info for staff) and aspects that relate to corporate policy and 'PR' (placed in About Canon).
Additionally, cross links between the two sections attempt to get staff to the right information if they happen to look in the 'wrong' section.
information architecture Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Better Writing Through Design
When building websites, information architecture is not the only structure there is. There is also the visual structure and then the most important of them all: the structure of the copy or the written text. A good IA may support a bad visual structure but it surely can't support a bad copy.
Good copywriting takes time. It is a design process. And like all design processes it requires one to do the research and build a strategy. This is why a copywriter should be involved right from the start, and not as an last-minute add-on when everything is complete. I still believe the it is much better to teach subject matter experts good copywriting skills than hire an external copywriter for short durations to fix broken content.
This article got me thinking on the role of the IA in supporting the visual language:
Ideally, you should work with a writer from day one to design the voice of the copy in conjunction with the visual language of the site. And getting a writer involved early can help you solve lots of other problems—from content strategy issues to information architecture snags. Remember that writers are creatives too, and they are, in many cases, the keepers of the content your design ultimately serves.
information architecture, content strategy, writing Add tag Permalink | Saturday, August 04, 2007