Information architecture - Introduction

Information Architecture Donna Maurer

About me
Freelance information architect/interaction designer
I design interfaces for complex informational and interactive systems
5+ years IA experience
Designed loads of business applications, websites, intranets
Practiced, taught and wrote about IA
Studying Masters of Human Factors

Lecture overview
What is information architecture
Information can be arranged and accessed in many ways
Design process for information architectures
Information architecture for interactive systems

What information architecture is about
IA Institute definition
The structural design of shared information environments.
The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability.
An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape .

Information-seeking behaviours
Known item – know exactly what you want, how to describe it and may know where to look
Exploratory – have an idea of what you want, may not know how to describe it, may not know where to look
May not know what you need to know
Returning to information – going back to something you have already seen

Information is arranged in many ways
Date
Alphabetical
Geography
Topic
Hierarchy
Faceted
Organic
Combination
Good IA allows access to information in many ways

By date

Alphabetical

By geography

By audience

By task

By category

References
Date: www.theage.com.au
A-Z: www.azlyrics.com
Geography: travel.yahoo.com
Audience: www.ato.gov.au
Audience: www.canberra.edu.au
Task: www.fsa.usda.gov/haynet/
Topic: en.wikipedia.org
Category: amazon.com
Category: ebay.com.au

Site structures
Two key methods of creating sites:
Hierarchy
Database
Hierarchy:
Similar to your computer’s file system – folder structure
Strict hierarchy: each item has only one location
Polyhierarchy: items can be in more than one location
Database
Metadata is used on each item and is used to generate links to content

Metadata
‘ Data about data’
Title
Description
Authored date
Keywords
Historically used to improve searching – search can use the metadata fields
Also can be used to relate information together

About hierarchies UC Home Future students Current students Staff Announcements Entry into UC About UC courses UC College Campus life Announcements OSIS Academic dvisions & schhols Studying at UC OPUS Directories & maps Academic dvisions & schhols

Database – categories and dates

Database - author

Database - Using tags

Database – using tags

Getting around - navigation

Navigation
Every page of a site should let you know:
Where am I
What’s here
Where can I go now
Where have I been
People don’t always work from the home page – they get to a page from a link or from a search

Baaaad navigation

Good navigation

Types of navigation
Global navigation
Persistent across a site
Allows access to major parts of the site
Local navigation
Lets you move around the current ‘section’
Contextual navigation
Inline links, to anywhere
Supplemental navigation
Helpers – site map, A-Z index
See also
Related links

Navigation

Social navigation

Labeling
Good labels
Are understandable by the reader
Are consistent within the site
Clearly describe where you are going next
Labeling is not easy – it is as complex as structure and navigation
Where to get labeling ideas:
User research
Search terms
Referrer terms
Call centre/people in contact with users

Search
What to search
Query structure - how to search it
Relevance - which results are the most important
How to display the results

In an IA project
Research
Business needs
User requirements
Content
Gives me an understanding of the domain
Understand technical opportunities or limitations
Design site structure (site map)
Design navigation and page layouts (wireframes)
Design metadata, search and relationships
Usability test throughout the process
Creates a blueprint for the site – technical work after blueprint created and tested

A simple site map

A more complex site map

A simple wireframe

IA for interactive sites
Sites that are primarily about ‘doing things’ use IA differently
Fewer pages than a large informational site, so site map may show workflow not structure
Navigation and labeling still important
More emphasis on scenarios
Wireframes show a lot more detail and show all screens
Design process is very similar

The elements of user experience

IA Resources
Books
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web – Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville
Elements of user experience – Jesse James Garrett
Information Architecture – Blueprints for the Web – Christina Wodtke
Don’t Make Me Think – Steve Krug
Online
Boxes and Arrows – http://www.boxesandarrows.org/
IAslash - http://www.iaslash.org/
IAwiki – http://www.iawiki.org/
Digital Web Magazine – http://www.digital-web.com/
Some blatant self-promotion
My weblog – http://www.maadmob.net/donna/blog/
My website – http://www.maadmob.com.au/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.1 Australia License.
See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.1/au/ for more information

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Information architecture - Introduction

by Donna Spencer on Oct 06, 2006

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Information architecture - Introduction — Presentation Transcript