02 What Is Information Architecture

A b c What Is Information Architecture October 2009

Kahn+Associates | 2 a Outline — What is Information Architecture — Categories and Classification — Five ways to organize information: LATCH — Exploiting existing and potential metadata

Kahn+Associates | 3 a I. What is Information Architecture

Kahn+Associates | 4 a Information Architecture is — discovering the kinds of information the site contains — matching this information to the needs of the users — determining the appropriate metadata structure Information is — a difference that makes a difference — a pattern that provides a structure for understanding

Kahn+Associates | 5 a Lenk/Kahn Communication Model — Mapping Websites, Kahn & Lenk, Rotovision, 2000

Kahn+Associates | 6 a Jesse James Garrett: 5 Elements Model — The Elements of User Experience, Jesse James Garrett, (New Riders, 2000)

Kahn+Associates | 7 a Jesse James Garrett: Application / Web Site

Kahn+Associates | 8 a Jesse James Garrett: Application / Web Site details

Kahn+Associates | 9 a The IA must understand the data — text coding systems: SGML/XML — database storage — information retrieval the interaction models — principals of user interface design — user-based design methodology — the limits of current web browser technology

Kahn+Associates | 10 a The IA must mediate — the requirements of a client, who wants to present information — the needs of the user, who needs to find and consume that information — balance between the desirable and the possible

Kahn+Associates | 11 a Where we fit in your Internet projects

Kahn+Associates | 12 a Understanding the nature of the information — Categories and Classification — Five ways to organize information: LATCH — Exploiting existing and potential metadata

Kahn+Associates | 13 a Category and Classification — Categorization is the mental process of grouping things by perceptible similarity within a given context. — Categories can be created through direct experience (bottom-up)

Kahn+Associates | 14 a Category and Classification — Categorization is the mental process of grouping things by perceptible similarity within a given context. — Categories can be created through direct experience (bottom-up) — Classification is a set of classes assigned according to a predetermined set of principles used to order a set of entities. — Taxonomic classification establishes stability by applying a set of rules to one domain (top-down)

Kahn+Associates | 15 a LATCH: Five ways to organize information for understanding and ease of use Location Alphabet Time Category Hierarchy see Richard Saul Wurman, INFORMATION ANXIETY 2, p. 40

Kahn+Associates | 16 a Location “Location is chosen when the information who you are comparing comes from several different sources or locales. Doctors use different locations of the body to group and study medicine. Concerning an industry you might want to know where on the world goods are distributed.” WSW — Location is the X/Y position in the context of a representation — In the most abstract sense, the X and Y positioning of any object on a plane is a purely visual distinction — Location can be used to organize information a geographical region (states, countries) — Location can be used in relation to an object (such as the body)

Kahn+Associates | 17 a

Kahn+Associates | 21 a Alphabet — “Alphabet is best used when you have enormous amount of data. For example words in a dictionary or names in a telephone. As usually everybody is familiar with the Alphabet, categorizing by Alphabet is recommendable when not all the audience is familiar with different kind of groupings or categories you could use instead.” WSW — Reference to the order sequence of the letters in an alphabet — Common 26 letter European alphabet — Alphabetic order varies according to language

Kahn+Associates | 24 a Time “Time is the best form of categorization for events that happen over fixed durations. Meeting schedules or our calendar are examples. The work of important persons might be displayed as timeline as well. Time is an easily framework in which changes can be observed and comparisons made.” WSW — Absolute reference to actual event in time — Sequence of events in linear time, hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries — Potential for cycle as well as sequence

Herbert Bayer, WORLD GEOGRAPHIC ATLAS. A Composite of Mans Environment. Chicago: Container Corporation of America, 1953.

BBC, British History Interactive Timeline http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/british/index.shtml

Chronologie - INRAP - institut national de recherches archeologiques preventives http://www.inrap.fr/archeologie-preventive/Ressources/Multimedias/Chronologies-et- grandes-periodes/Chronologie/p-1499-Chronologie.htm

French Regional & American Museum Exchange: Galleries http://www.framemuseums.org/jsp/fiche_pagelibre.jsp?STNAV=&RUBNAV=&CODE =76640905&LANGUE=1&RH=ACCUEIL_EN&RF=Galleries

Kahn+Associates | 33 a Category — “Category is an organization type often used for goods and industries. Shops and services in the yellow pages are easy to find by category. Retail stores are divided into e.g. men- and woman-clothing. This mode works well to organizing items of similar importance.” WCW — Organizing objects into logical groups — Grouping by logic or association rather than by alpha-numeric sequence Foods: fruit, vegetables, meat, fish Languages: French, Italian, Spanish; Swedish, Norwegian, Danish; Polish, Bulgarian, Russian

Kahn+Associates | 38

Kahn+Associates | 39 a Hierarchy “Hierarchy organizes by magnitude. From small to large, least expensive to most expensive, by order of importance, etc. Hierarchy is to be used if you want to assign weight or value to the ordered information.” WSW — Organized by sequence of importance — Recursive sequence of whole to part — Largest to smallest — Hierarchy implies sequence of quantity

Kahn+Associates | 44 a A Sixth Method: Common Focus — Organizing information by what users are touching — Currently viewed — Most discussed — Most popular — People who bought this item also bought…

Kahn+Associates | 48 a New York Times www.nytimes.com

Kahn+Associates | 50 a Le Monde http://www.lemonde.fr/

Kahn+Associates | 51 a How do we design navigational links between items? — Indentify patterns that can be used to built links between units of data — Patterns can come from the nature of the data AND/OR nature of use — Shared Metadata: Structured information about a unit of data • Such as date/time, owner, ID, subject, etc. — Find facets / attributes / properties that can be associated used to identify similarities between units of data in a collection • Author name • Publication date • Subject

Kahn+Associates | 52 a The role of Metadata — Associating the same metadata with items in different web sites, applications, and information collections can be used to • Extract “related” item lists, • Create topic collections. — Unique Identifier (UID) codes for elements that appear in several contexts can be particularly valuable • Stock trading codes • Book ISBN • Part number

Kahn+Associates | 53 a Further Examples of Applied Metadata — Scientific Publishing: • Digital Object Identifier (DOI) used by publishers to identify a publication unit, such as a scientific article, independent from the print location (journal, vol. issue. page) or current URL location. — Biomedical/Pharmaceudical: • UID code for pharmaceutical product — Finance: • Symbol for publicly traded companies, stocks and bonds used to link data and news

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02 What Is Information Architecture

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