Information Architecture
Today
What is IA
IA for WWW
Pervasive IA Example
Architecture of a cup
Create architecture==Describe the essense
Open top, for consumption
of liquid
Weight and size
conductive to being
Relationship between walls and
held in hand
bottom that allows containment
Definition of IA (from Polar
Bear book)
1. The structural design of shared information
environments
2.The combination of organization, labeling, search, and
navigation systems within web sites and intranets.
3.The art and science of shaping information products
and experiences to support usability and findability
4. An emerging discipline and community of practice
focused on bringing principles of design and
architecture to the digital landscape
Information organization
What is considered information in definition of
IA?
Web sites, documents, software applications,
images, metadataand more
Librarians add value to printed materials by
putting them within framework of information
architecture that facilitates access to those
materials
Information architects perform a similar role
but within the context of websites and digital
content.
Information ecology concept
Business goals,
funding, politics,
culture,
Context technology,
resources
Document/data
types, content IA Audience, tasks,
objects, volume, needs,info-
existing structure seeking
Content Users
behavior,
experience
IA and other disciplines
Graphic design is not IA
Software development is not IA
Usability engineering is not IA
usability is the study of the ease with which people
can employ a particular tool
User Experience Design is:
An umbrella term that encompasses information
architecture, usability engineering, graphic design
and interaction design as components of holistic
user experience
IA starts with User
Study user needs and behavior to select user
behavior model
Types of information needs
known item seeking
exploratory search
exhaustive search
User information-seeking behavior
Searching
Browsing
Asking
Behavior happens in patterns -> models can
be build
IA Components
Organization systems
-how we categorize information
Navigation systems
- how we browse or move through information
Searching systems
- how we search information, e.g executing a search query against
an index
Labeling systems
-how we represent the information, e.g.Terminology
Metadata, controlled vocabulary, classification schemas
Visualizing IA search
Navigation
systems
Organization
systems
Organization system
The grouping of like content together
Provides a way to browse the structure
of the site
Schemes:
chronological
geographical
alphabetical
Navigation and Search
systems
Global
Local
Contextual
Supplemental
Global Navigation Where I am?
What is
nearby?
Contextual Whats related to
Local
whats
here?
Labeling system
The interface to the organization scheme -
the names of the different categories
Appears in the words in the navigation
systems
One of the most important aspects and one of
the most difficult to do.
Needs to reflect the content and the user -
must be written in users language
Designing labeling system
labels
The proprietor of this website ditched conventional wisdom, utilizing
terminology they knew their users would better understand. In fact, the
whole store is premised on this innovative nomenclature scheme, and
it's been frightfully successful
Classification schemas
Two classification models:
Faceted (Item is tagged with set of attributes
and values and organization of these objects
emerges from this classification and from how
user decides to access them).
Hierarchical (only one place for an item
according to classification scheme)
Category
Subcategory 1 Subcategory 2
Item
Faceted classification
example
Item = particular
wine
Facet Value
Type of Red, White
wine
Wine California,
Regions France
..
facets
Process of IA
Research -> Strategy -> Design -> Implementation -> Administration
Research phase - review background, understand goals,business
context, existing IA, content and intended audience
Strategy phase - define the highest two or three levels of the sites
organization and navigation structure. Suggest candidate document types
and metadata schema.
Design phase- creating detailed blueprints, wireframes and metadata
schema that will be used by graphic designers, programmers, content
authors.
Research
Context Background Presentations Stakeholders Technology
search and meetings interviews assesment
Content Heuristic Metadata and
Content mapping Benchmarki
evaluation content analysis ng
Server log & Contextual User
Users Use cases and
clickstream interviews
personas inquiry
analysis and testing
IA iceberg
Interface
Wireframes, Blueprints
Metadata, Classification scheme, Thesauri
Information architecture strategies, Project plans
Users Content Context
Needs, behaviors Structure, meaning Culture, technology
Some trends
Organizing search (collaborative tagging - tag
clouds, Im feeling lucky button)
RIA
Information Visualization (newsmap)
Person-based organization : google
personalized search
Social navigation (amazon collaborative
filtering)
Definition of IA (revisited)
1. The structural design of shared information environments
2.The combination of organization, labeling, search, and navigation
systems within web sites and intranets.
3.The art and science of shaping information products and
experiences to support usability and findability
4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on
bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital
landscape
Future directions:
developing pervasive IA
From wikipedia Pervasive computing:
At their core, all models of ubiquitous computing (also
called pervasive computing) share a vision of small,
inexpensive, robust networked processing devices, distributed
at all scales throughout everyday life and generally turned to
distinctly common-place ends.
Pervasive IA?
Pervasive design example (by Maya
Design company)
Carnegie library in Pittsburgh
Paper Designing for a pervasive information environment: the importance of
information architecture
Goal: to design public library environment
Pervasiveness of the situation:
After observing customers and talking with librarians we had much
more complete picture of the kinds of information available and how
people accessed that information. We discovered for example that
information a customer is seeking might reside in multiple media
(books, bulletin boards, magazines, microfiche, newspapers,
videotapes, posters, electronic articles and other people) in different
locations (building , floors, shelves, computers) with different
access and organization methods..The variety and complexity of
these choices demonstrate the pervasiveness of information in a
library
References
Information Architecture for world Wide Web, Peter Morville and
Louis RosenFeld, OReilly, 2007
H.L.McQuaid, A.Goel, M.McManus. Designing for a pervasive
information environment: the importance of information
architecture, 2003
www.maya.com
Wikipedia
http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000063.html
Faceted Search (Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts,
Retrieval, and Services), Daniel Tunkelang.
http://www.slideshare.net/cfox74/making-ia-real-planning-an-
information-architecture-strategy-presentation
Thank you
