PRINT2WEB
[ Information Architecture ]
The Information Architecture Institute [IAI] describes it like this: We define information architecture as the art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability.
Your organization needs
information architecture when:
1 | Business objectives dictate designing or significantly redesigning a user interface or website
2 | Inaccessibility of information to your customers and employees is increasing costs, including to your call center and help desk
3 | Knowledge management initiatives are migrating information from desktops to a central file system or intranet
Content: Document, data types, content, volume, existing structure
Context: Business goals, funding, politics, culture, resources, constraints
Users: Audience, tasks, information seeking behavior, experience
Principles of Information Architecture
Organization Systems: How we categorize information, by subject, chronology
Labeling Systems: How we represent information, scientific terminology, lay terms.
Navigation Systems: How we browse or move through information. e.g. clicking through a hierarchy.
Searching systems: How we search information. e.g. executing a search query against an index.
Browsing Aids
Organization Systems: The main ways of categorizing a site's content. Also known as taxonomies and hierarchies.
Site-Wide Navigation Systems: Primary navigation systems that help users understand where they are and where they can go within a site.
Local Navigation Systems: Primary navigation systems that help users understand where they are and where they can go within a portion of a site.
Sitemaps/Table of Contents: Navigation systems that supplement primary navigation systems; provide a condensed overview of and links to major content areas and subsites within the site, usually in outline forms.
Site Indexes: Supplementary navigation systems that provide an alphabetized list of links to the contents of the site.
Site Guides: Supplmentary navigation system that provides a specialized information on a specific topic, as well as links to a related subset of the sites content.
Site Wizards: Supplmentary navigation system that lead users through a sequential set of steps; may also link to a related subset of te site's content.
Contextual Linking Systems: Consistently presented links to related content. Often embedded in text, and generally used to connect highly specialized content within a site.
Search Aids
Search Interface: The means of entering a search query, typically with information on how to improve your query, as well as other ways to configure your search.
Query Language: The grammar of a search query.
Retrieval Algorithms: The part of a search engine that determines which content matches a user's query.
Search Zones: Subsets of site content that have been separately indexed to support narrower searching. e.g. searching the tech support area of a site.
Search Results: Presentation of content that matches the user's search query; involves decisions of what types of content should make up each individual result, hw many results to display, and how results should be ranked, sorted and clustered.
Content and Tasks
Headings: Labels for the content that follows them.
Embedded Links: Links within text, these represent the content they link to.
Embedded Metadata: Information that can be used as metadata but must first be extracted, e.g. if an ingredient in a recipe is mentioned, the information can be indexed to support searching by ingredient.
Chunks: Logical units of content, these can vary in granularity. e.g. books and chapters are both chunks, and can be nested, a chapter is part of a book.
Lists: Groups of chunks or links to chunks; these are important because they've been grouped together, e.g. they share some trait in common, and have been presentedin a particular order.
Sequential Aids: Clues that suggest where a user is in a process or task, and how far they have to go before completing it.
Identifiers: Clues that suggest where a user is in an information system, e.g. a logo that specifies what site they are visiting, a breadcrumb that tells a user where they are in a site at that moment.
Invisible Components
Controlled vocabulary: Predetermined vocabularies of preferred terms that describe a specific domain.
Thesauri: A controlled vocabulary that may also include links to broader and narrower terms; as well as descriptions of preferred terms.
Rule Sets: Groups of rules that can be used to guide information retrieval, e.g. if someone searches for "handheld", present these three manually identified results.
Material based on Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition
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