This book is quiet a good read, "Information Architecture of the World Wide Web, 3rd edition". I usually hate reading text books but this one was well written and keeps making me want to read more.It talks about what Information Architecture really is, and the processes and skills behind it. I will summaries a few of these from chapters 5, 6, & 7.
Chapter 5: Organisation Systems
This chapter talks about how we always organise our information for everything and ways we organise. For example, we live in towns which are in states which are in return inside countries. This is an example of "Bottom-Up" Hierarchy organisation.
There are a lot of challenges involved in organising information, such as:
- Ambiguity: words are capable of being understood in more ways than one.
- Heterogeneity: referring to a collection of objects or parts that are unrelated.
- Differences in Perspectives: everyone views things or sets things differently.
- Internal Politics: Choice of organisation and labelling can have a big impact on how users perceive a company, group, or person.
There are a number of organisation schemes. They come under two categories, Exact and Ambiguous.
Exact:
- Alphabetical
- Chronological
- Geographical
Ambiguous:
- Topic
- Task
- Audience
- Metaphor
- Hybrids
Organisation structures include:
- Hierarchy: Top-Down Approach
- Database Model: Bottom-Up Approach
Hypertext systems involve two components, the items or chunks of information to be linked, and the links between those chunks. Hypertext systems are page transitions for example. Clicking a link in a Wikipedia article will take the user to information linked to that link.
Free tagging is another way of organising. It involves the users to tag one or more key words to objects. These key words act as pivots so mass information can be found easily to a single key word being searched for. Users can move swiftly through objects, authors, tags, and indexers this way.
For example, Del.icio.us is a web application that allows users to tag saved bookmarks to describe the link. This allows easy searching for search engines.
Chapter 6: Labeling Systems
Labelling is important because it is a form of representation. Such as using speech to represent concepts and thoughts, we use labels to represent larger chunks of information in websites.
Types of labels:
The rest of the text is quite dull on this subject, nothing much left to describe (The text continues to go into indepth analysis of these types of labels and how to design them, often repeating itself).
Chapter 7: Navigation Systems
As you may assume, this chapter is all about Navigation. It describes how navigation is like the story, "Hansel and Gretel". Users will get lost extremely quickly on the World Wide Web unless they leave a trail of breadcrumbs to show their path.
It is important investigate the environment which the system will be implemented in. A lot of users use different web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer to move around websites. Different web browsers use many different built-in features. A different web browser can force a user to enforce different views on a website's navigation.
Before a navigation is plotted, we have to locate our position. Many users jump in to a random page of a website from search engines. This can be really confusing navigating a site since the home page is usually skipped. A good course of action to check if a user can recognise the "here you are" in a website is to test them. First user jumps directly into a random page of the website, skipping the home page. Can the user figure which they are in relation to the website? Can they tell where the page will lead to next? Are the links descriptive so the user understands what they are about?
The design of navigation systems is deep in the "grey area", meaning it can very in many ways. This is because the design is comprised of information technology, interaction design, information design, visual design, and engineering. Now you can see why it is very hard to form a well-designed navigation system.
Hierarchy is powerfully familiar way to sort a website's information. It is used often. A web's hypertextual capabilities (i.e. search engine) remove the hierarchy to give freedom to travel anywhere in the website. But make sure the website leaves "breadcrumbs", or some sort of "you are here" label or you can get lost.
Types of Navigation Systems:
Types of labels:
- Contextual - Hyperlinks to chunks of information on other pages or to another location on the same page.
- Headings - Labels that simple describe the content that follows.
- Navigation System Choices - Labels representing options in navigation.
- Index terms - Keywords, tags, and subject heading all represent content for searching or browsing.
Iconic labels are quite a difficult bunch. Just as the saying goes, "A picture means a thousand words", so does an iconic label. A lot of study and analysis has to go into creating an iconic label. Users can get quite confused with navigation or subject matters if they are not clear enough or without text to describe them.
The rest of the text is quite dull on this subject, nothing much left to describe (The text continues to go into indepth analysis of these types of labels and how to design them, often repeating itself).
Chapter 7: Navigation Systems
As you may assume, this chapter is all about Navigation. It describes how navigation is like the story, "Hansel and Gretel". Users will get lost extremely quickly on the World Wide Web unless they leave a trail of breadcrumbs to show their path.
It is important investigate the environment which the system will be implemented in. A lot of users use different web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer to move around websites. Different web browsers use many different built-in features. A different web browser can force a user to enforce different views on a website's navigation.
Before a navigation is plotted, we have to locate our position. Many users jump in to a random page of a website from search engines. This can be really confusing navigating a site since the home page is usually skipped. A good course of action to check if a user can recognise the "here you are" in a website is to test them. First user jumps directly into a random page of the website, skipping the home page. Can the user figure which they are in relation to the website? Can they tell where the page will lead to next? Are the links descriptive so the user understands what they are about?
The design of navigation systems is deep in the "grey area", meaning it can very in many ways. This is because the design is comprised of information technology, interaction design, information design, visual design, and engineering. Now you can see why it is very hard to form a well-designed navigation system.
Hierarchy is powerfully familiar way to sort a website's information. It is used often. A web's hypertextual capabilities (i.e. search engine) remove the hierarchy to give freedom to travel anywhere in the website. But make sure the website leaves "breadcrumbs", or some sort of "you are here" label or you can get lost.
Types of Navigation Systems:
- Global - a navigation system that is to be present on every page through a website.
- Local - a navigation system that is present on pages related to a certain area of a website. e.g. Sub-menus.
- Contextual - a navigation system that is used to link to specific page, document, or object in a website. e.g. Clicking an image on Google Images to take the user to the image.
Supplemental navigation systems are external to the basic hierarchy of a website. They provide extra ways to search for finding content or completing tasks. These are:
- Sitemaps - Just like a table of contents in a book or magazine, just implemented on the website.
- Site Indexes - Just like indexes found in many printed materials, a website's site index presents keywords or phrases alphabetically. This is great if a user is knows what they are looking for.
- Guides - Can take on many forms (guided tours, tutorials, and micro-portals). They focus around a specific audience, topic, or task, and often serve as tools for introducing content (e.g. When you get a new electronic product for the first time and it brings up a tutorial on the device itself).
- Search - Search engines that look in the websites parameters for information.
- Wizards and configurations - Considered a special class for a guide, they help users configure products and navigate through complex decisions for their product.
Some advanced navigation approaches include personalization and customization. Personalization involves serving tailored pages to the user based on their behaviour, needs, or preferences of one individual. Customization involves allowing the user full control over presentation, navigation, and content options.
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