Let's take a basket and throw in a heaping portion of Content. Next, add two concepts: 1) Information Architecture and 2) Usability and then mix.

Content: Stuff you put on your website. Often meaningful text with some graphics and sometimes multimedia of different sorts.

Information Architecture: This term refers to the organization of a website's structure and content, the labelling and categorizing of information and the design of navigation and search systems. Information Architects are the librarians of web development. The aim is to help users find information and accomplish their task. (from techdis.ac.uk)

Usability: Jakob Nielsen defines it thus: Usability has five quality components:

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

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CONTENT / WEB AS PUBLISHING PLATFORM

"Content is King" has been a recent mantra concerning content on the web. This came at a stage in the web when users had tired of merely seeing pictures of a webmaster's cat and when, in general, the reckoning of the Web as predominantly a publishing plaform and medium came about. If we stick to this view of the web as a publishing platform, it can change the sensibility with which we approach our websites.

Content is the information (and in our case, learning) delivered to the user (or reader) and web pages of one form or another are how the content is delivered. The focal point here is not the web or web pages (which is just the delivery method) but the content (which should be of quality and usefulness) and more specifically how it pertains to the needs of the user or reader who you are trying to provide some sort of service as the result of your publishing. So, "the Reader is King", not Content as Gerry McGovern puts it in his book "Content Critical". The perspective he

• Who is my reader (user)?
• Will they read this?
• What value is being created?

Who is the primary user of your website? If you don't know, you have major problems. If you do know, then your content must be focused on that audience. For content added to your website, you must ask, is this something my audience would read? Is is of value to them? Is it of value to the organization hosting the website? The message here is that

Once you have the content, users must be able to find it and use it, that's where Information Architecture and Usability activities come in to play.

Metadata

Below is an example of an entry screen for metadata which would be associated with a single resource added to a Content Management System. Typically, this would accompany the creation or uploading of an article or individual content resource. The metadata entry elements are based on the Dublin Core framework which is one of many emerging metadata standards.

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INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

The role of Information Archicture has come about as an acknowledgement of the primacy of the Web as an information source. Also implied in the activity is the importance of user-centric development. An Information Architect is concerned with the organization and structure of information as it is presented within a website. This covers both the categorization of the content that is placed within a website and the user interface which serves as a guide to the content.

Information Architecture is about...

• Defining the "mission and vision" for a website.
• Determining the "content and functionality" for a website.
• Deciding how users will find information on the site.

"[information architecture is]"...
creating consistent and functional systems for navigation, graphics, page layout and title languages so that the user knows where to go, what to do, and encourages them to return."
-- Web Review, Peter Morville

"Most commercial websites have finally realized that the best way to serve their audience is to get out of the way and let them accomplish what they came to do. Still, there is a vestige of designers who continue to demand that users conform to their whims. -- The Art & Science of Web Design, Jeffery Veen

Also called "customer experience analysts, interaction designers, digital librarians, information scientists"

The four areas that are typically addressed in Information Architecture are:

• organization
• navigation
• labelling
• searching

“Information architecture involves the design of organization, labeling, navigation, and searching systems to help people find and manage information more successfully.” - Louis Rosenfeld.

It combines skills from the library sciences, software design, traditional architecture, marketing and many other disciplines. IA's will typically develop site maps, content maps, schematics, content inventories, flowcharts, wire frames and prototypes as deliverables for projects they work on. IA's are charged with trying to identify an efficiency of information for the content and provide an anticipated user path to the content, making it as easy as possible to find information in the different ways a user might approach it. IA's must also work within organizations or with clients to ensure that client needs can be translated to meet the intended user's needs, something that is not always very straightforward.

Addressing user concerns by supporting a variety of intentions is a typical IA concern. Whether the user knows what they are looking for or if they have no idea what they are looking for in particular but are casually exploring, it is up to the IA to design an environment which allows each to effectively navigate to their needs.

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USABILITY / USER EXPERIENCE

Usability 101 by Jakob Nielsen, a quick reference on what usability is and how it is performed.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

Great column by Peter Morville on the evolution of web roles and the position of IA's in that.
http://argus-acia.com/strange_connections/strange004.html

 

NAVIGATION NOTES (messages from the reading)

-Browser Navigation: In general, don't mess with it. This include link colors (links, visited links), back and forward buttons. Give proper consideration to other built-in navigational tools in browsers such as History and Bookmarks.

-Context: "You Are Here!" is important on MUNI bus shelter maps and is also important on your websites. The user needs to know where in the structure of your site they are at any given point (thus proper page titling giving the local and sitewide context) and directions on how to get back to other important parts of the site.

-Flexiblity: It's important to maintain flexibility for the user in terms of providing a navigation system. Hierarchical (top down navigation) and Hypertext (lateral and vertical navigation) are two poles. Hierarchical is more rigid in enforcing users down and up a particular path (home > about me > my hobbies > about me > home) whereas Hypertextual is open-ended and can allow the user to jump between disparate pages inside (and outside) of a site. It's important to understand that both have inherent strengths and weaknesses. Hierarchical approach are one of the most common ways of logically organizing information. Hierarchical navigation provide a great deal of freedom with regard to directing the user to information.

The important point with regard to these two types of navigation and flexibility is a sense of balance between the two. Too much hierarchical navigation can be inflexible and limiting but too many navigational cues and links as in a hypertextual approach can be confusing
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ENTER WEB CONVENTIONS

Nielsen is referring to the need for standardization of site architecture in his article, suggesting that designer's blend medley's of familiar and often-used design components.........."Information architecture will partly become standardized. An example that has already happened is the "About the company" area of most corporate websites. All users expect this area to contain subsites about the management, the company history, financial information and investor information, PR and press releases, and employment opportunities. But the way these subsites are structured might differ depending on the characteristics of the specific company. Similarly, there would be many other areas that were related to individual products or services and that would be structured differently on different sites." - Jakob Nielsen in the "End of Web Design"

His book "Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed" seeks to uncover these conventions by reviewing 50 websites and analyzing

(from Amazon.com spotlight review by Shaun W. Taylor)
Repeated at least 20 times are these themes:

* Title your pages appropriately
* Get a good tagline
* Provide example content on the homepage, not just links
* Write headlines as succinctly as possible, while retaining greatest possible meaning
* Have a search box available
* Categorize links and sections appropriately
* Use good labels
* Use images wisely, and not gratuitously
* Beware of ads, and anything looking like them

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INFORMATION PRESENTATION

Yale professor Edward Tufte has distinguished himself in the area of information design with his three books (Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) and his well attended lecture tours across the country. He is concerned with the presentation of information, especially with respect to data. While his focus is generalized and includes print based reviews, his work has had a large influence on the field of interface and information architecture.

An important concept from him is that of information resolution or what is the information capacity of a given medium (or as characters on a typical page spread). Compare for instance, the information resolution of a phone book versus a non-fiction novel. The phone book page has an incredibly dense resolution. Now, consider a web page, which is already at a deficit because of the low resolution of the computer screen versus the printed page. The lesson, web pages are light on information resolution

Why so many bad user interfaces? The main problem is that computer monitors are low resolution. For comparison, one page from Who's Who contains around 50,000 characters, at least ten times the resolution of a computer screen.

Knowing this is helpful for working within the limitations of your medium.

Napolean's March, Minard - Information Density

John Gotti Trial Example - Persuasive Data