from a one-day workshop given at UIE 08, an overview of key concepts and practices of IA.

1. Information Architecture blueprints for the web Christina Wodtke & Tom Wailes, Yahoo! Inc.

5. It is the design behind the design Diagram from Jesse James Garett’s Elements of User Experience

6. Where it fits in design

8. The elements and goals of IA Information Architecture Content architecture Organization of content for information retrieval findability Interaction Design Design of system behavior to promote usability Information /Interface design Design of information presentation to promote understandability

21. Next Understanding your problem through requirements

22. Understanding your problem Requirements for success

36. Exercise: requirements gathering

40. Next Personas

41. Personas Never leave your user

42. Personas

48. Exercise: rapid persona creation

49. Prioritize personas

50. Prioritize personas primary secondary special

51. Prioritize personas primary secondary special

58. Example Persona Scenarios Michael is doing his morning surf; he’s just left indiewire.com and has come to indieword.com. He reads through the new stories on Sundance and spots the link to the Festival Planner. He remembers he was just agonizing over having to wade through the huge number of films . He hopes this might make it simpler. Michael looks over the Festival Planner intro page. He wants to make sure this is going to save him time and not waste his time. He sees he can play with it without having to sign up, which is a relief ; he sees he can set up a schedule for the day based on his preferences. It seems painless; he sets his watch alarm for five minutes—at that time he’ll decide if he wants to continue. Preferably, he’ll be done. … … Festival Planner now gives him a schedule to review, with three films to pick from and an option to “see all for this time slot.” One film for each time slot is indicated as his “best pick.” Each shows how well it meets his taste and needs. And he can choose to “rest” and not select a film for that time period. Michael goes through the schedule; his wristwatch beeps, and he absent-mindedly shuts it off. He selects his films. As he chooses, he notices an option to get a report on any film when its available—he’s very excited by that. If he can’t see them all, at least he can get a sense of what he’s missing! Finally, Michael has a schedule that satisfies him. He notices he can e-mail the schedule to anyone. He sends a copy to his P.A. and to himself. 1. Emphasis on goals ^ 2. Avoiding interface design >

61. Task analysis Purchasing a purse at nordstroms.com might include the tasks: 1. locate purse 2. add purse to shopping cart 3. check out

62. Task analysis Purchasing a purse at nordstroms.com might include the tasks: 1. locate purse 2. add purse to shopping cart 3. check out f. Review order “ CHECK OUT” BECOMES g. Finalize checkout e. Input payment d. Input billing address c. Input shipping address b. Sign in/sign up a. Select checkout

64. Example Task analysis

65. Another Task Analysis

66. digramming

67. Next Content Architecture Part I

68. Content Architecture Make it make sense

69. What is this?

70. What is this?

71. What is this?

72. What is this?

73. What are these?

74. They are all birds (ornithologist)

75. The Cassowary is not a bird! (the Karam)

76. From “Why the Cassowary is not a bird”, R. Bulmer, Man , Vol. 2, Issue 1, (Mar. 1967)

77. From “Why the Cassowary is not a bird”, R. Bulmer, Man , Vol. 2, Issue 1, (Mar. 1967)

91. Types of Metadata

92. Yahoo! Travel < meta name =' description ' content =&quot;Yahoo! Travel is a comprehensive online travel destination, where you can reserve flights, rental cars, hotel rooms, cruises and vacation packages, all in one place. Research trips from a wealth of planning resources including destination and city guides, user and expert reviews, local weather and currency information, and much more. Yahoo! Travel has competitive prices on everything from airfare to lodging, it's easy to find great deals and special offers&quot;> < meta name =' keywords ' content ='online airfare airfares hotel car reservations travelocity airlines tickets airplane air line air fares arifares airline low fairs fares cheap tickets flights book information flight itinerary itineraries online reservations online tickets online travel agents vacations cruise cruises cruiselines business travel busines corporate hotels discounts car cars rental lasvegas tickets travel reservations online travel travel bookings online bookings book airfare fare wars discount fares sales lowest vacation planning information travel agencies travel sites disney world florida orlando miami atlanta ATL Dallas DFW DCA LAS LAX NYC ORD SFO atl dfw dca las lax nyc ord sfo Washington D.C. washington dc los angeles Los Angeles new york New York new york city New York City San Francisco sanfrancisco family trips family vacation family vacations'>

94. Types of Metadata

98. Next Content Architecture Part II

99. Controlled vocabularies Master of your domains

100. When humans and computers interact I’ve got music I want music.

101. Humans are good at figuring things out Hip Hop Rap. Rock. Dance.

102. Most of the time Jiggy tunes ?

103. But computers are literal Acid reggae ? No matches found

104. Add more on how they are literal

105. And need help Acid Reggae? ? Let’s give them “Dance and DJ” IA

114. Bizrate takes good advantage It may be the Canon PowerShot S30

115. But what do people call it? Cannon S30 Powershot S30 S30 Canon S30

116. A page for each synonym

117. And they can be number one

119. There is a right spelling

122. Classification schemes Parent / Child (amazon.com)

125. Associations

127. Associations

128. Associations

138. Sleeping Bags BT Camping NT Down Sleeping Bags NT Synthetic Sleeping Bags NT Family Sleeping Bags NT Cold Weather Sleeping Bags NT 2-Season Sleeping Bags NT 3-Season Sleeping Bags NT Back Packing Sleeping Bags NT Expedition Class Sleeping Bags NT Ultralight Sleeping Bags RT Backpacks RT Ultralight Backpacking RT Sleeping Bag Liners RT Sleeping Pads RT Stuff Sacks RT Pillows From Creating a Controlled Vocabulary by Karl Fast, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/creating_a_controlled_vocabulary.php

142. examples

146. Next Interface and Navigation

147. Interface & Navigation IA made visible “ Like putting an Armani suit on Attila the Hun, interface design only tells how to dress up an existing behavior.” – Alan Cooper

149. Yahoo! Maps Legal turn One-way street No turns between 3pm and 6pm Concrete barrier Pedestrian walkway Speed limit 35 Road passes overhead Destination on the left Highway 101

151. But not everything is simple masthead Global links Folders Mail tools ad Other properties upsell Web search Related Services tip inbox ads ad Related Services upsell Mail tools Log out inbox Write mail And there isn’t even content!

152. Navigation orders complex pages

153. Understanding Navigation Message and Access

155. Global Navigation

156. Global navigation

157. Global navigation

159. Local Navigation

160. Local Navigation

161. Local Navigation

163. Inline links

164. Related items

166. Pagination Useful to reduce page download speed and cognitive overload. Annoying for printing.

167. Ad negotiation

168. Print/email/clip

169. Sort

171. Have you ever seen this page?

172. How about this one?

173. How about this one?

174. You can make it helpful “ After testing several different sitemap designs on users, I decided to try putting one on every page of my small Columbian web site. I then decided to track how often it was used for navigation. It turns out the sitemap is used for over 65% of all navigation done on the site .” -- Usability Report by Peter Van Dijck of poorbuthappy .com (Guide to Columbia) http://www.webword.com/reports/sitemap.html

176. Conventions If 90% or more of the big sites do things in a single way, then this is the de-facto standard and you have to comply . Only deviate from a design standard if your alternative design has at least 100% higher measured usability. If 60-90% of the big sites do things in a single way, then this is a strong convention and you should comply unless your alternative design has at least 50% higher measured usability. If less than 60% of the big sites do things in a single way, then there are no dominant conventions yet and you are free to design in an alternative way. -- Jakob Nielsen, November 14, 1999 Alertbox column &quot;Identifying De-Facto Standards for E-Commerce Web Sites“ © 2003 Heidi P. Adkisson

178. Homework: Prioritization

180. Next Understanding Search

181. Understanding Search The Web, your web