Information architecture

Methods for creating new labels

- Content analysis - Content authors - Subject Matters - Card Sorting - Free-listing - Search log analysis

Basic concepts of IA: information

- Distinguish information architecture from data and knowledge management.

Services traditional view

- Heterogeneous - Produced and consumed simultaneously - Cannot be kept in stock - Intangible

Products (physical goods) traditional view

- Homogeneous - Production is separated from consumption - A thing - can be kept in stock - Tangible

Modern view on services

- Value propositions. Organizations should focus on creating these - what are the needs of our customers? - Actors (suppliers, customers, users...) are the engine. They act as information and resource integrators. - Resources (information). - Institutions (ex. Tools, methods, processes...). - Institutional arrangements (norms, rules, laws...).

Advantages of the search function

-Helps when you have too much information to browse. - Helps fragmented sites - Is a learning tool (you can learn more about your users) - Should be there because users expect it to be there - Can "tame" dynamic content (content that is changed/updated very often, for example news feed)

Layers change at different rates, in order of slowest to fastest, they are:

1 Site 2 Structure 3 Skin 4 Services 5 Space plan 6 Stuff

DIKW triangle

1. Data - symbols, signs etc. lack context/meaning/interpretation. Meaningless to us. 2. Information - Useful. Created from data. Interpret the data to make infromation. 3. Knowledge - Something you can apply. Once we have the infromation we can use that. 4. Wisdom - If you have knowledge, then you can learn to ex. organize content on a website.

Lean IT 7 principles

1. Eliminate waste that adds no value - waste in service, project management and workforce potential. 2. Amplify learning 3. Delay commitment - decide as late as possible, because then we have much more information than before. 4. Deliver as fast as possible - customers can change their minds. 5. Empower the team 6. Build integrity in - do what the customers want, building the right things that work. 7. See the whole

Types of navigation systems

1. Global, local and contextual 2. Supplemental navigation systems

Advantages of information-driven organizations

1. Improves decision-making 2. Improves productivity 3. Supports "Doing the right thing" & "Doing things right" 4. Superior performance

Important for designing labels:

1. Narrow the scope - focus our information environments on a more defined audience 2. Develop consistent labelling systems, not labels. 3. borrow labels from similar sites

Definitions of IA

1. The structural design of shared information environments 2. The synthesis of organization, labeling, search, and navigation systems within digital, physical, and cross-channel ecosystems 3. The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability, findability, and understanding 4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape

Two problems IA can help us solve

1. information overload 2. Access to infromation adn demterializaations (infromation becomes decoupled from artifact and context

Why is it useful to have generalized types of information environments?

1. it serves as a shorthand to communicate to users what type of place they are in. 2. it makes it easier for users to understand and navigate the environment. 3. having a standard structure to work against makes it easier to differentiate an information environment from those of competitors

Digital transformation (DT)

A process that aims to improve an entity by triggering significant changes to its properties through combinations of information, computing, communication and connectivity technologies.

Conceptual diagram

A representation of a system - A simple way to communicate with your customers or other actors in your eco system.

Ambiguous organization schemes

Ambiguous schemes are best known for browsing and associative learning, when users have a vaguely defined information need.

Organisational schemes

An organisation scheme defines the shared characteristics of content items ans influences the logical grouping of those items. There are exact schemes and ambiguous schemes.

Contextual inquiry

Asking questions to users, what they are doing, how they are doing it etc. Qualitative and quantitative research. User testing, interviews, surveys, focus groups etc.

Users

Audience, tasks, needs, infromation-seeking behavior, experience. - Who's using our system? - How are they using it? - What information do they want from our systems?

Audience specific schemes

Audience-oriented schemes break a site into smaller, audience-specific mini-sites, thereby allowing for clutter-free pages that present only the options of interest to that particular audience.

SCRUM

Based on the Agile Manifesto. It is designed for teams to break their work into goals that can be completed within time-boxed iterations, called sprints, no longer than one month. The scrum team assess progress in time-boxed daily meetings of 15 minutes or less.

Varieties of labels: Navigation system choices

Because navigation systems typically have a small number of options. Be consistent with them

Context

Business goals, funding, politics, culture, technology, resources, and constraints. "Include the documents, applications, services, schemas and metadata that people need to use or find in your systems".

Hypertext

Can help organise information on your website. Consists of two things: - Chunks of information - Links to the different chunks

Organisation systems: Ambiguity

Classification systems are made of language, and language is ambiguous: words are capable of being understood in more than one way.

Database

Collection of data arranged for ease and speed for search and retrieval.

Varieties of labels: Contextual links

Connects the user to important information. For example on a wikipedia text, having links in the text. Usually good, but not always.

Do we need a search system?

Consider the following: - Amount of content in the information environment - Focus on more useful navigation systems (there's a risk that the other navigation systems are badly designed because "search solves everything") - Do you have the time and know-how to optimise the search system? - Other alternatives - Users' preferred ways of interacting (some users like to browse rather than search)

What is meant by information architecture?

Design discipline that is focused on making information findable and understandable.

Content

Document/data types, content objects, volume, existing structure

Social classification

Driven by users and emerge over time. Usually we use tagging - the users define the different categories.

Basic concepts of IA: Finding and content managing

Findability is a critical success factor for overall usability designing for the needs of users isn't enough. balance the needs of users with the goals of the business.

Lean IT

Goal: Reduce waste in a system and enable greater value for the customer through philosophy and tools.

Varieties of labels: iconic labels

Good when you don't have that much space. More limited language

Why IA?

Helping make information findable and understandable can have enormous impact on people's lives. We live in an information-driven world - digital technologies in combination with information can be very powerful.

Search analytics

Helps you understand what users see by looking at previous information. Learn about the most common search queries on a site. For example google analytics.

Organisation systems: Heterogeneity

Heterogeneity refers to an object or collection of objects composed of unrelated or unlike parts. The heterogeneous nature of information environments makes it difficult to create a single structured organization system on the content.

Top-down IA

In top-down IA, the environmental designers posit a structure that aims to answer the users' questions in the right order.

Refinding information

Information you'd prefer to never lose track of. You bookmark information in order to not lose track of it

Bottom-up IA

Instead of being dictated from "above", bottom-up IA is suggested by and inherent in the systems content. It's important because users are increasingly likely to bypass your system's top-down information architecture.

Varieties of labels: Headings

Labels are often used as headings that describe the chunks of information that follow. For example app store, "top free", "new" etc.

Labeling

Labels represent larger chunks of information. Describes categories, options and links. They represent meanings to the users without taking up too much space on the website.

Metaphor-driven schemes

Metaphors are commonly used to help users understand the new by relating it to the familiar

Varieties of labels: Index term

Often referred to as keywords, tags, descriptive metadata, taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, and thesauri, sets of index term labels can be used to describe any type of content: sites, subsites, pages, content chunks, and so on

Topical organizational schemes

Organizing information by subject or topic

4 systems/components of IA

Organizing system - Content categories for specific information (like subject, chronology) Navigation system - help users move through content (e.g. clicking through a hierarchy) Search system - search for content on a website (e.g. executing a search query against an index) Labeling system - Describe categories, options and links

Rythm

Patterned repetition of elements in space

Difference between project and program

Project has a start/stop and a goal, a program is continuous.

Personas

Represents one type of user (you're basically guessing, you shouldn't guess. Go out and talk to your users to find out things instead).

5 stages of "the process of information architecture development"

Reserach - Research questions, what are the goals of this project, short term and long term? Schedule? Budget? Target audience? Helps us form an information strategy. strategy - Provides a high-level framework. Scope, direction. Usually involves how to work with maintenance, what kind of technology integration do we need, top-down or bottom-up? Navigation systems? Search? design - Create sitemaps, wireframes, implement schemes that will be used by developers etc. implementation - Implement the design. Release. administration- maintenance. (Reserach, strategy, design, implementation = project)

Information seeking behaviours

Searching, browsing, asking, integration, iteration

Definition of service

Service is an interactive process of doing something for someone that is values. Service os the application of specialized competences through deeds, processes and performances for the benefit of another entity or the entity itself..

Taxonomy

The categorization and labeling of information

Organisation systems: Perspectives

The fact is that labeling and organization systems are intensely affected by their creators' perspectives.

Basic concepts of IA: Art and science

The practice of information architecture will never be reduced to numbers; there's too much ambiguity and complexity. Information architects must rely on experience, intuition, and creativity.

Organisation systems: Internal politics

The process of designing information architectures can involve a strong undercurrent of politics. Politics raise the complexity and difficulty of creating usable information architectures

Informatics

The scientific subject that develops knowledge about people's design and use of IT in individual, organizational and societal contexts.

Typologies

The study and classification of types, people and symbols. For example the study of ancient symbols, portfolio websites, university websites etc.

Exploratory seeking

The user is looking for more than only one simple answer, for example 'How to play tennis'.

Hybrid schemes

This hybrid scheme includes elements of audience-specific, topical, metaphor-based, task-oriented, and alphabetical organization schemes.

Too simple model

User asks question -> black magic -> User receives answer. Problematic because: - Finding information is not always that straight forward. - People don't always know what they want. - The model is too narrow; focuses on what happened while the user was interacting with information. We should always be aware of the context.

Berry picking model

Users start with an information need, formulate an information request (a query), and then move iteratively through an information system along potentially complex paths, picking bits of information ("berries") along the way.

Pearl growing approach

Users start with one or a few good documents that are exactly what they need. They want to get "more like this one." To meet this need, Google and many other search engines allow users to do just that

Basis for forming effective IA design (three circels of infromation architecture)

Users, Content, Context

Problems with the traditional view of services?

We buy value - not products and/or goods. For example, you buy a phone to be able to call and text, not primarily the actual product. However, when it comes to value we can't be sure why someone wants to buy a phone - could be for example a status symbol. The customer is viewed upon as a value destroyer. This is the difference between products and services.

Known item seeking

What's the population of Jönköping

Browsing aids

When the user's don't use the search box, they browse through the page. - Organization systems - General navigation systems - Local navigation systems - Sitemaps/tables of contents - Index - Guides - Walkthroughs and wizards - Contextual systems

Exhaustive research model

When you want to read everything you can find about a subject, for exmaple when you're competing in a tv-show, writing a thesis etc. The topic could be for example a medical condition.

Exact organisation schemes

are best known for item searching, when users know exactly what they are looking for (Alphabetical schemes Chronological schemes Geographical schemes)

Pervasive information architecture

one that is experienced across multiple channels and contexts (consistency is critical)

Task oriented schemes

organize content and applications into collections of processes, functions, or tasks

Metadata

terms used to describe and represent content objects such as documents, people, processes, and organizations