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IV. Information Architecture in Practice
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IV. Information Architecture in Practice
by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd Edition
Preface
What’s New in the Third Edition
Organization of This Book
Audience for This Book
Conventions for This Book
Contacting the Authors
Contacting O’Reilly
Safari® Enabled
Acknowledgments
I. Introducing Information Architecture
1. Defining Information Architecture
A Definition
Tablets, Scrolls, Books, and Libraries
Explaining IA to Others
What Isn’t Information Architecture?
Why Information Architecture Matters
Bringing Our Work to Life
2. Practicing Information Architecture
Do We Need Information Architects?
Who’s Qualified to Practice Information Architecture?
Disciplinary Backgrounds
Innies and Outies
Gap Fillers and Trench Warriors
Putting It All Together
Information Architecture Specialists
Practicing Information Architecture in the Real World
Context
Content
Users
What Lies Ahead
3. User Needs and Behaviors
The “Too-Simple” Information Model
Information Needs
Information-Seeking Behaviors
Learning About Information Needs and Information-Seeking Behaviors
II. Basic Principles of Information Architecture
4. The Anatomy of an Information Architecture
Visualizing Information Architecture
Information Architecture Components
Browsing Aids
Search Aids
Content and Tasks
“Invisible” Components
5. Organization Systems
Challenges of Organizing Information
Ambiguity
Heterogeneity
Differences in Perspectives
Internal Politics
Organizing Web Sites and Intranets
Organization Schemes
Exact Organization Schemes
Alphabetical
Chronological
Geographical
Ambiguous Organization Schemes
Topic
Task
Audience
Metaphor
Hybrids
Organization Structures
The Hierarchy: A Top-Down Approach
Designing taxonomies
The Database Model: A Bottom-Up Approach
Hypertext
Social Classification
Creating Cohesive Organization Systems
6. Labeling Systems
Why You Should Care About Labeling
Varieties of Labels
Labels As Contextual Links
Labels As Headings
Labels Within Navigation Systems
Labels As Index Terms
Iconic Labels
Designing Labels
General Guidelines
Narrow scope whenever possible
Develop consistent labeling systems, not labels
Sources of Labeling Systems
Your site
Comparable and competitive sites
Controlled vocabularies and thesauri
Creating New Labeling Systems
Content analysis
Content authors
User advocates and subject matter experts
Directly from users
Card sorting
Free-listing
Indirectly from users
Search-log analysis
Tag analysis
Tuning and Tweaking
8. Search Systems
Does Your Site Need Search?
Search System Anatomy
Search Is Not an IT Thing
Choosing What to Search
Determining Search Zones
Navigation versus destination
Indexing for specific audiences
Indexing by topic
Indexing recent content
Selecting Content Components to Index
Search Algorithms
Pattern-Matching Algorithms
Recall and precision
Other Approaches
Query Builders
Presenting Results
Which Content Components to Display
How Many Documents to Display
Listing Results
Sorting by alphabet
Sorting by chronology
Ranking by relevance
Ranking by popularity
Ranking by users’ or experts’ ratings
Ranking by pay-for-placement
Grouping Results
Exporting Results
Printing, emailing, or saving results
Select a subset of results
Save a search
Designing the Search Interface
The Box
Advanced Search: Just Say No
Supporting Revision
Repeat search in results page
Explain where results come from
Explain what the user did
Integrate searching with browsing
When Users Get Stuck
Where to Learn More
9. Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and Metadata
Metadata
Controlled Vocabularies
Synonym Rings
Authority Files
Classification Schemes
Thesauri
Technical Lingo
A Thesaurus in Action
Types of Thesauri
Classic Thesaurus
Indexing Thesaurus
Searching Thesaurus
Thesaurus Standards
Semantic Relationships
Equivalence
Hierarchical
Associative
Preferred Terms
Term Form
Term Selection
Term Definition
Term Specificity
Polyhierarchy
Faceted Classification
III. Process and Methodology
10. Research
Process Overview
A Research Framework
Context
Getting Buy-In
Background Research
Introductory Presentations
Research Meetings
Strategy team meeting
Content management meeting
Information technology meeting
Stakeholder Interviews
Technology Assessment
Content
Heuristic Evaluation
Content Analysis
Gathering content
Analyzing content
Content Mapping
Benchmarking
Competitive benchmarking
Before-and-after benchmarking
Users
Usage Statistics
Search-Log Analysis
Customer-Support Data
Participant Definition and Recruiting
Surveys
Contextual Inquiry
Focus Groups
User Research Sessions
Interviews
Card Sorting
User Testing
In Defense of Research
Overcoming Research Resistance
11. Strategy
What Is an Information Architecture Strategy?
Strategies Under Attack
From Research to Strategy
Developing the Strategy
Think
Articulate
Communicate
Test
Work Products and Deliverables
Metaphor Exploration
Scenarios
Sample scenario
Case Studies and Stories
Conceptual Diagrams
Blueprints and Wireframes
The Strategy Report
A Sample Strategy Report
Executive summary
Audiences, mission, and vision for the site
Lessons learned
Architectural strategies and approaches
Content management
The Project Plan
Presentations
12. Design and Documentation
Guidelines for Diagramming an Information Architecture
Communicating Visually
Blueprints
High-Level Architecture Blueprints
Digging Deeper into Blueprints
Keeping Blueprints Simple
Detailed Blueprints
Organizing Your Blueprints
Wireframes
Types of Wireframes
Wireframe Guidelines
Content Mapping and Inventory
Content Models
Why Do They Matter?
Supporting contextual navigation
Coping with large amounts of content
An Example
A Valuable Process
Controlled Vocabularies
Design Collaboration
Design Sketches
Web-Based Prototypes
Point-of-Production Information Architecture
Putting It All Together: Information Architecture Style Guides
The “Why” Stuff
The “How” Stuff
IV. Information Architecture in Practice
13. Education
Transition in Education
A World of Choice
But Do I Need a Degree?
The State of the Field
14. Ethics
Ethical Considerations
Intellectual Access
Labeling
Categories and Classification
Granularity
Physical Access
Persistence
Shaping the Future
15. Building an Information Architecture Team
Destructive Acts of Creation
Fast and Slow Layers
Project Versus Program
Buy or Rent
Do We Really Need to Hire Professionals?
The Dream Team
16. Tools and Software
A Time of Change
Categories in Chaos
Questions to Ask
V. Information Architecture in the Organization
17. Making the Case for Information Architecture
You Must Sell
The Two Kinds of People in the World
Running the Numbers
Debunking the ROI Case
Talking to the Reactionaries
Other Case-Making Techniques
The Information Architecture Value Checklist
A Final Note
18. Business Strategy
The Origins of Strategy
Defining Business Strategy
Alignment
Strategic Fit
Exposing Gaps in Business Strategy
One Best Way
Many Good Ways
Understanding Our Elephant
Competitive Advantage
The End of the Beginning
19. Information Architecture for the Enterprise
Information Architecture, Meet the Enterprise
Finding Your Way Through an Enterprise Information Architecture
What’s the Goal of EIA?
Getting Everyone on the Same Page
Centralization Above All?
So What Is the Goal?
Designing an Enterprise Information Architecture
Top-Down Navigation and EIA
Bypass the main page
Repurpose your sitemap
Slim down your site index
Develop guides
Bottom-Up Navigation and EIA
Build single-silo content models
Limit dependence on metadata
“Telescoped” metadata development
Search Systems and EIA
Simple consistent interface
Analyze those logs
Prioritize your queries
Reverse-engineering content and metadata
“Guerrilla” EIA
Klogs for internal experts
Wikis for groups
Accessing internal expertise through the staff directory
Aggregating staff expertise...and everything else
Social bookmarking in the enterprise
EIA Strategy and Operations
A Common Evolutionary Path
The EIA Group’s Ideal Qualities and Makeup
The strategists
Operations People
Doing the Work and Paying the Bills
Build a New Business Unit
Build an Entrepreneurial Business Unit
Provide Modular Services to Clients
Timing Is Everything: A Phased Rollout
Identifying Potential Clients
Phasing in Centralization
A Framework for Moving Forward
VI. Case Studies
20. MSWeb: An Enterprise Intranet
Challenges for the User
Challenges for the Information Architect
We Like Taxonomies, Whatever They Are
Three Flavors of Taxonomies
Descriptive vocabularies for indexing
Metadata schema
Category labels
How It Comes Together
The Technical Architecture: Tools for Taxonomies
Creating and managing the taxonomies: VocabMan and the Metadata Registry
Creating and managing the records: the URL Cataloging Service
Beyond Taxonomies: Selling Services
Location, location, location
Helping where it hurts
Modular services
Different kinds of flexibility
Company savings
Benefits to Users
What’s Next
MSWeb’s Achievement
21. evolt.org: An Online Community
evolt.org in a Nutshell
Architecting an Online Community
The Participation Economy
Supporting Different Levels of Participation
Capital in the Economy
Discussion list postings
Tips
“Published” articles
Biography listings
New ventures
Decision-making
How Information Architecture Fits In
Cracking the Nut of Integration
Fit Enough to Survive?
The “Un-Information Architecture”
1. Essential Resources
Communities
Discussion Lists
IA Institute Members
SIGIA–L
AIGA–Experience Design
CHI–WEB
IxDA
Professional Associations
ACM SIGCHI
ASIS&T
CM Pros
IA Institute
IxDA
STC
UPA
UXnet
Directories
The IAwiki
The Information Architecture Library
InfoDesign
IxDA’s Resource Library
Additional Resources
Books and Journals
Online Journals and Magazines
Books
Responses to the question “What books or other teaching materials do you use in your courses?”
Additional Resources
Formal Education
IA Institute Education
Educators Survey
IxDA Education Resources
Human Factors International
IAwiki Degree in IA Page
U.S. News and World Report
HCI Bibliography
University of Texas on Information Architecture
Conferences and Events
Information Architecture Summit (ASIS&T)
DUX
Additional Conferences
Examples, Deliverables, and Tools
IA Institute Tools
IAwiki Deliverables and Artifacts
IAwiki Diagramming Tools
IxDA Resource Library
jjg.net’s Visual Vocabulary
Index
About the Authors
Colophon
Copyright
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12. Design and Documentation
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13. Education
Part IV. Information Architecture in Practice
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