Information architecture doesn't happen in a vacuum. The design of complex web sites requires an interdisciplinary team that involves graphic designers, software developers, content managers, usability engineers, and other experts.
In early days of web design, many designers employed a one-step process called 'Code-Html'. People had no patience for research or strategy. Fortunately after several years of painful lessons from failure, now there is a realisation that designing website is hard work and requires a phased approach.
Here I am trying to explore the process and methods for creating information architectures. Courtesy to Peter Moville's book Information Architecture for World Wide Web and Information Architecture : Blue-Prints by Christina Wodtke
Research Methodology
There are different types of research methodology for the development of IA such as rapid information architecture prototyping, Rosenfeld and Morville's methodology, Christina Wodtke's methodology and others IA practitioners who focus on the design processes. While there are different types of ways and methods to practice IA, majority agrees on the approach pioneered by Rosenfeld and Morville. The five phases of development of IA is recommended and widely followed by IA's as the research methodology because it is comprehensive and clearly described.
Stage 1 : Research
Research Phase begins with review of existing background materials and meeting with strategy team aimed at gaining a high-level understanding of the goals and business context, the existing Information Architecture, Content, Intended Audiences. Then quickly moves into a series of studies, employing a variety of methods to explore the information ecology.
This research provides a contextual understanding that forms the foundation for development of an information architecture strategy. From a top-down perspective, this strategy defines the highest two or three levels of the site's organization and navigation structures. From a bottom-up perspective, it suggests candidate document types and a rough metadata schema. This strategy provides a high-level framework for the information architecture, establishing a direction and scope that will guide the project through implementation.
Good research means asking the right questions. And choosing the right questions requires a conceptual framework of the broader environment.
A balanced approach to research
Stage 1A : Context
An investigation of the business context can be a good place to start. It's critical to begin projects with a clear understanding of the goals and an appreciation of the political environment.
Tasks in Context Stage:
Background Research : Background Research consists of reviewing any documents that relate to the site's mission, vision, goals, intended audiences, content, management structure and culture.
Introductory Presentations: It is worth taking time for an introductory presentation to authors, software Developers, Graphic Designers, marketing team to give an understanding about Information Architecture and why is it important and what are the major milestones and deliverables. Very useful in building a common vocabulary helps people communicate with one another more successfully.
Research Meetings Conducting series of targeted research meetings includes with Strategy Team, Content Management Team and Information Technology Team to learn as much as possible about mission, vision, audience, content, infrastructure etc.
Stakeholder Interviews: Most valuable components of the business context research is meeting with Senior executives and managers from variety of departments and business units for gaining broader participation in the process and bring new ideas and resources to the table.
Technology Assessment: In real world IA must work with the tools and infrastructure already in place and it is required to assess the IT environment in the very beginning of the project.
Stage 1B : Content
Findability precedes Usability - users need to be able to find content before they can use it.
Tasks in Content Stage:
Heuristic Evaluation: Heuristic Evaluation (originally proposed by Nielsen and Molich, 1990) is a discount method for quick, cheap, and easy evaluation of the user interface. The process requires that a small set of testers (or "evaluators") examine the interface, and judge its compliance with recognised usability principles (the "heuristics"). The goal is the identification of any usability issues so that they can be addressed as part of an iterative design process.
Content Analysis:Content analysis is a defining component of the bottom-up approach to information architecture, involving careful review of the documents and objects that actually exist. Early in the research phase, a high-level content survey is a useful tool for learning about the scope and nature of content. Find, print, and analyze a representative sample of the site's content is important in this stage. Noah's Ark approach of capturing a couple of each type of document type like white papers, annual reports etc is recommended. To quickly become fluent in the language of participants or stake holders is gaining familiarity with the subject matter.
Content Mapping: To bridge the gap between Heuristic Evaluation And Content Analysis by developing one or more content maps. A content map is a visual representation of the existing information environment. They are a tool for understanding, rather than a concrete design deliverable.
Competitive Research and Benchmarking: Competitive benchmarking is where we wish to discover what our company's websites/product is compared with an immediate competitor. Knowledge is a powerful thing. By ranking your website against your competitors' sites, you gain valuable knowledge which may help you win business over your competition. Here IA perform an in-depth analysis of the user experience on the website and those of key competitors. competitive benchmarking generates a laundry list of information architecture features, bringing lots of new ideas to table and encourages transition from broad generalizations to specific, actionable definitions. Also challenges embedded assumptions and avoids copying the wrong features for the wrong reasons.
Before-and-after benchmarking: Benchmarking can also be applied to a single site over time to measure improvements. It identifies and prioritizes information architecture features in the existing site and encourages transition from broad generalizations to specific, actionable definitions. Also creates a point of reference against which you can measure improvements.
Stage 1C : Users
Users are the ultimate designers of the Web
Tasks include
Usage Statistics: It makes sense to begin by looking at data that shows how people have been using the site and where they've been running into problems. Most statistics software packages, such as Google Analytics provide reports includes page information and visitor information and additional data includes time and date when people are visiting, referring sites users are coming from, type of browsers being used and how long user spend each page on the site. It is very valuable feedback from user explaining why he came to the site, what he found, and why he left.
Search Log Analysis:A simpler and extremely valuable approach involves tracking and analysis of queries entered into the search engine. We can identify what users are looking for by studying these queries and these queries are valuable in developing controlled vocabularies.
User Surveys: Surveys are a broad-and-shallow research tool that provide an opportunity to gather input from a large number of people relatively quickly and inexpensively. Surveys can be conducted via email, web, telephone, mail, or in person, and can be used to gather qualitative or quantitative data. In addition to the inherent value of real users' opinions, the survey results will provide you with a powerful political tool.
Contextual Inquiry: Methods of contextual inquiry can be useful to the information architect. It can be valuable to simply watch people work. Observing users performing normal daily tasks can provide insight into how the intranet or web site might (or might not) help people be more productive.
Focus Groups: Focus groups are one of the most common and most abused tools for learning from users. Focus groups are great for generating ideas about possible content and function for the site. However, focus groups don't work as well for information architectures as they do for, say, consumer products. For example, people can tell you what they like, don't like, and wish for regarding their refrigerators, but most people don't have the understanding or language necessary to be articulate about information architectures. Focus groups are also very poor vehicles for testing the usability of a site.
User Research Sessions
Face-to-face sessions involving one user at a time are a central part of the user research process. Due to these sessions are expensive and time consuming, it is recommended to integrate two or more research methods and this multi method approach makes the most of your limited time with real users.
Interviews: Often begin an end user research sessions with a series of questions.
Card Sorting: Most powerful information architecture research tools in the world. Card-sorting studies can provide insight into users' mental models, illuminating the ways they often tacitly group, sort, and label tasks and content in their own heads. The simplicity of this method confers tremendous flexibility. Card Sorts are in two categories : Open and Closed. In totally open card sorts, users write their own card and category labels. Totally closed sorts allow only pre-labelled cards and categories. Open sorts are used for discovery. Closed sorts are used for validation.
Affinity modelling diagram: Affinity diagramming is the visual representation of metrics captured in card sorting sessions and a deliverable presenting to the client as research result. This provide an opportunity to focus on a few highlights of the card sorting result.
User Testing: User Testing is fairly straight forward. According to Steve Krug, usability expert and author of the book Don't make me think! : a common sense approach to Web usability, 'It is not a rocket surgery'. In user testing, ask a user to sit in front of a computer, open a web browser, and try to find information or complete a task using the site we're studying. Allowing roughly three minutes per task, ask the user to talk out loud while he's navigating. Take good notes, making sure to capture what he says and where he goes. We may want to capture the session on audio or video, or use specialized software to track users' click streams. We might use the existing site, a high-fidelity web-based prototype, or even a low-fidelity paper prototype. We can ask the user to only browse or only search.
Step 2 : Strategy
A high-level conceptual framework for structuring and organizing a web site or intranet. It provides the firm sense of direction and scope necessary to proceed with confidence into the design and implementation phases. The bridge between research and design is an information architecture strategy.
Developing the Strategy
The transition from research to strategy involves a shift from a primary focus on process to a balance between process and product. Moving from a mode of absorption to one of creation is often a difficult transition for the information architect. The development of an information architecture strategy is inherently a creative process, with all the associated messiness, frustration, pain, and fun.
Strategy development process
Strategy development is a highly iterative and interactive process. There are four steps along the path : Think, Articulate, Communicate and Test (TACT)
Think
Some people think best by themselves, while taking a long walk or doodling on a pad of paper. Others think best in a group setting. You need to create some time and space to digest all that you've learned during research and become ready to be productive is the key.
Articulate
It is important to begin articulating them as idea forms. Start informally, scribbling diagrams and notes on paper or whiteboard. It is important to stay away from visual design software at this point to avoid wasting energy on layout and formatting when the main focus needed on developing your ideas. Some people work best alone whereas others need a sounding board. Work as a team in this stage work well together to flesh out ideas, collaborating around design of high-level visuals on a whiteboard. Small team is recommended in this process to articulate the ideas.
Communicate
Make the shift from creating ideas to communicating them. Here we need to identify the most effective ways to communicate these particular ideas to the target audience. Use metaphors, stories, use case scenarios, conceptual diagrams, blueprints, wireframes, reports, and presentations to communicate effectively. It is important selecting the right communication tools for the purpose. It's good to communicate your ideas early and often.
Task performance analysis is another useful approach. It is recommended to create paper or HTML prototypes for users to navigate in this stage. Ideal of testing the pure information architecture by presenting users with hierarchical menus and asking them to find some content or perform a task. Simply deciding how to order categories by alphabetical, by importance, or by popularity will impact the results.
Advantages of low fidelity prototype test / paper prototype test
Quick Turnaround : Very little work necessary to build the prototypes.
Force the user to primarily focus on Information architecture and navigation rather than look and feel of screens.
The Strategy Report
Strategy report serves as the catalyst for the most detailed, comprehensive articulation of the information architecture strategy. The process of integrating the previous results, analysis, and ideas into a single written document forces tough decisions, intellectual honesty, and clear communication. Strategy report is often the largest, hardest, and most important deliverable. This report provides a high level outline of goals and methodology, and present the view of major problems and major recommendations for improving the information architecture to achieve greater competitive advantage. It is important to consider political message you are sending and generate enough interest to get people to read it. It's important to define the audiences and goals of the site to make sure that the report is grounded by the broader context. This is a good place to restate the mission statement for the web site. Strategy report forms the bridge between research and analysis and recommendations to the problems. Report includes conceptual blueprints as well as a series of wireframes that further illustrate the key points in the document.
One of the major goals of this architectural strategy is to get users to return to the place that contains all the content.
The Project Plan
As part of the strategy phase deliverables, create a project plan for information architecture is the next step. This project plan can accomplish two major objectives. First, when developed in parallel with the strategy report, it forces the team to constantly ask questions about accomplishing the goals, time frame to accomplish it, who is the responsible for it, deliverables in each stage and dependencies. The second objective of the project plan is to form the bridge between strategy and design. It can be integrated with plans from other teams involved toward the development of a structured schedule for overall site design. There could be short term and long term plans prepared. In the short-term plan, focus on defining a process for design changes that can and should be made immediately to improve the information architecture. In the long-term plan, present a methodology for fleshing out the information architecture, noting interdependencies with other teams where appropriate.
Presentations
Rigorous research, brilliant brainstorming, a detailed, high-quality strategy report and a solid project plan is not enough for a successful completion of strategy phase without some form of presentation and discussion. It's often a good idea to make one or more presentations to the people who need to understand your recommendations. This might take the form of a single presentation to the web site or intranet strategy team or to various departments to achieve organization-wide understanding and buy-in. It is important to think about these presentations from a sales perspective.
Deliverables in Strategy Phase
Strategy Report, Project Plan and a good presentation of these to the stake holders.
Stage 3 : Design
This section explains the role of diagrams in the design phase and why, when, and how to develop blueprints and wireframes, the two most common types of IA diagrams. In design phase the emphasis moves from process (thinking and talking) to deliverables (producing a clear and well-defined information architecture. In this stage we are now actively shaping what will become the user experience and committing your ideas to paper. Process is as important during design as it is during research and strategy.
Diagrams are useful for communicating the two basic aspects of an information system's structural elements. Diagrams main goal will always be to communicate what your site's content components are and how they're connected.
A variety of visual vocabularies available to provide a clear set of terms and syntax to visually communicate components and their links. The best-known and most influential visual vocabulary is Jesse James Garrett's . Just about anyone can use it to create diagrams, even by hand. Visual vocabularies are at the heart of the many templates used to develop blueprints and wireframes. Thanks to their developers' generosity, there are many free templates available online to create your own deliverables.
Blueprints
Blueprints show the relationships between pages and other content components, and can be used to portray organization, navigation, and labelling systems. They are often referred to as "site maps". Both the diagram and the navigation system display the "shape" of the information space in overview, functioning as a condensed map for site developers and users respectively.
High-level blue print is a part of a top-down information architecture process . High-level blueprints map out the organization and labelling of major areas, usually beginning with a bird's-eye view from the main page of the web site. These blueprints can be drawn by hand, I prefer to use diagramming software such as Visio or OmniGraffle. A task-oriented blueprints is ideal deliverable approach in this stage, which are similar to the process flow diagrams often created by interaction designers. It allows the project team to walk through each step along the process, looking for opportunities to improve the user experience.
Detailed Blueprints
Detailed architecture blueprints serve a very practical purpose. They map out the entire site so that the production team can implement IA's plans to the letter without requiring your involvement during production. The blueprints must present the complete information hierarchy from the main page to the destination pages. They must also detail the labelling and navigation systems to be implemented in each area of the site.
The blueprints will vary from project to project, depending upon the scope.
Wireframes
Wireframe depict how an individual page or template should look from an architectural perspective. Wireframes stand at the intersection of the site's information architecture and its visual and information design. Issues as where the navigation systems might be located on a page needs to be considered in wire framing process. Trying out ideas in the context of a wireframe might force you back to the blueprint's drawing board and it is better make changes on paper rather than reengineering the entire site at some point in the future.
Wireframes are typically created for the site's most important pages such as main pages, major category pages, and the interfaces to search and other important applications. They are also used to describe templates that are consistently applied to many pages, such as a site's content pages. The goal is to create wireframes for the pages that are complicated, unique, or set a pattern for other pages.
Low-Fidelity wireframes
Low-Fidelity wireframes has got no graphic elements and no real content. This enables the visual designer to focus attention on the global, local, and contextual navigation elements of the page.
Medium-Fidelity Wireframe
Medium-Fidelity Wireframe with a high degree of detail. Medium-Fidelity Wireframe was intended to introduce several aspects of content, layout, and navigation into the discussion, and was one of many wireframes used to communicate the information architecture to managers, graphic designers, and programmers.
High-Fidelity Wireframe
High-Fidelity Wireframe presents a close approximation of what the page will actually look like. This is about as far as most information architects can go without bringing a graphic designer into the picture. The content and colour bring the page to life, helping to capture the attention of your clients or colleagues. By simulating actual page width and font size, the wireframe forces you to recognize the constraints of an HTML page. The fidelity is sufficient to support paper prototype-testing with users. High fidelity requires greater effort and takes a lot of time to design and this can slow down the process and increase costs.
Wireframes can be an extremely powerful tools for communication and collaboration during the information architecture design process.
Content Mapping
In simple term, a content inventory is a list of all the content on your site. A by-product of the content mapping process is a content inventory describing available content and where it can be found (e.g., the current site or the annual report), as well as content gaps that need to be filled.
In simple term, a content inventory is a list of all the content on your site. A by-product of the content mapping process is a content inventory describing available content and where it can be found (e.g., the current site or the annual report), as well as content gaps that need to be filled.
If you are revising a Web site, start with a content inventory of what is now on the site. Then, use your Web site requirements to create a planned content inventory for the new version of the site. If you are developing a new site you will only have the planned content inventory. Depending upon the size and complexity of the web site and the process and technology in place for production, there are many ways to present this inventory. For larger sites, it might require a document or content management solution that leverages database technology to manage large collections of content. For simpler sites, you might rely on a spreadsheet. Content inventory, is a relatively straightforward process of clicking through your web site and recording what you find.
You can create a content inventory as soon as you have completed the content mapping process. At different points in time, it can serve as an inventory of pages that need to be created, an inventory of architectural page mock-ups that need to be designed, and an inventory of designed pages that need to be reviewed before integration into the web site.
Content Models
Content models are "micro" information architectures made up of small chunks of interconnected content. Content models support the critical missing piece in so many sites: contextual navigation that works deep within the site. Why a missing piece? Because it's easymaybe too easyfor an organization to accumulate blobs of content, but extremely difficult to link those blobs together in a useful way.
