If anyone is interested, I have made the slides from my Web Forum IA crash course presentation available.
All presentations were sent out to the Web Forum email list today, if you are not on this list, attended the Forum and would like the slides, leave a note in the comments.
Mark Celsor has written an interesting post explaining how and why he uses Drupal for IA, prototyping and project management when building a site for a client. I've always been a fan of the white site or similar to get people to focus on how the site will work and to make holes in content glaringly obvious. The Drupal idea is worth a look. I was tickled also by his description of a typical web project:
1. IA expert designs a beautiful, well thought out site map in Microsoft Visio leveraging industry best practices and the web site sponsor's business objectives.2. Site map goes to the sponsor, there might be a few rounds of revisions but basically they love it, and say "Great start building it out. We'll write the content."
3. Large amounts of work by the graphic design and technical staff building toward the site map.
4. 10,000 years elapse, business objectives change, best practices are revised, great civilizations rise and fall.
5. Content finally shows up and it consists of 475 faxes, 280 Word documents and around 400 GB of photos and low resolution logos in weird file formats that only open on old Commodore 64s. All of which have no relation to the original beautiful, well thought out site map.
6. Hilarity ensues, everything is slammed together as quickly as possible to meet a deadline and nobody is amused with the final product.
So true it hurts.
Some days make you realise that there are some old battles that IAs and the like are still fighting, years after you had dared to wish that they had been won.
One of these is the organisation-based website. You know, the ones that reflect the structure of the organisation, the internal politics and turf wars. Sometimes you have a number of sites fighting each other and the needs of the user are completely ignored. Also, there was no thought put into how a user may approach a large and varied instituion's website and make sense of all the little subsites. Five or six years ago a great proportion of sites were structured in this manner and I sometimes believe those days are gone, but alas, they are still with us.
So, a few things to remember when building a site, especially if that site has a relationship to other sites in a large institution:
1. Your users don't know who looks after what
They don't know which site to visit to get specific information, they don't know which department is responsible for the answer, they just want an answer. Quickly.
2. If a user is external to the organisation they usually don't distinguish between different sites in an overall web presence, especially if those sites use a standard template. They view it all as "University of XX's website".
3. The web is not the place to stake a political claim for your part of an organisation.
You will end up not fulfilling your user's needs and looking a little silly.
4. The web is not a change management catalyst for departmental restructures.
Changing the structure of an organisation and using a restructured website to try to introduce and enforce this change is not a good idea. A website should not reflect the structure of your organisation, it should reflect the information needs of your users and the way in which they think about this set of information.
On other matters, I have been seconded to the Marketing and Student Recruitment Unit for six months, this is my last day at Web Services for a while. I'll no doubt still haunt Templatedata like a ghost that just won't give up...
For those interested in information architecture, some of the presentations given at the recent IA Summit in Las Vegas are now available for all those of us who couldn't make it.
I may be a bit slow on the uptake with this, having just taken three months off and all but if you're a university web designer/developer/monkey/whatever you may find the Edustyle site to be of some use.
It's a gallery of university websites that also allows for commenting and voting ('My style' / 'Not my style').
One of the problems in web work is that when something useful is developed and it takes off, everyone wants one. Take tagging for example. Tagging has contributed to a shift in web design, in web usage and the way in which people conceive of information patterns. Tag clouds have been popping up everywhere and this is not always a good thing. Like all things to do with the web, there is a time and a place. What works in one context may be a dismal failure in another.
Tim at the LibraryThing blog has taken a good look at the difference in tag use between LibraryThing and Amazon. In short: tags have not been as successful on the latter as they have on the former. Tim makes a few interesting observations, including:
- people like to tag their own stuff but don't feel compelled to tag products people are trying to sell
- LibraryThingers are using the site to organise their own books, most of their tags are descriptive and are used for themselves and socially whereas Amazon users have a tendency to create 'opinion' tags which are are an extension of Amazon's review system.
Something is going on here—something with broad implications for tagging, classification and "Web 2.0" commerce. There are a couple of lessons, but the most important is this: Tagging works well when people tag "their" stuff, but it fails when they're asked to do it to "someone else's" stuff. You can't get your customers to organize your products, unless you give them a very good incentive. We all make our beds, but nobody volunteers to fluff pillows at the local Sheraton.
It's a fantastic post. Go read it.
Morville and Rosenfeld's seminal IA text, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web has gone into a 3rd edition. CMSWatch has published one of the new chapters so you can go over and read it for free. It tackles enterprise IA.
If you are involved in web development and design and have never looked into this book I suggest you do so. The Library here has made the full text of the second edition available online. So now you have no excuses.
The good people at A List Apart have produced a Primer for those new to their site. Even if you're familiar with the site, it's worth taking a look.
If you’re going to build a house—or a website—you need the right tools. A List Apart offers hundreds of articles on design, markup, style, accessibility, usability, and more. We’ve selected a few that you might want to start with. (Think of this guide as one of those reassuring brochures from Lowe’s or Home Depot, but about websites instead of ceramic tile.)
Yum. Berkeley have a web pattern resource for user interface design. I have wanted to develop one of these for us here at Sydney for ages but, alas, you know how these things work sometimes.
If you're interested, there's another pattern resource here,
I am not sure exactly what this proves, except that the page layout of some very large sites looks relatively basic but here is a gallery of some very large sites with all text removed, leaving only graphics.
As we are currently in redesign mode (it's coming, settle down), I thought I would direct you to this piece by Maishi NIchani: The changing face of University websites.
A lot of the points raised will not be new for anyone working on uni sites but it's still worth a read.
The program for the Oz-IA Conference/Retreat has been announced. Get over there and check it out. There's no registration facility or info as yet but perhaps you might like to subscribe to the news feed so you won't miss a thing.
Often web teams have obsessive arguments about whether a scrolling page is ok and if so, how much scrolling is too much? Like a lot of things in web design, the answer is: it depends. (Except with sideways scrolling to which I say: avoid at all costs). You have to consider things like the type of page (homepage, article page etc) and the nature of the page layout itself and whether it leads a user to believe the page should scroll.
Jared Spool has written a short but descriptive and useful discussion on the issue. Go and read it.
Via Column Two.
Via the ever-interesting info aesthetics, a very interesting Flickr group: everyday information architecture. Well, it's interesting for someone who is fascinated with how people organise things...
On the last weekend of September 2006 there will be a conference/retreat on information architecture in Sydney, Australia. We'll have a packed schedule featuring international and local speakers, you'll get to engage with panels, and participate in group sessions. And of course, there's the opportunity to catch up with your peers, network your way to new contacts, and have a good time.
Thanks to Mark Nearhos for the heads-up.
So we think it's hard to design a university homepage? Imagine if your potential audience included the entire country plus quite a large chunk of the rest of the world? And you had plenty of good content to showcase?
You may remember we mentioned the new online strategy of the BBC and the accompanying competition being run to redesign their homepage. Entries have started coming in and you can check them out in a gallery. It is interesting the different approaches taken by people (I was particularly tickled with one person's idea that people should search for things, not be given content up-front. I think s/he needs to put a little more thought into this design...)
More at currybetdotnet.
What makes a good university homepage?
1. Clear pathways to further information
2. An uncluttered interface that serves only the users, not the wishes of every group on campus with a website that wants a link.
3. Clear and consistent branding
4. Pleasing graphic design that appeals to the largest target audience group of the page without alienating other groups completely.
I honestly don't know how long this has been around so it might be old hat. Anyway, UX Mag is worth a look if you are interested in the 'user experience.'
Ok, it's a bit too clever by half sometimes but still, there is stuff there worth reading. I particularly enjoyed the piece Design 101 for programmers.
I have been blessed with working with wonderful techies in my time at the Uni. Generally they have always listened to me, even when I was being more than demanding, and tried to implement what I asked for. They never treated me like an idiot and always accepted that sometimes the interface was beyond them. More than that, they were willing to learn about interfaces. Now I'm not working with them, I miss them. Sniff.
(I also like the treatment of links to stories on UX Mag - much less room for mistakes when the whole box containing the title is a link. Nice).
When I started designing websites it was all about space. That’s how I thought about it anyway. I had a set of information that I had to present logically but I had to factor in how people were going to move around that information. The easiest way for me to think about it was to imagine someone moving through space. They had to feel oriented, that was the key to making your website usable. That is, making people feel comfortable using your website. If they knew where they were and felt comfortable about where they were going all would be ok.
That was in the old days.
Now there’s a whole new breed of websites/applications that make the spatial simile a little redundant, or at least force those of us who think like that to think a bit harder.
The key thing now is connections. It’s about networks and most importantly it’s about how one piece of information or content relates to another and this relationship can be arbitrary.
The biggest influence on this change is the advent of user-supplied content. Of course, for an information architect, the idea of content created on the fly is horrifying. How the hell am I supposed to deal with content that just appears? How can I make sure it all fits together, that it all slots into place? You don’t. They do.
This is even worse. I’m going to leave classification to users? Yes, and you’re going to sit back and watch what they create. And my, what a thing of beauty it is. If you told me 18 months ago that people would be uploading/bookmarking material and CLASSIFYING it and that their classification would work and would spawn even more connections (think RSS feeds from del.icio.us tags) that would create even more content avenues, my mind would have been in melt-down.
Now it seems logical. So obvious it was too obvious to see.
So what’s my point? The way people think about information is changing. They’re not always trying to work their way through systems of classification that are applied, they’re applying the systems. The systems are always in flux. They are open to graphic reprensentations of information. They are classifying their material with an eye on what others do. There is a desire to have their stuff found so they look for tags that fit with those of others. Sure, there are some tags in terms of things like Flickr that are incredibly personal and have no resonance outside of the person who created them but even within those there is consistency. (Check out how many people have tagged their del.icio.us bookmarks ‘toread‘ or ‘toblog‘).
People aren’t operating in a vacuum. They are happy to classify their own material but there is always an eye on the bigger picture. We’re social animals I guess…
In 2001 the Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University carried out a study to determine where users expected to find certain elements on individual web pages. This included search, back to home links etc.
SURL have now followed up this study with another to assess how much the mental model people use when looking at websites has changed. Not surprisingly, they found that the model people used was very similar. Changes in technology had led to some changes in the model but overall there was a large degree of similarity between the results.
Some argue that 'Web 2.0' applications have had the biggest influence on change on the web for a long time. It would be interesting to see this study repeated in a year or two to see if Web 2.0 is really as seismic a shift as some are saying.
You know those spreadsheets we use to do IAs? This Boxes and Arrows article explains how you can take your spreadsheet, shove it into Visio and have it spit out a useful little sitemap. Nice.
I've been rather slack in getting my remaining two posts on Web 2.0 on the blog haven't I? Apologies for that. [Note to self: don't promise posts unless you have completely written them first...]
So, designing websites with an eye on Web 2.0. The changes that I can see are:
The job of the designer is moving away from taking a whole lot of set content and dividing it up logically then creating a site around it. It's more about designing the 'interaction experience' (for want of a better phrase) and also keeping an eye on content. Of course, designers have also designed websites around interaction but now there is a closer fit with the content. The interaction defines more of the site purpose than the content.
If you want more read Dan Brown's Information Architecture 2.0.
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Web 2.0 is the dominant 'meme' in web development and design discussion right now. Like a lot of catchphrases associated with the web it could be dismissed as dressing something old in something new. It also could be seen as one of those terms that means whatever the user wants it to mean. There is a healthy amount of cynicism of the band-wagon-jumping happening at the moment. Like all buzzwords and movements, there is a certain amount of judgement required. Some of the tools involved in Web 2.0 are truly useful and are remoulding the web, others seem to be a hodge-podge of ideas that have very limited use.
There is however a core set of features that are at the centre of the Web 2.0 buzz. The one I want to talk about is that affecting design, namely the effect of user interaction. In the coming week I will follow this post with words on design and adopting Web 2.0 tools in the academic arena.
In the past IAs and others who design websites have been used to carefully laying out the available information, weighing up the needs of users and the strategies of the business and trying to come up with a structure that is user-focussed and also caters to the needs of the business. For examaple, high school students want to find out about the University, the University wants them to apply to study here. The language and structure used to communicate through the website is aimed at the high school students but the actual information comes from the organisation.
Sites designed like this are pretty simple, they deliver information and may provide a low level of interactivity, such as forms and registration. What we are seeing now is a proliferation of sites that provide more than information. They provide functionality, they allow users to create and organise their own content, they provide channels for further investigation and allow themselves to be built upon. A simple example is the use of RSS feeds on sites other than blogs.
The RSS feed took off with the escalation of blog use. Too much information being produced, not enough time to keep track of it. RSS feeds enable the constant monitoring of blogs without actually having to visit the sites. Bookmarks for high-content sites like blogs become redundant. The content is pushed to the user, who has initiated it by activating a 'pull' through their news reader.
Now the RSS feed offers more than a system of tracking content production. Deli.cio.us enables feeds of other's bookmarks, or a feed from a certain tag. For the user this acts as a lever to further investigate, to build upon the bookmark system itself. The feed keeps track of other user's interaction with the site, not the content the site provides.
Feeds from Flickr and other tag-based social applications work in the same way. Users generate content of sorts but it is their interaction with the application that provides interest to others.
An example: I live in Newtown and like to take photos of Newtown and post them on Flickr. I have an RSS feed from the Newtown tag. Any time anyone posts a photo with this tag I know about it. I look at the photos but I also interact with Flickr by posting my own photos, adding contacts, commenting on the photos of others and adding my photos to groups. It's a loose form of social interaction.
Another: I have an RSS feed from the del.icio.us tag 'IA'. Anytime anyone bookmarks something and tags it 'IA' I get notified. I can then investigate the bookmarks of others and find more material for research. Sure, I'm looking for content but I'm not browsing for it. The interactions of others are providing me with a different path to it. It's less labour intensive and allows me to tap into the thoughts of others in terms of classification. We don't all call things by the same name and sometimes you're sprung with some pleasant surprises.
As I mentioned, the idea of browsing the web is becoming redundant. The web has always allowed you to move sidewards, this is the beauty of it, but new tools associated with Web 2.0 allow for a more refined web using experience. It allows for the consumption of more content with less effort. The beauty of this is that a lot of it is user generated. You're not bound by the structure of sites and their connections with others sites (through links etc). You create your own connections and with luck this can lead to sideways movement of thought, building upon the oringial 'sideways' thought that the web allowed. Connection between information is sped up through the interaction of general web users with these new tools.
The really simple thing about this interaction is that it's informed by offline actions. Many web 2.0 tools fulfil purposes that have their roots in things we do in everyday life. They just move it online and thus are able to use the lateral nature of the web.
Sure, we've been able to interact with the web for a while, online banking for instance. These 'web 1.0' interactions were more streamlined, they had a beginning and an end. They had a defined purpose and had no larger context than this single purpose. Web 2.0 interaction is not pre-defined. There is a basic premise but they are able to be built upon. In the words of others they allow for mash-ups, they ask to be hacked, not in a technical sense but in a sense of what they can be used for. Of course, developers have always written ad-ons for software. Now the 'mashing' is happening with content.
Web 2.0 moved beyond the hard core of web enthusiasts long ago. Two mainstream examples: The Washington Post encourages 'mash-ups' of its content and UPenn library provides a bookmarking service that enables users to share their bookmarks using tags. It's high time we took a good hard look at it.
Other reading:
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I've been working towards writing something about the effect 'Web 2.0' is having on how I design sites. So, when I saw Dan Brown's article on the brand-spanking-new UX matters site I thought why bother? In Information Architecture 2.0 he's summed it all up very well and no doubt better than I would have done.
If you fancy yourself as an IA it is essential you read this article. I think that is a strong enough recommendation...
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Sorry, I'm being lazy, just a few links today:
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Last week they received some interesting criticism of their new look, this week the SMH has responded to the complaints.
Whenever we redesign the site or introduce a change to the layout, we’ve come to expect a shellacking from our readers.This time is no different. We've been swamped with emails and public feedback about the changes, many of them highly critical
I am particularly interested in this 'fix':
4. Why do you need to spread stories out over multiple pages?Many sites use this pagination method. However, we've heard you loud and clear on this one and we’re looking into a fix that we think will solve the problem. Stay tuned for more details.
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As many of you will have noticed, the Sydney Morning Herald launched a redesign of their site this week. They went live with the new look in the entertainment section of few weeks ago. It has now been rolled out to the entire site.
Some very interesting comments have been made on the SMH redesign on their news blog. I have to agree with a lot of them, especially the pagination and the treatment of ads.
One very interesting thing was the negative feedback about moving to a drop down navigation and removing the left-hand navigation completely. As we are planning to add drop down menu items from our tabs I think we have done the right thing with retaining the left-hand menu. Obviously some people find that if you can�t see it, it�s not there.
In a follow-up to his piece on Information Architecture for the People, Joshua Kaufman has produced Getting IA done Part II. A very practical and useful article, go read it if you are interested in IA.
I was particularly keen on tip #6: From concept to XHMTL.
Learn to do wireframes in XHTML and CSS. You will save time for those that follow you in the workflow. You will also get regularly brought into later stages of the development that you, as an IA, were left out of in the past.
As someone who has become distanced from the coding process as I have worked more as an IA, I can see the benefits of this. It is important that those designing have some idea about how their designs will be implemented. One of my aims for the next six months is to brush up on my code. (I'm gonna need a lot of help...)
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Welie is a site that provides examples of design patterns. It includes web design patterns, handily categorised into (among others) types of sites, types of interactions, navigation, search and user experience. Very useful if you are stuck for inspiration. And as we all know, there's no point in reinventing something that's already been done before. And there's also the minor point of usability - when users become used to something it becomes a defacto standard. (Is that enough reasons to go and take a look?)
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A small but interesting study of prospective students' impressions of university websites is discussed in this Guardian article. ALthough it focussed on UK university websites it provides some valuable insights into how high school students use university websites and what they are looking for.
The students in this survey were in the first year of A-level courses at Long Road sixth form college in Cambridge and Cambridge Regional College, and had not yet engaged in the applications process - the researchers were after fresh eyes. They were asked for their first impressions: was the site visually attractive, with a good balance of text and pictures? Did it give a good feel for the institution? Did they agree: "This is a cool site"? Was it easy to find their way around?
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The Interaction Design Group has launched a library of resources.
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Today I attended the first half of the "Human Centred Design Revolution Workshop" which showcased the talents of Jesse James Garrett.
For the benefit of others who may be interested, what follows is a brief summary of what he said.
Basically Garrett gave a walk through of his theories around user-centred design. Garrett has been on this track for a while now and a lot of what he said reinforced the ideas in his book, The Elements of User-Centred Design.
Garrett went to great pains to point out that this is not a 'theory' in that it provides answers, or guidelines or even pointers. It's a way of thinking that he believes need to infiltrate the whole development team in order for websites to address user needs well and thus produce a website that is a success, whatever the metrics you have applied to its measurement.
Garrett divides the development of a website into five planes three of which are then each divided into two sections - the web as software and the web as hypertext system. These two distinctions define the unique position of the web in terms of its cousins, software development and media. The web sits somewhere in between. People use it to consume media but they also interact with it and try to achieve tasks, like they do with software. Development then has to take these two things into account.
The five planes move from the conception stage where things are more abstract, to launch where things are definitely more concrete (if they're not you're in trouble!).
The planes are (moving from abstract to concrete):
- User needs / Site objectives- Functional specifications / Content requirements- Interaction design / Information architecture- Interface & navigation design/ Information design- Visual design
Having read his book and sat through the workshop I can conclude that the techniques used by Web Services at least, are user centred and we are on the right track. In further posts I hope to explore the ideas that came from this workshop in terms of how we can improve the way in which we do things at the Uni. If you want to explore Garrett's work further, I have the PowerPoint handouts from today's workshop, plus a print of his one-pager 'Elements of User Experience. The book is available in the University library and Garrett's website provides more information, of course.
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Step Two's KM Column for this month explains "What is information architecture?"
Organising functionality and content into a structure that people are able to navigate intuitively doesn't happen by chance. Organisations must recognise the importance of information architecture or else they run the risk of creating great content and functionality that no one can ever find.
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The SMH has been on the web ten years. They have developed a 'mini-site' to celebrate this feat, including some interesting screen shots from the days of old. (Yes, even the SMH had to start somewhere and my, how the shots show their age.)
An interesting piece of online history, well worth a look. I recommend the article by Des Devlin, specially if you are interested in how organisations deal with sites that have high content turnover and distributed authors. (Sounds like content management to me...)
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A lineup of the usual suspects this week:
Louis Rosenfeld on why IA failures may be good for IA development. I.e. learning from your mistakes. Not exactly rocket science but there you go.
Gerry McGovern on search optimisation (not search ENGINE optimisation).
Gene Smith and his Beyond the Page presentation given at the recent IA Summit in Montreal. This is really worth reading if you are interested in tags, folksonomies and the way in which site like Flickr and Del.icio.us are changing the way we look at web design. it's not just about the tags, it's about interaction.
Sitepoint helps you build round corners on your boxes with CSS.
And there's a beta version of Netscape 8 available for download. One has to ask why, what with Firefox taking over the world...
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Via Column Two, word that IBM is to experiment with folksonomies on their intranet. I am extremely interested in hearing more about this after they have implemented it. An intranet is perhaps the perfect place to try it as in-house language is able to be used, even desired. It may only fall over when someone is new to the organisation. Still, an honourable and exciting idea.
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(This is an except from a previous post, extracted and posted again for clarity).
Following is an outline of how Web Services work with clients to define their audiences and goals. The methods are not rigid or difficult. The key is to change the way that the design of a site is approached, to focus on the audience and ensure that their goals are met. Web Services call these sessions 'IA workshops'.
A design process
The following section outlines the process used by Web Services to design information architecture for University websites. It is not an exhaustive process. Our emphasis is on low-documentation and speed of development. There are techniques which can be used at each stage which we may not necessarily use in every case. The following is a basic process.
Before you start
Before you even being to think about how your site will work there are a number of things you should define.
Know your goals
Your department or area should have a clear goal or set of goals that are generally agreed upon and to which everyone has made a commitment.
What are your goals for your site? If you don’t know why you should have a website it is probably better that you go away and come back when you do know. Do you want to promote a course? Do you want to be able to carry out some of your business on the web? Do you want to reduce the number of enquiry phone calls your department receives?
Know your audience
It is very important to identify all possible audiences of your site so that you can tailor your information to suit them.
Who is your site for? Is it for students, potential students, staff, a broad general audience?
Know what your audience needs
Once you have identified your potential audience, now you identify why they will visit your site. What tasks are they trying to achieve and what type of information do they need to achieve them?
Finding out these things
Usually it is not only one person who decides what the goals are, who the audience is and what they need. There will probably be a group of people who generally agree but who individually may have their own ideas about what the site should do. Sometimes one group or individual is concerned only with their part of the site and not with how it is all going to fit together. Sometimes parts of the site are being prioritised for political reasons.
The job of the information architect is to take in all the points of view, synthesise the information and come up with a solution that will serve both the business (your department or Faculty etc) and the users of the website.
Sounds straightforward huh? Think again…
IA workshopDefining your goals and audience involves getting the stakeholders of the site into a room with a whiteboard and asking lots of questions. Web Services calls this process an IA workshop.
Possible invitees:
There are no rules as to who should be present, those who have most knowledge about the potential audiences and their needs and wants are perfect. Customer support staff are the most useful in IA workshops. If possible, members of the target audiences are also good.
Running an IA workshop
Outcomes of an IA workshop required by the Information Architect:
These things will form the underlying principles of the site design.
Guidelines for running an IA workshop
Leading the discussionExplain that you are trying to identify high level concepts for the website from the meeting, not details such as how the site will be structured or what things should be called. If participants start to stray into the area of actual site structure, steer them back to the aims of the workshop.
Identify goalsAsk the participants to identify the goals of the website. This may require some prodding as people don’t always know immediately what they are trying to achieve.Some example questions to ask:
As goals are nominated, write them down on a whiteboard so everyone can see what has been decided. Also take notes for yourself (or get someone to do it for you).
Identify audienceOnce the goals are identified, ask the participants to identify potential audiences of their site. Write the audience groups on one side of the board, leave the other side free for matching with audience tasks. Try to get the participants to be specific with their audiences, for example ‘current undergraduate students’, rather than just ‘students’.Identify tasksNow, match these audiences to needs and tasks. At this point you need to explain that it is important that the needs of the users, rather than the owners of the site, should dictate. Also, that tasks should be identified, rather than just information.
Example: commencing students need to come to the university for the first time and enrol, what kind of information do they require to complete this task and are there any parts of this task that could be completed online?
It may be difficult to get participants to identify all parts of a task, or it may take a lot of time. If this is the case, make sure t