Information Architecture as an Extension of Web Design : Comments
February 17, 2005
Comments
This article refers to another one – Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus by Curt Cloninger. Though I must admit that Joshua tries to find some common grounds between info architects and designers…
This kind of essay is very helpful for those of us who don’t have that kind of either/or luxury, but must be all things to the sites in our care. Thank you from a wearer of many hats.
Elsewhere it is suggested to call this type of IA work "IA Lite", but I propose to call it "Guerrilla IA." assuming it will allow webdesigners to prepare for a more structured approach to (more) IA processes, methods and tools.
I appreciate this article because I too wear both hats in many projects: IA and interface/user experience design. It’s helpful to see the two disciplines described in a way that respects the individual professions.
geof
I wasn’t aware that a rift existed between Web designers and IA. In my experience, the two have always gotten along quite well and always enjoyed working together.
While I learned more about standards compliant HTML/CSS I started doing some IA automatically (I know now!). I think it is hard to code good HTML/CSS without practicing IA.
Great article…I think that I actually learned something today.
For most small business doing in-house design like myself, I do not have the luxury of having someone else do the IA. For this reason, it is important to wear these 2 hats, plus many more. And if you don’t know how to IA properly, you’ll learn quickly which makes the web design side blend it so much nicer.
White hat? Black hat? What hat?
My god, that
Excellent article!
I wished I could email this article to my previous employer! I had to leave a company as a web designer, due to working with an IA who totally controlled everything – to the point where he even moved my mouse on my behalf, for being a know-it-all. I’m now very happy at a new company where there is an understanding of integration between IA and design.
Thanks for an interesting article! Now I guess I have to reconsider my routine work and my attempts on web-design…
“As a preliminary exercise, it’s perfectly fine to group the pages into categories in order to develop a navigation scheme. But after this exercise, you should ask some potential users of the site to do a card sort. A card sort is an exercise used to find out how people group things, and what names they give those groups. It’s as easy as 1-2-3:
Write down the names of all your pages on pieces of paper.
Ask the participant to group them, creating subgroups if necessary.
Ask the participant to name the groups.”
Print, hang on the wall, learn, stick to it.
Thanks!
With warm greetings from Saarbruecken, Germany,
Vitaly Friedman,
http://www.alvit.de/vf/
This article is very interesting.
I have to an essay concernning this article. I am someone who doesn’t know alot about web design, and macromedia. This article would have been much more helpful for my computers2 class if you would have explained it more.
I completely agree with Confused. I also have a simmilar essay, and feel it should have been explained better. Otherwise it was excellent.
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