On jig.net, I looked at Elements of User Experience and appreciated a model that could identify not just different areas to address in designing a website, but also as a guide that could be used to assign tasks to different groups working on developing web content while providing a staged model to follow. Jesse James Garrett’s ‘elements of user experience’, as outlined in the introduction to his book of the same title, (http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements_intro.pdf), and in his diagram, (http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf) could prove to be useful tools to understanding this aspect of IA, ‘user experience,’ and its significance in site development.
I also looked over Garrett’s IA reconsidered essay, (http://www.jjg.net/ia/recon/) and found his conclusion that ‘most people who do IA will never be able to focus on it exclusively’ (in Part 5) to be especially revealing, comforting, and thought-provoking. Within libraries, I have already experienced the distribution of seemingly diverse tasks – in addition to an Acquisitions manager, I worked reference, performed some cataloging functions, and shared some OPAC management responsibilities. My colleagues—and especially the professional librarians—were expected to assume the same sort of varied groups of responsibilities, and I imagine practicing information architecture is similar. This seems like it might be especially true in organizations where developing and delivering web content is a collection of tasks distributed to many individuals or groups, like academic libraries. While the end product of a non-specialist, as Garrett calls them, might be less than stellar, I imagine that in the same way we divide simpler copy cataloging functions amongst paraprofessionals and student workers, and original cataloging is handed to professional librarians, the same sort of division of tasks within that thought of as the purview of an information architect might also occur.
Finally, I reviewed Garrett’s ‘Visual vocabulary for describing information architecture…” (http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/), and quickly bookmarked the site for future use. In much the same way that certain chapters of Morville & Rosenfeld’s Information architecture and the World Wide Web will be a rich, practical resource when attempting to carry out the tasks described as ‘information architecture’, so too is this page. In fact, this might have been useful to review before reading Chapter 12 of IA for the WWW, to help more easily understand the diagrams shown as examples.
On Morville’s site, I reviewed the following:
Information seeking behavior – “From Information Retrieval to Information Interaction” by Gary Marchionini – From the development of hypertext onward, it seems that Marchionini argues that interaction with information has become more dynamic; rather than a simple enter-query, retrieve-response method of interacting with information, various forms of interfaces allow users to combine browsing and searching by using faceted navigation, (Marchionini uses Relation Browser ++, or RB ++, to show this). As Marchionini (2004) points out, these new interactive interfaces have changed the face of information seeking, so that “a person with an information problem is best able to meet that need through action, perception, and reflection rather than through query statements alone,” (p. 11).
Structure and Organization – “Depth vs. Breadth in the Arrangement of Web Links” by Panayiotis Zaphiris and Lianaeli Mtei – While a brief article, the gist of it—that broad site design results in more effective use than deep design—is immensely useful for anyone designing the structure of a website. I doubt the conclusions are a surprise to any of us who have become frustrated with moving deeper and deeper into a site without arriving at our intended destinations, but still, it is reassuring to have an experiment the results of which reflect what I had only known through experience and anecdote.
Navigation – “Website Structural Navigation” by Noah Lazar and Michael Eisenbrey – While the results of the experiment recorded in this paper were no surprise, it was interesting to read about the experiment and to see some quantitative data (despite what Garrett might have said on jig.net about those concerned with IA acting the part of scientists) to back up the existence of navigation bars—especially for large sites. As I have found numerous times of late while attempting to pull data from government websites, following a path identified from a series of presets in a navigation bar and resulting menus can often lead to better results (and more speedily) than other functions, like search. This seems especially true on sites where the search function was poorly implemented and the results list is in no way ranked by relevance.
Search – “Bringing Order to the Web: Optimizing Search by Showing Results in Context” by S. Dumais, E. Cutrell and H. Chen – This article, as with the one reviewed above about depth versus breadth in website structure, reinforces a sense I had of design with the outcome of a study. The study is worthwhile in aiding IA work, in that it supports delivering content within context – I would argue both in terms of menus on a site and within search results for any site.
References
Marchionini, G. (2004). From information retrieval to information interaction. Retrieved from: http://www.ils.unc.edu/~march/ECIR.pdf
On Media 7, I noticed a similarity between Martin Howard’s content presentation and the news aggregator we looked at before, at least in terms of centrality of graphics. Since design is clearly the focus here (evidenced by the giant, bold DESIGN near the top of the page), it does not come as any surprise that while context is provided by the menu on the side of the page, the image content of each page takes center stage (without any explanation). The site design is inconsistent, though – by clicking on ‘Corporate ID’, you are taken to an ad-laden page (interestingly forming a frame for the content) that lacks the navigation menu.