Information Architecture IBE312 Ch 3 – User Needs and Behaviors & Ch 4 The Anatomy of IA 2013

Information Architecture The combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within an information system. The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content. The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape. Some notes from Morville

Things that Information Architects do… Understand user and system requirements Design (and build) organization, navigation, and metadata systems Evaluate the user experience Figure out if it works Figure out what’s needed Build it Design it (compare with physical architects)

Why is IA Important? Cost of finding (time, frustration) Cost of not finding (bad decisions, alternate channels) Cost of construction (staff, technology, planning, bugs) Cost of maintenance (content management, redesigns) Cost of training (employees, turnover) Value of education (related products, projects, people) Value of brand (identity, reputation, trust)

Why is IA Important? (examples) Employees spend 35% of productive time searching for information online. Working Council for Chief Information Officers The Fortune 1000 stands to waste at least $2.5 billion / year due to an inability to locate and retrieve information. IDC Poorly architected retailing sites are underselling by as much as 50%. Forrester Research 50% of web sales are lost because customers can’t find content fast enough. Gartner Group Content on a typical public corporate website grows at an 80% rate annually. The CMS Report

Most Common Usability Problems Poorly organized search results 53% Poor information architecture 32% Slow performance Cluttered home pages 27% Confusing labels 25% Invasive registration 15% Inconsistent navigation 13% Vividence Research The Tangled Web Vividence found poorly organized search results and poor information architecture design to be the two most common and serious usability problems

Ch3 User Needs & Behaviors How information needs vary How information seeking behaviors vary How and why to learn more about info seeking behaviors

Misconception: finding information can be addressed with a simple algorithmic approach So we think we can measure the experience of finding by how long it takes, or how many mouse clickts it takes, or how many viewed pages it takes to find the ”right” answer when there is no right answer. (p.32) Search Analytics – should have both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Web stats + user provided (task analysis, surveys, focus groups)

Information needs – fishing metaphor The perfect catch – looking for a specific fact Lobster trapping – looking for more than just a single answer. Hope whatever ambles in will be useful. Indiscriminate driftnetting – leave no stone unturned on a topic. Exhaustive search. I’ve seen you before, Moby Dick…- tag it so you can find it again. Bookmarking (del.icio.us)

Type of needs – fishing metaphor The perfect catch – know item seeking – know what you are looking for Lobster trapping – exploratory seeking – learn something from the process – a few useful items – open ended – springboard for new searches Indiscriminate driftnetting – exhaustive search- want everything I’ve seen you before, Moby Dick…- need it again – refinding a piece of useful information - tagging

Four common information needs

Precision vs. Recall Everything = Recall-oriented Searching Orthogonal concepts: A few good things Exploratory seeking Known-item seeking Users’ Needs Organization Systems Navigation Systems Page Layout and Design The right thing = Precision-oriented Searching

Information seeking behaviors Integration – do searching, browsing and asking in the same finding session Iterations – do it in several cycles to refine findings

Berry-picking: search and browse and search… After search – you can browse a sub-category After browsing – you can search

Ch 4 Anatomy of IA Visualizing IA & categorizing components Organization systems Navigation systems Search systems Labeling systems Well designed IA is invisible to the users

IA components Organization systems – content categories –categorize information (subjects, chronologically) Navigation systems – help users move through the content –browse or look through information Search systems – allow users to search the content (query, index) Labeling systems – describe categories, options and links to language that is meaningful to users (controlled vocabularies, thesauri)

Aids Browsing aids – organization systems, site-wide and local navigation sitemaps/TOC, site indexes, guides, and wizards, contextual links. Search aids – search interface, query language, retrieval algorithm, search zones and results Content and task – headings, embedded links and metadata, chunks, lists, sequential aids, identifiers, ”Invisible” components – controlled vocabularies, thesauri, rule sets.

Where am I How do I search for it How do i get around this site What’s important What’s available What’s happening here Do they want my opinion How can i contact a human What’s their address

A different type of page – bulk of the page points to content elsewhere Where we are Helps us move to others related pages Helps move through site hierarchy Helps manipulate content for better browsing Getting help 1 5 4 3 2

Bottom-up IA – content structure (e. g Bottom-up IA – content structure (e.g. recipe format), sequencing, tagging – help answer where am I, what’s here, where to og from here.. Find what I need from middle without learning the top-down organization.

Findability “Findability will eventually be recognized as a central and defining challenge in the development of web sites, intranets, knowledge management systems and online communities.” Peter Morville, The Age of Findability “A case of librarians trying to muscle into the usability field with their own spin…findability is just a subset of user-centered design.” http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/002595.php

Ambient Findability surrounding, encircling, enveloping the ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime

David Rose ambientdevices.com