New Ideas for IA Readings review - How to manage the process Content Management Process Management - New ideas in design Information Objects Content Genres Web page design review Topic Presentations Review homework Next week’s homework

Managing the process of IA Are there any universal rules for IA process management? - Understanding & involving users - Defining requirements - Design principles Guidelines Technology compliance - Verifying the designs - Deploying the systems What else is universal? How does the process change?

Is it all about the content? Creating content is much easier - Tools & skills Distributing content is less expensive - Anyone can publish (repeatedly) Is more content always better? - Presenting information vs. an information application How do you coordinate all this content? - Creation can outpace coordination - Management of the process is key

Content Management Marketplace CMS use is now a huge business Technical comparisons & field study are part of review Enterprise Content Management is now standard - Full cycle - Production oriented - Delivery oriented

CMS Vendors Documentum (among many products) Interwoven Vignette FileNet Stellent IBM & ORACLE (turn key or custom solutions) What about open source? - Better for smaller projects - More customizable (in less time)

CMS Evaluation Is it enterprise wide usable? What is a typical process cycle time? Is it part of a larger system? Features, Usability and Application Layers? What is the licensing? Does it support metadata & taxonomies?

CMS Advice Know the vendors history & future plans Services cost more than the software Negotiate service level expectations Training takes (lots of) time Involve more than just the CMS IT staff and Ias Test, test, test before you buy

IA for Content Management CM now means Tools + Technology IA has become synonymous with information architecture for the web, but IA is so much more - Content modeling - Reuse - Metadata - Repository structure - Workflow - IA for User Experience (modeling)

So what is Content Management? “Content management is the dynamic organization of information architecture, business management, software and network engineering, content creation, and publications development. If you don’t master each of these areas, CM will fail.” - Bob Boiko We need models for content - Headers, footers, other boilerplate - Semantic information (metadata) - Critical, frequent content vs. additional information

Keys to Content Management Process - Structural reuse - Version control - Creation coordination Technical - Pointers to content, not inclusion - Consistency helps with good design - Reuse Locked Derivative Nested

CMS Design CMS sit on a database & databases do not have a hierarchy, so why do we need to structure them? IAs use the CMS to retrieve information While search and retrieval can be used to find information, logical groupings of content help users to rapidly find content How to structure - Content can appear in multiple places - Consider using multiple groupings of content (e.g., by product, by type of information) - Consider creating reusable content structures (e.g., graphics, product descriptions)

CMS Workflow 1.Determine a starting point for your workflow. 2.Figure out a logical place for the workflow to end. 3.Identify all players from beginning to end of the workflow. 4.Sketch the tasks. 5.Identify interaction patterns among players and tasks. 6.Allocate time frames for tasks. 7.Identify notification patterns-who needs to know what at any given stage of the workflow.

CMS Workflow Cont. 8.Identify approval patterns. 9.Determine all the "what ifs" that may knock your workflow off its path. 10.Once all roles are identified, tasks are sketched, notification and approval patterns are identified, examine your workflow to see if it can be simplified. 11.Repeat these steps for all the workflow processes you need to support your unified content life cycle.

CMS Applied CMS is for all the users, not just the IA & Web Developers CMS becomes the hub of the IA process Users may interact with CMS via dynamic pages or searches Time needs to be taken to architect content for: - Reuse - Retrieval - Tracking - Delivery

Implementing a Pattern Library Yahoo! is drowning in content Teams often develop something new instead of finding & reusing Extra efforts are required User experience on Yahoo! Is inconsistent Communicate standards across the company Increase productivity of the design staff

The solution? A Pattern Library Make a central place for submitting, reviewing & utilizing content Tasks - Understanding & agreeing on the problem - Developing a workflow - Generating organization cooperation - Designing the Pattern Library application - Promoting & Using the pattern library as a standards body

Pattern Library Tips Involve contributors in the project - Contests - Peer recognition - Make part of performance evaluations - Hold training sessions - Defined incentives for management Easy content descriptions *& labeling) - Title, author, rationale… - Standards, links to research…

Pattern Library in Action Test the IA of the CMS application Make it easy to see what/why/who

Content Genres We understand types of content & their uses

Content Genres “a distinctive type of communicative action, characterized by a socially recognized communicative purpose and common aspects of form” - Orlikowski & Yates Genres emerge as a response to purpose Web site designs can serve (too) many purposes - Designing can become a thing unto itself - Designing can get out of control How can we use genres to constrain use & avoide overwhelming users?

Variety of Content Genres

Do we mean templates? Yes, but templates are driven by genres - Why not leverage what users already know? - Can users know too much? Templates are more about appearance, not functionality - Tabs don’t make the most sense - Flipping “pages” - Shopping carts Genres are about content & purpose Presentation suggests how to use the content

Let’s look at some IA tools

Let’s look at some designs