Structure and Function: IA for Web Applications

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 2 Structure - IA with content In a content-only site, the user interface is easy, the information architecture is hard Lots of things topics with different sub-structures grows, hard to know how it’s going to expand but it’s understood

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 3 Function - UI for applications For desktop applications, the information architecture is easy the user interface is hard lot’s of different actions a user can take they interfere with each other effect of actions needs to be clear to the user but it’s understood

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 4 How is UI different on the web? Supports more tasks at once lots of domain-specific tools, not one general purpose tool Supports different tasks shopping, communication, decision-making Combines traditional tasks with more things

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 5 Typical Web applications Shopping, for simple and complex products Decision-making Auctions and marketplaces Verticals - applications embedded in portals Process tracking, workflow, negotiations Status tracking

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 6 Structure of this talk Team structure for these projects How users and their intentions are different Common IA challenges in a Web application Object structure Navigation Other Basic Advice

Teams and Collaboration

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 8 User Interface Designers Design the task flow, and thus the page flow Design page-level interaction Bring a lot of knowledge about human-computer interaction Collaborate on: information display page layout navigation

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 9 Are you being a UI Designer? Are you: choosing where to put info and buttons on a page deciding when to show users info and when not designing task flow If so, learn the user interface domain as well

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 10 Building a team Typical design team: UI Designer, Information Architect, Visual Designer Useful people: Ethnographer, technical writer, usability tester Be flexible in ownership of tasks Be collaborative in the design process Be clear about inputs and outputs

Different Audiences, Different Goals

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 12 Who are the users? People at work Trying to make money Trying to save money Users often aren’t the people who buy the system People at home doing something important

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 13 Same questions, different answers Frequency of use all day, every day Level of domain expertise often deep Language jargon is extensive and important How optional is it, what happens if it fails not very - either it’s important or they are forced

Common Challenges

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 15 Information limits task Structure of things and their attributes sets what is possible IA needs to see how the info interacts, flexes Know what users should change, when, why Guess what tasks the information allows that haven’t been thought of Overlaps with a DBA role

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 16 Information limits task If the user can’t enter it here, it can’t be chosen, searched on

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 17 Information affects understanding The user’s mental model is made of things, their attributes, and what can be done to them Make relationships between attributes sensible, obvious Know what attributes will be compared in trade-off decisions Have the UI surface interaction between attributes, the effects of actions

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 18 Information affects understanding

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 19 Keeping users in a task Ubiquitous navigation increases the chance for mistaken moves Collapse general navigation use sequence nav Avoid related links on the pages for a task Use pop-ups for honest side tasks Try to make tasks short On a web app, users WANT to stay on task

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 20 Keeping users in a task sequence navigation with collapsed global nav- MetaDesign

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 21 Navigating between tasks Some tasks need instant access at all times need to understand the user’s day and mix of responsibilities Some tasks are related and grouped need to know the user’s more general intention to decide connections between tasks Tasks are less likely to expand than lists of things horizontal navigation often works

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 22 Navigating between tasks Switch between sourcing, buying, and looking for partners Switch active orders and adding new ones, rarely

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 23 Flexible navigation Different situations demand different navigation Looking for a task vs. completing a task finding a thing vs. finding a task different users, with different roles and permissions Some of this is in the “global nav”, some is an issue of links that appear or don’t appear

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 24 Flexible navigation Buyer has a different navigation than the agent

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 25 Navigating tasks and sub-tasks Use pop-ups judiciously If the sub-tasks are optional, highlight the typical next step Design a good multi-level sequence navigation This is tied to the UI area of task flow, but determines pages and structure

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 26 Navigating tasks and sub-tasks Effective use of pop-ups helps support sub-tasks -MetaDesign

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 27 Look for a thing, then choose a task The e-tail model, but often have more tasks Have the right tasks available at the right level in the object hierarchy What can I do to a class of objects? What can I do to one object? At what point do you have matrix navigation

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 28 List of things with actions attached Look for a thing, then choose a task

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 29 Maintaining tasks over time Many tasks extend over days and weeks Have workbench for user’s tasks, what they are responsible for Display status and provide access, due dates Notification of events, with or on that workbench

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 30 Maintaining tasks over time Workbenches monitor and provides access

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 31 Searching an application Users are looking for how to do a task, not for a piece of info Many pages should not be searched at all Heavy use of meta-tags rather than full text search Search is often part of a task, not just navigation

Basic Advice

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 33 Task-focused research Can’t rely on card-sorts Listening in context is often the only way to find jargon Different groups of users are different Collision repair shops differ in how they order parts, who does it, what they call the tasks

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 34 Wallow in the information Things, attributes, and relationships have a huge impact Things define tasks Tasks determine things

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 35 Start IA and UI at the same time UI (page flow) controls IA below the top level Both need to learn the same stuff, work on the same design problems Knowing the things requires knowing the tasks

Innovate - For What’s Next™ ©1999 Scient, Proprietary and Confidential Page 36 Is this information architecture?