1. IA
Information Architecture
Natalia Shatokhina CS 575

2. Today
What is IA
IA for WWW
Pervasive IA Example

3. Create architecture==Describe the essense
Architecture of a cup
Create architecture==Describe the essense
Open top, for consumption of liquid
Weight and size conductive to being held in hand
Relationship between walls and bottom that allows containment

4. Definition of IA (from “Polar Bear book”)
1. The structural design of shared information environments
2.The combination of organization, labeling, search, and navigation systems within web sites and intranets.
3.The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability and findability
4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape

5. Information organization
What is considered information in definition of IA?
Web sites, documents, software applications, images, metadata…and more
Librarians add value to printed materials by putting them within framework of information architecture that facilitates access to those materials
Information architects perform a similar role but within the context of websites and digital content.

6. “Information ecology” concept
Business goals, funding, politics, culture, technology, resources
Context
Document/data types, content objects, volume, existing structure IA
Audience, tasks, needs,info-seeking behavior, experience
Content
Users

7. IA and other disciplines
Graphic design is not IA
Software development is not IA
Usability engineering is not IA
usability is the study of the ease with which people can employ a particular tool
User Experience Design is:
An umbrella term that encompasses information architecture, usability engineering, graphic design and interaction design as components of holistic user experience

8. IA starts with User
Study user needs and behavior to select user behavior model
Types of information needs
known item seeking
exploratory search
exhaustive search
User information-seeking behavior
Searching
Browsing
Asking
Behavior happens in patterns -> models can be build

9. IA Components Organization systems -how we categorize information
Navigation systems
- how we browse or move through information
Searching systems
- how we search information, e.g executing a search query against an index
Labeling systems
-how we represent the information, e.g.Terminology
Metadata, controlled vocabulary, classification schemas

10. Visualizing IA
search
Navigation
systems
Organization
systems

11. Organization system The grouping of like content together
Provides a way to browse the structure of the site
Schemes:
chronological
geographical
alphabetical

12. Navigation and Search systems
Global
Local
Contextual
Supplemental
Global Navigation
Where I am?
What is related to what’s here?
Contextual
What’s nearby?
Local

13. Labeling system
The interface to the organization scheme - the names of the different categories
Appears in the words in the navigation systems
One of the most important aspects and one of the most difficult to do.
Needs to reflect the content and the user - must be written in user’s language

14. Designing labeling system
labels
The proprietor of this website ditched conventional wisdom, utilizing terminology they knew their users would better understand. In fact, the whole store is premised on this innovative nomenclature scheme, and it's been frightfully successful…

15. Classification schemas
Two classification models:
Faceted (Item is tagged with set of attributes and values and organization of these objects emerges from this classification and from how user decides to access them).
Hierarchical (only one place for an item according to classification scheme)
Category
Subcategory 1
Subcategory 2
Item

16. Faceted classification example
Item = particular wine
Facet
Value
Type of wine
Red, White
Wine Regions
California, France ……
……..
facets

17. Process of IA
Research -> Strategy -> Design -> Implementation -> Administration
Research phase - review background, understand goals,business context, existing IA, content and intended audience
Strategy phase - define the highest two or three levels of the site’s organization and navigation structure. Suggest candidate document types and metadata schema.
Design phase- creating detailed blueprints, wireframes and metadata schema that will be used by graphic designers, programmers, content authors.

18. Research Context Content Users Background search Technology assesment
Presentations and meetings
Stakeholders interviews
Heuristic evaluation
Content mapping
Benchmarking
Content
Metadata and content analysis
Server log & clickstream analysis
Contextual
inquiry
User interviews and testing
Users
Use cases and personas

19. IA iceberg Interface Wireframes, Blueprints Users Needs, behaviors
Metadata, Classification scheme, Thesauri
Information architecture strategies, Project plans
Users
Needs, behaviors
Content
Structure, meaning
Context
Culture, technology

20. Some trends…
Organizing search (collaborative tagging - tag clouds, “I’m feeling lucky” button)
RIA
Information Visualization (newsmap)
Person-based organization : google personalized search
Social navigation (amazon collaborative filtering)

21. Definition of IA (revisited)
The structural design of shared information environments
2.The combination of organization, labeling, search, and navigation systems within web sites and intranets.
3.The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability and findability
4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape

22. From wikipedia “Pervasive computing”:
Future directions: developing pervasive IA
From wikipedia “Pervasive computing”:
……At their core, all models of ubiquitous computing (also called pervasive computing) share a vision of small, inexpensive, robust networked processing devices, distributed at all scales throughout everyday life and generally turned to distinctly common-place ends.
Pervasive IA?
1.Understand of how information is used, how it flows, and how it fits within the user’s world (its context)
2.Create a systematic description of the information content of a given product, service, or environment. (categories…etc.)

23. Pervasive design example (by Maya Design company)
Carnegie library in Pittsburgh
Paper “Designing for a pervasive information environment”: the importance of information architecture”
Goal: to design public library environment
“Pervasiveness” of the situation:
After observing customers and talking with librarians we had much more complete picture of the kinds of information available and how people accessed that information. We discovered for example that information a customer is seeking might reside in multiple media (books, bulletin boards, magazines, microfiche, newspapers, videotapes, posters, electronic articles and other people) in different locations (building , floors, shelves, computers) with different access and organization methods..The variety and complexity of these choices demonstrate the pervasiveness of information in a library

24. References
Information Architecture for world Wide Web, Peter Morville and Louis RosenFeld, O’Reilly, 2007
H.L.McQuaid, A.Goel, M.McManus. Designing for a pervasive information environment: the importance of information architecture, 2003
Wikipedia
Faceted Search (Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services), Daniel Tunkelang.

25. Thank you