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

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 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)

5. 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

6. 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

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

10. 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)

11. 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)

12. 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

13. Four common information needs

14. 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

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

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

17. 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

18. 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)

19. 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.

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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.

24. 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.”

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

26. David Rose
ambientdevices.com