REFLECTION PAGE - Lesson 1

.....................................................................
Week 1 - WEEKLY REFLECTION PAGE - Lesson 1

According to Jakob Nielson the architecture that makes up the structure of the internet and websites is important to have been structured optimally and in the most friendly and supportive way for the user otherwise the information becomes a struggle to find and their task for finding things gets bogged down in spoor searching methods, annoying led by numerous failures to find information and users will go to other websites.

Listed on page 4 in chapter 1 of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd Edition, by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld points out the
definition of Information Architecture as:
1. structural design of shared information environments
2. combination of organization, labeling, search, navigation systems in websites/intranet
3. art and science of shaping information products-support usability and findability
4. emerging discipline - principles of design and architecture to digital landscape

A great comparison is given between books and websites on page 6 which basically describes books as physical tangible objects with pages, page numbers, chapters and has a connection to the Dewey Decimal system allowing users to find the object on the shelf of libraries. Whereas, websites are virtual (not three dimensional) having a main page, navigation bar, links, content with a sitemap and index and the borders bleed information alongside columns of information versus chapters.

It was apparent that IA, Information Architecture is a grass roots phenomena sprouting technology such as: labels, taxonomies, vocabularies, metadata, portals and navigation which are all components that the architect of the site being created needs in order to have successful findability on the site. Page 19 goes on to describe the differences between graphic designers, librarians, journalists and that of an IA which while holds some characteristics of all three of these professionals but exudes mostly as: usability engineers, marketing, computer science, technical writers, architecture concepts and strategies as well as product management. (page 20)

Basic content would include: (page 28)
-documents, applications, services, schema, metadata, stuff the make up the site
-Ownership=who creates it
-Format=databases, catalogs, archives, tech reports, MSWord, PDF, video clips
-Structure=systems may be built around the document paradigm
-Metadata=what extent has metadata describing the content and objects been created, controlled vocabularies, metadata entered in manually

.....................................................................