WEBSITES - review the following:
IA Institute
The IA Institute is an international organization that provides IA education and services. Their digital library is a great resource.
IA Institute is a global organization that supports the specializing in the design and construction of shared information environments. IA is a leader in valuable education, advocacy, services and social networking for information architecture and they provide a framework for member to improve skills as a professional.
They define IA as:
1. The structural design of shared information environments.
2. The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability.
3. An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
The site is broken up into a home page which populates automatically with sections for Member Center, Join IA Institute, Newsletter, Job listings, and a Journal section. Main tabs : Member Services, IA Network, Learning IA, About us, Events, Grants and Email Discussion List. It has a bright visual design of a simple white background with grey lettering and bright blue text headers indicating they are links.
It is hosted by Dreamhost with a link at the very bottom for About the site which was updated April 4, 2007 albeit the Homepage at the bottom lists. 2008.
It does have a browse and search option alongside select a language which listed many, many languages.
The tab that most interested me was the Learning IA tab.
This tab had a plethora of links and information all about IA education, research, resources, translations and again a lead into The Journal of Information Architecture.
At further investigation there was a IA Library link which I of course had to check out.
Subjects were alphabetized: Accessibility, architecture-buildings, branding, business context, business strategy, case studies, classics, classification, more subjects. And then there was Resource Types: articles, papers, blogs, columns, journals, books, organizations, conferences, mailing lists, presentations, and tool.
When I clicked on Journals, it displayed a host of journal both available print/online versions. One in particular struck my interest: findability.org which was a very interesting site about IA but kind of looks like a blog and put out by Semantic Studios.
This site is well laid out and easy to navigate.
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IA Summit - This is the annual conference on IA.
iSummit
A catchy title but I don’t like the colors right off the start. Muted greens and a pepto bismol pink. I say no to the colors. However, it’s user friendly and simple to navigate. About us: IA Summit is a community or place where IA professionals to collaborate, share info and the discipline at a conference which was apparently in April of 2008 in Miami, hence the colors I imagine. I think if they added imagery of pelicans or something, it would lend itself to the Miami theme better.
I do like the little hand holding a card albeit redundant but with text of the name of the section in the menu. What did catch my eye was the section called Crowdvine. It’s a section of active member, pictures of them, links to their sites and the title really stands for Crows Vine. Very interesting site but lacks interesting graphics which coming from IA, I really expected a little more visually.
All in all, the conference itself would be very interesting to attend.
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Semantic Studios - Peter Morville's IA consulting firm. There are many excellent IA related articles on his website.
Semantic Studios
This site is an information architecture and user experience consulting firm led by Peter Morville who helps clients worldwide.
After clicking on the first link user experience deliverables (maps, stories, proverbs, prototypes, comics, treasures) … this picture was the first thing that I saw and I laughed aloud. The Semanitcs sections on the bottom left has sections, titles are links and just below the title it describes what types of information can be found inside the link.
It was a short scroll which was nice. It is aggravating to scroll down for a long time. However, there is a lot of white space to the site=unused landscape.
And interestingly enough, they advertise findability.org toward the bottom of the site.
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2Advanced Studios - This is an example of a state-of-the-art Web Design firm that utilizes IA concepts and strategies.
2Advanced Studios
Progressive Design Technology
I absolutely fell in love with this site. The graphics are captivating and impressive with small font simple and ‘electronic looking’ or ‘robotic looking’, I feel like I am about to launch off the planet in a rocket.
The digital atmosphere exudes the professional and advanced capabilities this team has to offer. They specialize in high impact media experiences adhering to progressive design and technology combined where every client has new potential.
Several links takes me to various examples of things they can create. The background segues into a blur while a central box pops up showing different icons. The segues between different backdrops which I believe the oriental one is new to me since I last saw this site. It is saved in my list of cool sites.
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