RELFECTION PAGE - Lesson 6

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"A picture is worth a thousand words"

This weeks readings basically lay out a path to make the transition from all the IA's hard research and strategy building for the design of the site into the actual beginnings of final prototypes and visual lay out of what is going to be made.
Terms like : concrete artifacts, controlled vocabularies and metadata, wireframes, and working prototypes all come into play now. The IA isn't alone in making and finalizing all these decisions. It is best for the IA to set up in person and face to face meetings to discuss "the invisible web" that is unfolding.

The IA will want to provide multiple views of the structure which can be too complex to show all at once. It is easier to break it down into segments and components for the groups of people who are signing off approval to see and understand the pieces that will fit together in the end to make the site.

It is important to develop the various strategic views of the IA structure and it's components for your audience's needs i.e. "communicate upstream for the corporate and stakeholders" that are in the meeting as well as "communicate downstream for designers and developers".

It is best to communicate visually all of the content components by grouping them together into a sequence so it makes sense to whom is viewing at that meeting.
Make connections between content components so that the viewers can visually see how the pages will fit together and how the flow of information will unfold.

The readings recommend that the IA create 'deliverables' and some examples of support layouts were given such as Microsoft's=Viso or Omni Group's OmniGraffle for Mac users
A fascinating site offering different ways to present your IA information.

Blueprints are a great deliverable tool that show relationships between pages and other content components. The rule of thumb is'less is more'. Wireframes are another great deliverable tool which depicts an individual page or template from an architectural perspective such as how to order them or which groups of information have priority. These are the kind of things that the meetings will hopefully help the team determine, approve and sign off on so that the site can begin to be made.
There are some simple guidelines for wireframes such as: consistency, charting tools support background layers, callouts-notes, page numbers, page titles, project titles, last revision date and wireframe steward. Content Modeling determines priority, forces us to choose metadata attributes and encourages following the Pareto Principle of 80-20 rule. Controlled Vocabularies helps you to walk clients through difficult decisions of making the site searchable. A basic Design sketch heps give style to the guide document that explains how the site be organized, show the why's and who it's for. Some basic standards to follow as rules include: rules for maintaining site, some guidelines for the IA about how it should be maintained, as well as maintenance procedures of regular tasks for the survival of the site.

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