Week 2 - Lesson 2 - Reading & Take Aways

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Assigned : READINGS - This week, read Chapters 3 - 4 from the "polar bear" text.

Book: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web 3rd Edition, by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, ISBN 100596527349


TAKE AWAYS
Chapter 3

USER NEEDS AND BEHAVIORS

(page 30)
-Dangers of oversimplified findability
-information needs vary
-info seeking behaviors vary
-determine these varying needs

-IA's need to understand this and correspond accordingly

(page 31)
Your site's information and usability and findability should match the needs of the site and the users who will use it. IA's need to discover the highest priorities for valuable information: efforts, resources, time and money=design architecture

(page 32)
"too simple"=oversimplifying - must understand what goes on inside the users head.

(page 33)
perfect catch sites packed with data/get what you want right off the first search


lobster trapping you don't know exactly alot about what you're looking for=you search and hope whatever you find will be it

indiscriminate driftnetting you want to leave no stone unturned in your search for info

(page 36)
Figure 3-4. The berry picking model of how users move through an information system=
yahoo type searching=within subcategories

(page 37)
pearl growing user starts with a few good documents and they want more like that.

*Most important is to learn about the users and their needs and behaviors/prioritize architectural components to build around this to your design.


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TAKE AWAYS
Chapter 4

THE ANATOMY OF AN INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

(page 41)
-make tangible
-visualize top down and bottom up
-categorize components-understand and explain IA

Organization systems=present site information in a variety of ways


Navigation systems=help users move through the content menus popular


Search systems=allow users to search the content/interface

Labeling systems=describe categories options links meaningful to user

(page 44-45)

top down information=Try to anticipate users major needs and common questions/design site to meet this

Top down questions:
-Where am I
-I know what I'm looking for, how do I search
-How do I get around the site
-What' important and unique about site organization
-What's available on the site
-What's happening there
-Do they want my opinion about the site
-How can I contact a human
-What's their address

(page 47)

recipe for strong structure='chunked' information/subtitles, directions,

Bottom up = content structure sequencing tagging help answer questions=sequential placement

Bottom down questions
(page48)
-where am I
-Whats here
-Where can I go from here

(page 49)
IA blueprints for navigational routes that support visual design=its visable and invisable that illustrates IA


IA components
Organizational systems-by subject or chronologically
Labeling systems-lay terminology
Navigational systems-browse move thru site
Searching systems-execute queries

(page 50)

Browsing Aids
Organization systems=categorize by topic, task, audiences, chronology
Site wide navigation systems=where they are where they can go=breadcrumbs
Local navigation systems=where they are where they go within a portion of the site
Sitemaps/tables of contents=supplement navigation systems/condensed overview of content areas
Site indices=alphabetized list of links to contents
Site guides=specialized info on site
Site wizards=lead user through a sequential set of steps
Contextual navigation systems=embedded in text links to related content

(page 51)
Search Aids

Search interface=entering and revising a search query
Query language=grammer of search query/Boolean/proximity operators
Query builders=enhancing query performance
Retrieval algorithms=determines which content matches query
Search zones=subsets of site content separetly indexed to support narrower search
Search results=presentation of content that matches the users search query

Content and Tasks

Headings=labels for content
Embedded links=links within text


(page 52)
Embedded metadata=used as metadata but first extracted
Chunks=logical units of content
Lists=groups of chunks or lists of chunks groupd together they share common trait/particular order
Identifiers=Clues that suggest where the user is in an information system


Invisible Components

Controlled vocabularies and thesauri=predetermined vocabularies of preferred terms that describe a specific domain/broader/narrower terms/related terms, scope notes, Search systems can enhance queries by extracting a querys synonyms from a controlled vocabulary
Retrieval algorithms=rank search results by relevance=relfect programers judgements on how to determine relevance
Best bets=which results merits as best results

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