Margaret%20Hanley

1
Introduction

• Margaret Hanley
• Business Analyst/Senior Information Architect BBC
• Worked on three continents Australia, USA and
  UK
• Been both a consultant and internal staff to
  companies like Sensis (Yellow Pages in
  Australia), Argus Associates (US), Ingenta (UK
  and BBC (UK)

2
IA Tools and Deliverables

• Some IA tools
• Deliverables to go with them

3
IA tools

• It depends
• Based on what you want to do, achieve and the
  amount of time you have

4
One example

• The BBC health site
• Needed to be re-organised but there was no budget
  for external consultants or user testing
• Only had 2 weeks
• What to do?

5
One example

• 2 week timeframe
• Business Context Interview the editor and the
  team working on the project to identify goals,
  users and any changes that will happen within the
  next 6 months
• Users Identify existing personas, do card sort
  with BBC staff who meet the persona profile
• Content do content analysis of the site
• Deliverable - New top-down structure with
  labeling that was acceptable to team

6
Second example

• 3 months
• Come up with a new way to think about Internet
  Directory structure
• What to do?

7
Second example

• Business context
• Interview opinion leaders
• Interview stakeholders
• Read business plan
• Users
• Test with internal users of the system
• Search log analysis
• Content
• Analyse the directory structure
• Do competitive analysis

8
Second example

• Deliverables
• Report
• Results of all parts of the methodology
• Project Plan for the next phase of development

9
Difference between the two

• Health web site
• One person (though experienced)
• Two weeks
• Known problems with known solution

• Directory
• Four IAs
• 3 months
• Unknown solution required lots of thinking

10
Types of methods - Users

• Card sorting (open and closed)
• Deliverable Top-down structure with site map
• Bench marking and task based testing
• Deliverable Understand problems with the site
• Common tasks and problems identified
• User interviews
• Deliverable Users mental models, understanding
  their environment
• Persona development, scenarios and tasks
• Deliverable modeling typical user so that the
  user can be referred to within the design
  process wireframes, task flows

11
Types of methods - users

• Search log analysis
• Deliverable most common words, types of facets
  entered by actual users what is cannot be found
  easily on the site
• Server log analysis
• Deliverable understand how the user currently
  moves through the site
• Prototyping
• Deliverable A tested design before the actual
  development

12
Types of methods - content

• Content inventory
• Deliverable list of content in the site, to
  know what is there
• Content analysis and audit looking through
  existing content
• Deliverable way to understand the connections
  and patterns between content
• Comparative analysis
• Deliverable identifying best features and
  elements of existing sites
• Content modelling
• Deliverable content objects or templates for
  pages

13
Types of methods - context

• Opinion leader interviews
• Deliverable business objectives and measures
  for the site
• Stakeholder interviews
• Deliverable what is or is not working now what
  has been tried already
• Workshops, advisory committees
• Deliverable commitment to the same vision for
  the information architecture solution

14
Deliverable task flow

• Process Flow for
• Customer Interaction

15
Deliverables - affinity diagramme
16
Deliverables - wireframes
17
Deliverables rules of thumb

• You create deliverables for someone
• Yourself
• To communicate with the client, design team or
  development team
• Create deliverables with them in mind dont
  overdo them
• If possible negotiate at the beginning of the
  process what is exactly required for it to be
  implemented, discussed or designed

18
Thank you

• Questions or comments?
• Margaret Hanley
• mairead_at_yahoo.com