Information Architecture and Internet

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Information Architecture and Internet

• Lecture 12

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Summary of Previous Lecture

• The Internet
• History
• Resource that can be shared
• Applications of Internet
• Client/Server Architecture
• Internet Service Providers
• HTML
• Web Browsers

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Summary of Previous Lecture

• Searching the Web
• Tips and Techniques
• Search Process
• Different Web search tools
• Outlook Express

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Todays Lecture

• Intranet
• Webpage and Website
• Web servers
• Static Website and Dynamic Websites
• Purpose of Information Architecture and basic
  problem.
• Common Mistakes
• Information Architecture Defined
• Information Architect

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Today's Lecture

• Main Concepts of Information Architecture
• Structuring, organizing and Labeling
• Finding and Managing
• Art and science
• Library and WWW
• Difference between books and websites
• Difference between libraries and websites
• Different roles of Information Architect
• IA Job and Role

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Todays Lecture

• Why IA matters?
• Example design structure of a University website.
• Structural schemes for website design.
• Navigation system in a website

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Intranet

• A private network of any company.
• Resources are shared within the organization.
• Allows small group of people to access specific
  information.
• E.g. Journals and Articles Access on COMSATS
  Intranet, Not permitted outside.

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COMSATS LAB Intranet Students are using network
Resources
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Webpage and Website

• A web page is one single page of information,
  while a website is made up of a number of
  different web pages connected by links.
• Website is a set of related web pages containing
  content (media) such as text, images, video,
  audio, etc.

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Web servers

• A web server is a computer which host websites.
• Hosted website can be accessible via network such
  as the Internet or Intranet through an Internet
  address known as a Uniform Resource Locator.

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How Does the Web Work?
Server
Folder that your site is saved in
Computers around the world
Your computer
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Static Website

• Visitors are not able to control information they
  receive using static web site.
• Simple Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) based
  website is a static website.
• Contents of the website do not change by itself.

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Dynamic Websites

• A dynamic website is one that changes or
  customizes itself frequently and automatically,
  based on certain criteria.
• A backend database is mostly associated with
  dynamic websites.
• Contents of the website are changed on the change
  in database.
• Users are able to customize their search
  preferences.

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Static Vs Dynamic Websites
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Defining the purpose

• If a website is difficult to use most people
  leave it
• If an Intranet site is difficult to use most
  companies will suffer productivity issues
• Low intranet usability costs the world economy up
  to or more than 100 billion/year in lost
  employee productivity.
• Jakob Nielsen, www.useit.com

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Example of Poorly Designed Website
INFORMATION EXPLOSION
Example of Worst Web Page With Bundle of
Information
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The Problem

• Organizations carry huge volume of day to day
  business data.
• Mostly stored in Database Systems.
• Questions arises how to put data on organization
  web.
• Web Design
• Information Presentation
• Ease of use

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Common Mistakes

• Lot of time spent on efficient information
  storage and retrieval, small time to present it.
• Not using Graphical User Interfacing (GUI)
  properly.
• Unknown concepts related Human Computer
  Interaction (HCI).
• Technical people considered as Business
  Development Managers.
• Let them present information whatever they want.

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Result

• Information search
• becomes cumbersome.

Solution understand Information Architecture for
WWW.
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A big Chaos

• Imagine a book store with organization scheme.
• Thousands of books are simply tossed into huge
  pile.
• Gould's Book Arcade, Australia.

Nearly Impossible to find a book by Topic
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What is Information Architecture?

• The art and science of structuring and
  classifying web sites and intranets to help
  people find and manage information.
• When users look for answers (on your website) and
  find them in the right place you have better
• Sales (e-commerce)
• service (marketing)
• and productivity (good Intranet usage).

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Information Architect (IA)

• The individual who organizes the patterns
  inherent in data, making the complex clear.
• A person who creates the structure or map of
  information which allows others to find their
  personal paths to knowledge.

Woman, R.S. and Bradford, P. (eds). (1996).
Information Architects. Zurich, Switzerland
Graphis Press.
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Information architecture is not new

• Managing and presenting data remained a KEY issue
  in history. For example consider the case of
  Library.
• The Library of Alexandria, in Egypt, was the
  largest and most significant great library of the
  ancient world (330 B.C.).
• It housed 120 scroll
• bibliography.

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Main concepts of IA

• Structuring, organizing and Labeling
• Finding and Managing
• Art and Science

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Structuring, Organizing and Labeling
Granularity refers to relative size or chunks of
information varying levels could be journal
issue, article, paragraph or sentence

• SOL Its what IA is
• Defining granularity and deciding how to relate
  them to one another
• Grouping into meaningful categories
• Labeling means what to call those categories
• How then to decide on the navigation from those
  choices

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Finding and Managing

• Findability is a critical success factor for
  overall usability.
• Users have the option of
• Searching
• Browsing
• Asking
• and if they cant find it then the site fails.

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Finding and Managing

• While designing a website, Information Architect
  must balance the needs of the user and the goals
  of the business (Return on Investment).

But this is hard to do
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Finding and Managing

• Dewey Decimal System
• A proprietary system of library classification
  developed by Melvil Dewey in 1876.
• Greatly modified and expanded in the course of
  the twenty-two major revisions, the most recent
  in 2004.
• Attempts to divide knowledge in classes and
  sub-classes.
• Books are placed on shelf in numerical order.

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Art and Science

• IA must rely on experience, intuition and
  creativity.
• You must be willing to take risks and trust your
  imagination.
• It is often difficult to understand.

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Library and World Wide Web

• In the similar fashion, we organize library
  books, information in web sites can also be
  organized.
• Information Architecture of a Library is
  essential to study information architecture of
  web sites.

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Library, Books and WWW
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Difference between books and websites.
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Difference between libraries and Websites
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Browsing in a Library and Internet for a Book
Both provides ordered book browsing faciltiy
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Different Roles of Information Architect

• Explaining different jobs of IA in his/her own
  wordings,
• IA as Internet Librarian
• I'm an information architect. I organize huge
  amounts of information on big web sites and
  intranets so that people can actually find what
  they're looking for. Think of me as an Internet
  librarian."

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Different Roles of Information Architect

• IA as online merchandiser
• "I am an information architect. I help my company
  by making it easy for customers to find our
  products on our web site. I'm a kind of online
  merchandiser. I apply one-to-one marketing
  concepts on the Internet."

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Different Roles of Information Architect

• IA as Information load organizer.
• "I am an information architect. I'm the one who
  takes on that information overload problem that
  everyone's been complaining about lately."

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Information Architect Job

• IA focuses on the structure or organization of a
  web site.
• How the different pages of the site relate to one
  another.
• It involves such activities as
• Content analysis and planning
• Organization of the pages
• Providing cues to help users orient themselves
• Labeling, search techniques, and navigation
  design

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Information Architect Job

• IA Jobs is not related to
• Graphic Designer
• Scientist
• Software Developers

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Information Architect Role
In typical web design project, the IA is found
between the administrative team and the
development team An important role for the
IA is as boundary spanner between these groups
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Why Information Architecture Matters?

• Several reasons exists, including
• Return on Investment
• Cost of finding information
• Value of education
• Cost of construction
• Cost of maintenance
• Cost of training
• The value of the brand

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Return on Investment

• How much an organization invested on developing
  the web site and what is the possible benefit out
  of it.
• Consider a case in which an organization spent a
  lot of money on developing, hosting and
  maintaining a web site and user feels not
  comfortable with it.

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Cost of Finding Information

• What does it cost if every employee in any
  company spends an extra five minutes per day
  struggling to find answers on the intranet?
• What will be the cost of frustrating the
  customers with a poorly organized web site?
• How many bad decisions are made every day in your
  organization because employees didn't find the
  information they needed?
• How many customers do you lose because they
  couldn't find the product they want on your web
  site?

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Value of Education

• Value of educating the users about new products
  and services on your website is really
  beneficial.
• This is only possible through interactive web
  design.

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Cost of construction

• Cost of designing and building a website.
• How much it will cost when after few months
  later, you decide to change the website because
  it does not support search and does not scale.

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Cost of maintenance

• People who update and manage website must know
  where to put new content and when to remove
  outdated contents on the companys website.

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Cost of training

• How much it cost to train the employees to use
  the website.
• For example a call center website.
• How much a company can save if it is not
  complicated to use.

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The value of the brand

• No matter how beautiful your web site, if
  customers can't find what they need, your brand
  loses value in their eyes.

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Example design of a university website
Home
A1
A3
A4
A6
A2
A5
A7
A8
A9
A10
A11
Key Home A3 Programs A3.1 MIS A3.1.3 Current
curriculum A3.1.3.1 New curriculum
A3.1
A3.3
A3.4
A3.5
A3.2
A3.1.1
A3.1.3
A3.1.4
A3.1.5
A3.1.2
A3.1.3.1
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Structural schemes for design

• Many types of structure scheme to design a
  website can be used, this includes
• Hierarchical (flat and broad)
• Hierarchical (narrow and deep)
• A wheel
• Sequential (an entry way into and an exit from a
  core)
• An organic hypertext structure
• Frames
• Sub-sites
• Database model

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Hierarchical (flat and broad)
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Hierarchical (narrow and deep)
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The Wheel
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Sequential
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Hyperlinked structure
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Frames
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Sub sites
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Database Model
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Types of Navigation system in a Website

• Hierarchical
• The navigation follows the tree structure
• This is a rigid system without linking across
  branches
• Contextual Navigation
• Global navigation
• Can reach any page from any other page
• This has limits depending on the size of the site
• Local navigation
• Can reach any page from any other page in the sub
  site
• Site map

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Site design and basic questions
Where am I?
Where can I go?
What can I do here?
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Summary

• In todays lecture
• We overviewed the essential concepts related the
  information architecture.
• We defined
• Intranet
• Web page and web site
• We understood how to structure the web site and
  how to organize the contents of a web site.
• This is a growing and increasingly important
  subject today.