Information architecture: Beyond the hierarchy

For thousands of years humans have been organizing information in hierarchies - we start doing it early in life and continue through our careers. So it's not surprising that it is our dominant method for organizing content for websites and intranets.

But there are alternatives, and they can be much more effective. In this presentation we'll discuss when hierarchies are most useful and when an alternative approach is better. We'll look at deliberate approaches such as metadata-driven databases and faceted classifications; and emergent approaches such as organic structures and tagging. We'll examine good examples of each and learn what to consider for our own projects.

Transcript

1. Information architecture: Beyond the
   hierarchy
   Donna Maurer – Maadmob Interaction
   Design
   

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2. IA: Theory & Practice
   Abot me
   • Freelance information architect/interaction designer
    8 yrs
    Website, intranet, business applications
    Design, strategy, mentoring
   • Chair for this year's IA Summit
   • Board member – Information Architecture Institute
   • Committee member – Web Industry Professionals’
   Association
   • Writing a book about card sorting - due late 2007
   (no, probably early 2008)
   

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3. IA: Theory & Practice
   IA structures
   • IA is all about structure:
    The overall shape of a set of information
    Relationship between content chunks
    Organising stuff
    Making it findable and discoverable
   • We’ll look at:
    Hierarchy
    Database
    Hypertext
    Faceted
    Tagging
    A structural pattern for government sites
   

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4. IA: Theory & Practice
   Hierarchies
   • Relationship: broader and narrower
   • Strict hierarchies & polyhierarchies
   • Broad & deep
   

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6. IA: Theory & Practice
   

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8. IA: Theory & Practice
   Hypertext structure
   • No planned structure
   • Linked together in context
   • Good for emerging content domains
   

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9. IA: Theory & Practice
   Database structure
   • Content stored in a database
    May be pages or content chunks
   • Metadata is assigned to fields
   • Metadata is used to assemble content into pages
   • Store content once, display it in many ways
   • Suitable for content with a repeated structure –
   products, articles, weblog posts
   

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13. IA: Theory & Practice
    Faceted
    • Wine.com1
    • Wine.com2
    • Epicurious1
    • Epicurious2
    • NCSU
    

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15. IA: Theory & Practice
    Faceted browse
    • Faceted classification uses a database structure
    • Facets are metadata elements
    • Using facets in browse:
     Start at whatever facet you like
     No keyword necessary
     Never get a null result
     Suits - where users may wish to explore from any starting
    point
    • Using facets in search:
     Start with a keyword search
     Refine based on characteristics present in the results
     Suits - where search returns many results and users want
    to refine
    

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16. IA: Theory & Practice
    A Government pattern structure
    

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17. IA: Theory & Practice
    Questions & thanks
    • http://maadmob.net/
    • 0409-778-693
    • donna@maadmob.net
    • In-house workshops
     Information architecture
     Writing for the web
     Interface design
     User-centred design
    

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