Information Architecture: Part II – Basic Principles

Hans Fredrik Nordhaug © 2006

Objectives
The anatomy of IA Organizations Systems Labelling Systems Navigation Systems Search Systems Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies and Metadata

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The Anatomy of an IA
Visualizing IA
• Look for the IA systems/components – organization, labeling, navigation and search. • Examples:
• Select any site on the web

• Problems: What’s the difference between organization and labeling?

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Alternative categorization of IA
Browsing aids
• Organization systems, site-wide and local navigation, sitemaps/TOCs, site indexes, guides and wizards, contextual links.

Search aids
• Search interface, query language, retrieval algorithm, search zones and results,

Content and task
• Headings, embedded links and metadata, chunks, lists, sequential aids, identifiers

“Invisible” components
• Controlled vocabularies, thesauri, rule sets.
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Organization systems
Challenges of organizing information
• • • • • Information growth Ambiguity Heterogeneity Differences in perspective Internal politics

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Organizing Web Sites and Intranets
Organization systems consists of organization schemes and structures. Organization is strongly connected to navigation, labeling and indexing. Even so, working with organization separately is useful, (possibly) making a fundament for navigation and labeling.

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Organization schemes
Exact schemes
• Alphabetical • Chronological • Geographical

Ambiguous schemes
• Much harder, but useful – we don’t always no the label, related items are grouped together… • By topic, task or audience • Metaphors • Hybrids are common, but troublesome.

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