SU SLIS LIBR287 Updated 01/21/2005

IA Information Architecture
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Define Understand Analyze Shape Create Value

Understand user needs, usability testing, how people 
process information, and how to write for the web

Now that we've cultivated a common vocabulary, and arrived with confidence and collegial support at our individual IA voice...we are beginning to visualize ourselves as active participants in, practitioners of, and important contributors to the emergent profession of IA.  In other words, we are gaining our own, personal grounding in the profession.

We've also arrived at a shared understanding about what Information Architecture is, or isn't (or at least a collegial difference of paradigm about this), and of the various ways we can choose to approach the profession and practice.  Now we turn our attention to who IA serves, and why, and how we serve them.  We turn our attention from self, and profession, to our user.

There are many approaches, and many models/disciplines involved in IA work.  They have one thing in common: the user.  Without them, there is no need to architect.  But, each discipline takes a different approach, and has a different set of assumptions.  Our job, as LIS-based IAs is to transcend those differences, and knit them together.

You are beginning to exercise some of these approaches as you begin work on your project under the guidance of your IA workbook. You should be gaining a firm understanding of who the users of your proposed project are, and why you are in service to them, what you hope to design for them, and have a vision of what you hope their experience will be.  

You have also explored IA as it is encapsulated by the "IA tools of the trade comic book," which you accessed and consumed during our first two weeks together, via the class schedule.

Besides LIS, some other disciplines/approaches to IA include:

  1. Instructional Technology Model (ISM)

  2. Interactive Design

  3. Computer-Human interface (or vice versa)

  4. Narrative (Storytelling)

  5. Cognitive Design

  6. Graphic Design / Communication Theory / Media Theory 

  7. Performance Improvement Theory

  8.  

None of these approaches are "right", and none are "wrong."  They're just different....and represent what we now see as mere PARTS of a much larger picture.    LIS is an overarching, of metadiscipline, and ours is always the larger view.  For instance, while graphic designers are focused on graphics, color, spash and flash, LIS-based IA's keep their eye on the larger picture.

In fact, when one IA project may benefit by one approach, the next project might be better served by another....and these approaches might change as the project progresses.  During phases of development, a single project can move through phases represented by many different disciplines.  It is in our best interest to understand all the possible approaches we attempt to understand this, and do so by focusing on the USER, and cultivating the user perspective.  

Can you classify the various IA Personalities according to their approach to IA?

In this module, our  focus on User Needs and Usability Theory.  Undoubtedly throughout your career as an LIS student, you have investigated how people process information, and how "user needs" and "usability theory" can be used to cross disciplinary boundaries and create common ground for specific project/environments.  

Thanks to our readings, we should also be beginning to recognize the various philosophical approaches to IA, which include linguistic, semantic, syntactic, syndetic, and  metaphoric, among others; and also be starting to recognize procedural, contextual, and conceptual approaches to IA (the idea that LIS occurs at the procedural, contextual, and conceptual levels is developed in Nitecki's Metalibrarianship, which is available on the readings page.) We should be seeing that the different disciplines approach IA from unique philosophical paradigms, and at different levels....but share one common element: the relations among the user, the medium, and the message.   

Visit each of the links below.  Get a sense of their aboutness, and look closely for a philosophical approaches, and underlying paradigms, dominant theory, or procedural/contextual/conceptual focus.  

Also, pay attention to your experience.  Think of yourself as the user, and think in the multidimensional mind we've been cultivating. Do the websites load quickly and without effort...can you feel the presence of an expert coder whose attention is on network performance to the sacrifice of style or substance?  Or, do you feel the presence of a graphic artist, whose focus is on style to the sacrifice of substance?  Or....what else???  Pay attention to your first impression.  what do you like...what do you don't like...why?  Pay attention to your experience.  Think about the experience from another's perspective, and another's...see if you can tune into the image of the user the architect (if there was one) had in mind.   Are the different "ways" of being IA reflected in different types of interface...is one busy, one not so..Does one "style" use lots of graphics, and another doesn't? 

After you've clicked around through these resources, conduct a search for other, relevant websites and scholarly publications (via the library databases)  that address usability and user studies specifically.  Do not limit yourself to the LIS-specific literature (but be sure to include it)...try other disciplines: probe around and look for common ground, and shared boundaries. 

Who is focused on the user...who isn't? 

What is the emergent thought on user studies and usability?   
Has a foundation been firmly planted...or are we really just getting started understanding the user experience?    

Assuming we've all read the core literature on user studies and usability on the reading list, what's new to know?
Share your findings and observations freely in the "Understand" discussion in the blackboard.

 

Understand Assignment

Formulate a brief but powerful academic argument (less than 200 words) about the need for user-focused design (citing appropriate academic sources), then, synthesize  your argument to about 25 jargon-free words that you could elegantly deliver at the water cooler, coffee pot, or on the elevator during an impromptu meeting with your client/boss (or the person to whom you might propose your project.)    Now, rewrite your argument for the web, using the techniques discussed in the IA Workbook.  Post all three in the body of a single message to the "Understand" forum, in the "assignment" thread.    Use subject line: yourlastname, yourfirstname.  Read and comment on other students' posts.

Understand Links

Seybold's Customer.com Handbook: Making It Easy for Customers to Do Business with You
(requires free registration) 
http://www.psgroup.com/main.asp  

Information Architecture: an electronic web guide
http://www.libsci.sc.edu/bob/class/clis748/webguidesf98/informationarchitecture_index.html 

"Practicing Information Architecture" Special Interest Group meeting
CHI 2001.http://keith.instone.org/practiceia/

A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design
http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/

jjg.net IA Resources online
http://www.jjg.net/ia/

Information Architecture and User Centered Design Reading List http://www.eleganthack.com/reading/index.html

http://www.bogieland.com/infodesign/publications.html

User needs and Usability

Brenda Dervin's Sense Making Methodology Web
http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/ 

Usable Information Designs
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june00/06bookreview.html

User-Centered Iterative Design for Digital Libraries, The Cypress Experience
  http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february96/02vanhouse.html 

Bates' Bibliography of Works on Information Seeking, Indexing, and Information Retrieval System Design http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/bibliography.html 

elements of the user experience
http://www.jjg.net/ia/elements.pdf

Usability News
http://www.usabilitynews.com/

The Elegant Hack Blog on Usability
http://www.eleganthack.com/blog/archives/archive-062001.html

Writing for the Web

Jakob Nielsen's research on web writing
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html 

Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321024087  

Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Text for Readers by Karen A. Schriver http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471306363 

"Writing Well for the Web: Quick and Easy tips for Non-writers," Catherine Titta.
  http://www.webreference.com/content/writing 

An Ezine for writers, editors, and others who create content for online media
http://www.contentious.com 

Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767903722 

Plain Language Action Network (PLAN) (part of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government) http://www.plainlanguage.gov/

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