Amazon.co.uk Review
With a swift and convincing stroke, the authors of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web tear down many entrenched ideas about Web design. Flashy animation is cool, they agree, as long as it doesn't irritate the viewer. Nifty clickable icons are nice, but are their meanings universal? Is the search engine providing results that are useful and relevant? This book acts as a mirror and with careful questioning causes the reader to think through all the elements and decisions required for well-crafted Web design. --Jennifer Buckendorff
Troy Swanson, Internet Reference Services Quarterly, Winter 2001
Major Keary, Book News Feb 2002
Product Description
Some web sites "work" and some don't. Good web site consultants know that you can't just jump in and start writing HTML, the same way you can't build a house by just pouring a foundation and putting up some walls. You need to know who will be using the site, and what they'll be using it for. You need some idea of what you'd like to draw their attention to during their visit. Overall, you need a strong, cohesive vision for the site that makes it both distinctive and usable.
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web is about applying the principles of architecture and library science to web site design. Each web site is like a public building, available for tourists and regulars alike to breeze through at their leisure. The job of the architect is to set up the framework for the site to make it comfortable and inviting for people to visit, relax in, and perhaps even return to someday.
Most books on web development concentrate either on the aesthetics or the mechanics of the site. This book is about the framework that holds the two together. With this book, you learn how to design web sites and intranets that support growth, management, and ease of use. Special attention is given to:
- The process behind architecting a large, complex site
- Web site hierarchy design and organization
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web is for webmasters, designers, and anyone else involved in building a web site. It's for novice web designers who, from the start, want to avoid the traps that result in poorly designed sites. It's for experienced web designers who have already created sites but realize that something "is missing" from their sites and want to improve them. It's for programmers and administrators who are comfortable with HTML, CGI, and Java but want to understand how to organize their web pages into a cohesive site.
The authors are two of the principals of Argus Associates, a web consulting firm. At Argus, they have created information architectures for web sites and intranets of some of the largest companies in the United States, including Chrysler Corporation, Barron's, and Dow Chemical.
About the Author
Peter Morville is President and Founder of Semantic Studios, a leading information architecture and knowledge management consulting firm. From 1994 to 2001, Peter was Chief Executive Officer and a co-owner of Argus Associates, a pioneering information architecture design firm with world-class clients including 3Com, AT&T, Compaq, Ernst & Young, Ford, IBM, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and the Weather Channel. He also served as Executive Director of the ACIA. Over the past 8 years, Peter has written and spoken extensively about information architecture, business strategy, and knowledge management. He has been interviewed by Business Week, Knowledge Management magazine, MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal.
Lou Rosenfeld is an independent information architecture consultant. He has been instrumental in helping establish the field of information architecture, and in articulating the role and value of librarianship within the field. Lou played a leading role in organizing and programming the first three information architecture conferences (both ASIS&T Summits and IA 2000). He also presents and moderates at such venues as CHI, COMDEX, Intranets, and the web design conferences produced by Miller Freeman, C|net and Thunder Lizard. He teaches tutorials as part of the Nielsen Norman Group User Experience Conference.
Excerpted from Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In this chapter:
The Role of the Information Architect
Who Should Be the Information Architect?
Collaboration and Communication
Information Architect: 1) the individual who organizes the patterns inherent in data, making the complex clear; 2) a person who creates the structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal paths to knowledge; 3) the emerging 21st century professional occupation addressing the needs of the age focused upon clarity, human understanding and the science of the organization of information.[1]Richard Saul Wurman
The Role of the Information Architect
Now that you know right from wrong from the web consumer's perspective, you're in a much better position to develop a web site. But besides needing a sophisticated knowledge of what works for consumers of the Web, what's actually involved in creating a web site?
Obviously, you need HTML pages. Maybe you'll grab a good HTML book or a decent HTML editing package. Maybe a high school kid can do the trick for peanuts. What about the copy for those pages? It needs to come from somewhere--perhaps existing brochures and documentation; perhaps it needs to be written from scratch. You'll also need some graphic design expertise to make sure that the pages are laid out with effective use of text, white space, and attractive images. Of course you'll need a server that is connected to the Internet; this you can lease, or you can buy one of your own. If you do, just be sure to hire someone sufficiently technically astute to administer that server. Perhaps that person should also write the CGI, Perl, ActiveX, Java, and other scripts that make the site interactive. What's missing? Maybe a project manager to make sure all these folks work together to develop the site without running behind schedule and over budget.
So now you're all set to design your web site, right?
Well, not quite. What's missing from this picture is a definition of what the site will actually be, and how it will work.
This may sound obvious, but for most web sites, it's true: design and production storm ahead without any unifying principle to guide the site's development. A web site essentially can be anything you want it to be and could cost millions of dollars, take years to complete, and cost thousands of lives to develop. To avoid such overkill, it will need to be defined somehow: it will need a definition.
That's the main job of the information architect, who:
Clarifies the mission and vision for the site, balancing the needs of its sponsoring organization and the needs of its audiences.
Determines what content and functionality the site will contain.
Specifies how users will find information in the site by defining its organization, navigation, labeling, and searching systems.
Maps out how the site will accommodate change and growth over time.
Although these sound obvious, information architecture is really about what's not obvious. Users don't notice the information architecture of a site unless it isn't working. When they do notice good architectural features within a site, they instead attribute these successes to something else, like high-quality graphic design or a well-configured search engine. Why? When you read or hear about web site design, the language commonly used pertains to pages, graphic elements, technical features, and writing style. However, no terms adequately describe the relationships among the intangible elements that constitute a web site's architecture. The elements of information architecture--navigation systems, labeling systems, organization systems, indexing, searching methods, metaphors--are the glue that holds together a web site and allows it to evolve smoothly. To a novice, this terminology is not very clear. These elements are extremely difficult to measure, and therefore even harder to compare. You really have to spend time using a site and get a feel for it before you can confidently talk about a site's information architecture.
Yet, we know these things are important. How? Well, consider your responses to the Boot Camp exercise in Chapter 1. How many of the likes and dislikes are not related to technical issues, copy editing, or graphic design? Remaining issues are probably tied to information architecture. Although perhaps indirectly, a poorly planned information architecture will adversely affect those other areas.
Well-planned information architectures greatly benefit both consumers and producers. Accessing a site for the first time, consumers can quickly understand it effortlessly. They can quickly find the information they need, thereby reducing the time (and costs) wasted on both finding information and not finding information. Producers of web sites and intranets benefit because they know where and how to place new content without disrupting the existing content and site structure. Perhaps most importantly, producers can use an information architecture to greatly minimize the politics that come to the fore during the development of a web site.
