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Information Architecture
Designing and Organising Digital Information Spaces
Part II. IA Building Blocks
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Organization – Labeling – Navigation – Search
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Organization Structures
Hierarchy: taxonomies, top levels, mental model
Database: structured content, metadata, facets, relationships
Hypertext: cross-references, contextual
hierarchy
hypertext
database
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Organization Schemes
Exact
Everything has a place.
Easy to create and maintain.
Great for known-item searches.
e.g., white pages, geography, chronology
Ambiguous
Fuzzy and full of overlap.
Hard to create and maintain.
Great for subject searches, associative learning.
e.g., yellow pages, topic, audience
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Movies
Personals
Quake
Soccer
Games
Chess
Solitaire
Investing
“Consider for example the
proceedings we call games.
I mean board games, card
games, ball games, Olympic
games, and so on. What is
common to them all?”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1945
Philosophical Investigations
Horoscopes
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Rules
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Family Resemblances
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Most categorization is
automatic and unconscious.
solid boxes
green squares
olive blocks
small spheres
orange circles
glass marbles
big mountains
When we define categories,
we choose which attributes
or properties to surface.
blue triangles
hollow shapes
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“Categorization is not a
matter to be taken lightly.
There is nothing more
basic than categorization
to our thought, perception,
action, and speech.”
George Lakoff
Professor, Cognitive Linguistics
UC Berkeley
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Prototype Theory
• Prototype-based categories defined
by fuzzy cognitive models rather
than objective rules.
Family Resemblances
• Members may be related
without all members sharing any
common property.
Centrality
• Some members may be better
examples
Membership Gradience
• Some categories have degrees of
membership and no clear
boundaries
Basic Level Primacy
• A psychologically basic (folkgeneric) level in the hierarchy.
Optimal for learning, recognition,
memory, knowledge organization.
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Robin
Core
Ostrich
Peripheral
Bat
External
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Kingdom Animalia
Animal
Phylum Chordata
Subphylum Vertebrata
Vertebrate
Class Mammalia
Mammal
Grey Dolphin
Order Cetacea
Whales, Dolphins
Suborder Odontoceti
Toothed Whales
Black Dolphin
Bottlenose Porpoise
Cowfish
Family Delphinidae
Genus Tursiops
Species Truncatus
Dolphins, Killer Whales
Basic Level
Bottlenose Dolphin
Bottle-Nosed Dolphin
Atlantic Bottlenose
Pacific Bottlenose
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Sony Clie PEG-NZ90 Handheld
Electronics > Audio & Video
Electronics > Brands > Sony
Electronics > Camera & Photo
Electronics > Computers
Gifts > Over $100
Basic Level
Kingdom
Electronics
Phylum
Handhelds & PDAs
Class
Palm Operating Systems
Family
Sony
Genus
Clie
Species
PEG-NZ90
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Labeling
Types
Purposes
Sources
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Descriptive Name
A name which describes a product, service, or company. Descriptive names, such
as Workgroup Server and Pacific Gas and Electric, have content, but often are not
protectable and typically are not favored by trademark attorneys.
Proprietary Name
A protectable name which one is able to own and trademark, as opposed to a
descriptive name, which is not protectable or ownable. See Brand Name.
Suggestive Name
A name built on or utilizing words or word parts which suggest or refer to the goods
or services, but do not literally describe them. Oracle and Safeway are suggestive.
Suggestive names are often protectable (unlike descriptive names), but may be
weaker as trademarks than coined/fanciful or arbitrary names.
Psycholinguistics
The study of how language is understood and interpreted and how and why the
individual responds to discrete aspects of language.
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Navigation
Support task flow
Provide context and flexibility
Avoid drowning content
Where Am I?
Content Lives Here,
With Contextual
Navigation Inline
Or Separate.
What's Nearby?
Local Navigation
Global Navigation
What's Related
To What's Here?
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Global
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Local
Contextual
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Global
Breadcrumb
Contextual
Local
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Path | Location | Attribute
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Path | Location | Attribute
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Path | Location | Attribute
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Navigation Question
Mark Up on the Paper
What is this page about?
Draw a rectangle around the title of the page or
write it on the paper yourself
What site is this?
Circle the site name, or write it on the paper
yourself
What are the major sections of
this site?
Label with X
What major section is this page
in?
Draw a triangle around the X
What is "up" 1 level from here?
Label with U
How do I get to the home page
of this site?
Label with H
How do I get to the top of this
section of the site?
Label with T
What does each group of links
represent?
Circle the major groups of links and label.
D: More details, sub-pages of this one
N: Nearby pages, within same section as this page
S: Pages on same site, but not as near
O: Off-site pages
How might you get to this page
from the site home page?
Write the set of selections as: Choice 1 > Choice 2
> .... Connect the visual elements on the page that
tell you this.
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Navigation Stress Test by Keith Instone > http://keith.instone.org/navstress/
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Nike.com > North America > USA > NikeRunning.com >
Gear > Footwear > Women’s > Trail > Air Trail Pegasus
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Home

Camp/Hike

Water Treatment

Water Purifiers
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Supplemental Navigation
Sitemaps
Table of contents
Top few levels of hierarchy
Scope / organization
Exploratory browsing
Indexes
A-Z index (back-of-book)
Finely grained
Relatively non-hierarchical
Known-item finding
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The Right Number by Scott McCloud
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Search
“…studies show that search is still the primary
usability problem in web site design.”
Vividence Research: Common Usability Problems
1. Poorly organized search results
2. Poor information architecture
Source: Flexible Search and Navigation using Faceted
Metadata (UC Berkeley SIMS)
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“Most of the complaints we get are due to the way users
search; they use the wrong keywords.”
Manufacturing Manager in Must Search Stink? by Forrester Research
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“I really do see the future in terms of categories and
clicking. The more I watch what's happening with the
evolution of web sites, the more I believe that Search is
essentially an experiment that has failed.”
Jared Spool
http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0302/0297.html
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Search Systems
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/search.html
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Where To Find Me
Peter Morville
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Semantic Studios
http://semanticstudios.com/
Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture
http://aifia.org/
Findability
http://findability.org/
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