Customer Reviews

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

What this book does is show you how librarians fit into 21st century. The book does very good promotion of IA itself, and shows why it's important.

The first half of the book is somewhat theoretical and hard to read. However, it's really worth reading. It will explain some concepts (thesaurus, categorization,...) librarians have used for a very long time, and how to easily used them while designing web sites.

The second part is where the book gets more practical and actually shows how to use IA in practice, which was, at least for me, the more interesting part. If you are in any way connected to web development, you should read this book.

The entire book is exactly what it says it is - "Designing large-scale web sites". Although some concepts can be applied to smaller sites, you will hardly find resources to make use of some of the things authors talk about.

There are many books on usability out there, but this one is dedicated to findability. If these terms are new to you, I recommend you read Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" and Jakob Nielsen's "Prioritizing Web Usability" before reading this book. It might make it easier to read, and the book will definitely make more sense to you.

What is information architecture? Actually that is a question that I never really knew until I came across this book. Information architecture (as defined by the author) is the structural design of shared information environments. It is the combination of organization, labeling, search and navigation systems within web sites and intranets. IT is also the art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability and findability.

Does that definition make it any clearer? Maybe a little, but basically it means how to properly design the architecture of medium to large websites (kind of).

Unless you're a senior developer of a large company that has a large website, or are in the process of doing so, you probably never had the first hand experience of how to set the foundation of properly displaying large amounts of data to customers.

The beginning of the book the author explains the importance of Information Architects and how one can gain the experience to be one since there is really no degree or certification at this point in time. The author explains the backgrounds one may need to have to gain the necessary knowledge: journalism, library science, product management, technical writing, etc. To be an "AI", does not mean you have a computer background, it means that you have an understanding of how to use information to convey the meaning they are trying to get across to the customer. Indexing data, organizing data, structuring data are some of the tasks that are needed. It seems to me that it is one of the "unknown solders" disciplines in web development, but it is necessary for a successful site design.

The book also discusses the niches of AI that are popping up recently such as:

Metadata Specialist
Content Manager
Director, User Experience
Search Schema Content Editor

The first part of the book focuses on the anatomy of information architecture. The author goes through many web page examples of showing how to visual information architecture. Showing each sites home page and going through categories such as navigation systems, search systems and labeling systems shows you how important small bits of information can convey a particular question to the user.

The questions could be:

How do I get around the site?
What's important and unique about this organization?
What's available on this site?
How can I contact a human?
What's there address?

Later in the book the author describes different browser aids, search aids, content and tasks and invisible components that an AI can use to help the user get the information they need.

Examples would be:

Browser aids:
Sitemaps, site guides, site wizards, contextual navigation systems, local navigation

Search aids:
Search interface, query language, query builders, search zones, search results

Content and tasks:
Headings, embedded links, lists, sequential aids, identifiers

"Invisible" components:
Retrieval algorithms, categorizing data, specific vocabularies

All of these are discussed throughout the book in an easy-to-read manner so that when you design or re-design a site you can keep these in mind if you can't afford to hire an AI yourself.

A really interesting book that makes you re-think the design of your site!

This is the book you need for designing large-scale web sites, where a well-planned information architecture is absolutely essential. In building effective large-scale websites, as in programming large computer applications, much work has to be done in the preliminary design stage. The early design effort of the information architecture is valuable not only in the building of the successful large web site, but for the future maintainability and revision of this web site.

This classic primer is written by pioneers in information architecture and shows information architects, designers, and web site developers how to build large-scale web sites that are easy to navigate and appealing to users. To accommodate the many web site display options available today, the book also addresses how to design for multiple platforms and for mobile devices.

The authors first lay the background for introducing and defining information architecture and for presenting the basic requirements to be good information architects. Information is defined as different than data, different than knowledge and information-seeking behaviors are looked into before delving further into the study of information architecture.

The components of information architecture are then defined as organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, and searching systems. Organization systems define how we categorize information; labeling systems define how we represent information; navigation systems define how we browse or move through information; and searching systems tell us how we search information. The study of these components in designing the information architecture of our web site comprises a major part of this book.
Conclusion: In designing large-scale web sites, there are a lot of complex relationships between the information involved, the expected users of the web site, the objects involved, the storage of the objects, the search or browse methods involved, and yet many more subjects. This comprehensive book purports to address all (or most all) of the elements and components of information architecture that need to be addressed in designing a large-scale website so that when the web site is completed, it is an appealing and easy to use and navigate web site that users will enjoy, complete their tasks successfully, find their desired information, and return to the site again and again.

In "Part I - Intro to IA," obviously the basics are covered, like what exactly is IA? What does an Information Architect do? After reading this title, I would define an Information Architect as a glorified content manager. Someone that occupies the realm between UI designer and DB engineer.

Google is pretty good at finding information for us on the vast Internet, but there is a long way to go. I believe these authors make a valid point that IA will become increasingly relevant. In fact, I wouldn't doubt that in the future you will actually be able to obtain a BS in IA. Nonetheless, IA is around us everyday when we use technology no matter what we want call it.

The elements that make up IA are covered in "Part II - Basic Principles of IA." The basis of IA is the interaction or retrieval of information in terms of organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, search systems, thesauri, controlled vocabularies, and metadata. What this basically means is, how do we categorize our data so that it makes sense, is easy to navigate and search, and is relevant or adaptable according to our users' vocabularies.

"Part III - Process and Methodology" helps one plan a path to your IA goals. For instance, developing a research management team to discuss such goals, your target audiences, functionality/deficiencies of your current IA system, and integrating other software, such as your customer management system (CMS).

My favorite topic here is the detailed discussion of "building vocabularies." This is something everybody needs to constantly perfect. An example of this is, two people can search for the same thing using two different criteria. How can can we build a vocabulary system that recognizes that?

Many research tools are discussed. My favorite technique, and it's so simple, is card sorting. Get some blank cards (20-25) and write on them the headings from categories, subcategories, and content within your site. Ask a user to sort this stack of cards into piles that make sense to him and have him label those cards using post-it notes. Make sure to tell them to think-out-loud and be sure to take notes. This will give you an idea of how one would "travel" through your site, what is relevant, and what should not be on your homepage, etc.

The authors take the reader through the process of the IA development cycle, from concept, to getting managers to buy-in, to the implementation and administration of the system; very thorough.

The hands-on aspects of IA are explained in "Part IV - IA in Practice." One thing I found insightful was how one could pursue an official education in the area of IA, albeit there is no such degree. To gain a competitive advantage, the authors suggest obtaining a degree in Library and Information Science (LIS) or Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

At the end of chapter 15, there is a list of position titles making up an ideal IA team.
This list may prove helpful for potential readers to get a better understanding of what IA is comprised of.

1) Strategy Architect - responsible for overall design goals and integration

2) Thesaurus Designer - develops classification schemes, controlled vocabularies, and thesauri

3) Controlled Vocabulary Manager - manages the evolution of controlled vocabularies and coordinates the indexing specialists team

4) Indexing Specialist - tags content and services with controlled vocabulary metadata

5) Interaction Designer - creates navigation schemes and page layouts with a focus on user interaction

6) IA Software Analyst - links the IA and IT teams, focusing on ways to leverage software to create, manage, and drive the user experience

7) IA Usability Engineer - focuses on intersection of usability and IA by conducting studies that isolate IA elements, such as category labels or metadata.

8) Cartographer - converts patterns in content, structure, and usage into maps, guides, indexes, and other useful navigational tools.

9) Search Analyst - leads the design, improvement, and ongoing analysis of search system.


"PART V - IA in the Organization" was a little dry for my tastes and irrelevant to me. May be very helpful for someone in a large bureaucratic organization that wants to implement their IA concepts.

The moral of the story is that "site builders" must employ multiple info retrieval methods and tightly integrate them. Everyone searches, browses, scans, and finds info differently; accommodate them.

This book is very comprehensive and even deals with the politics of IA. To me, the book gets a little long at times, but if your life evolves around information somehow, this is an essential read.

I'm a developer building a company-internal website and I'm struggling to organize all the information it will contain. I bought this book hoping to ease that struggle. What I found is for a technical person like me, this book was so useless that it has compelled me to write my first Amazon review in years.

I planned to read it cover to cover. After 50 pages I realized that I haven't really read anything at all yet. So far it's been ridiculously verbose, rambling, and content-free. So I gave up and started skimming.

I couldn't find much better in the remaining pages. Page after page of touchy-feely gobbledygook that has not helped me organize information at all.

There are more useless diagrams in this book than I've ever seen before. For example, the term "synonym ring" is defined as a group of words with the same meaning. Does it really take a diagram with a bunch of arrows in a circle to explain that? (Figure 9-2)

To explain the concept of equivalence we have another diagram: "A=B" inside a circle. (Figure 9-21) Does such a diagram really enhance anybody's understanding of the concept of equivalence? Why does this diagram even exist in the first place?

Maybe some business or consultant type might get something out of this book. For a developer, run away. Fast.

This 3rd edition is only 44 pages longer than the second edition, versus the doubling in size that occurred between the first and second editions. I found part one on the introduction to Information Architecture a nice tutorial for the uninitiated. It basically explains what IA is and is not and talks about user needs and behaviors and various models. Part two is great for those interested in concrete methodology. Particularly good were the chapters on navigation systems and on search systems. There's some very practical information on thesauri and metadata included in chapter nine. Likewise, part three was very practical information for practitioners. It covers the phases of research, strategy, design, and documentation in detail with many practical pointers. Parts four and five, on the practice of IA and the use of IA in the organization is not very helpful for professionals - they already have the education, got their foot in the door, know IA's role in the organization, and know how to make the case for IA to management. The one exception to this assessment of sections four and five was the chapter on enterprise IA. I found it full of interesting information. The final section, on case studies, contained two very interesting examples of how IA fits into real organizations versus the fluffier content of the previous two sections. Overall, I would recommend the book in its latest version to IA practitioners, since it takes what could be a very dry subject and makes it interesting and very comprehensible. Just realize that parts of it seem to be written to web designers thinking about transitioning to IA and to students rather than IA's that are already in the trenches. A good companion book for this book is "Ambient Findability". The following is the table of contents:

Part I. Introducing Information Architecture
1. Defining Information Architecture
A Definition; Tablets, Scrolls, Books, and Libraries; Explaining IA to Others; What Isn't Information Architecture?; Why Information Architecture Matters; Bringing Our Work to Life;
2. Practicing Information Architecture
Do We Need Information Architects?; Who's Qualified to Practice Information Architecture?; Information Architecture Specialists; Practicing Information Architecture in the Real World; What Lies Ahead;
3. User Needs and Behaviors
The "Too-Simple" Information Model; Information Needs; Information-Seeking Behaviors; Learning About Information Needs and Information-Seeking Behaviors;

Part II. Basic Principles of Information Architecture
4. The Anatomy of an Information Architecture
Visualizing Information Architecture; Information Architecture Components;
5. Organization Systems
Challenges of Organizing Information; Organizing Web Sites and Intranets; Organization Schemes; Organization Structures; Social Classification; Creating Cohesive Organization Systems;
6. Labeling Systems
Why You Should Care About Labeling; Varieties of Labels; Designing Labels;
7. Navigation Systems
Types of Navigation Systems; Gray Matters; Browser Navigation Features; Building Context; Improving Flexibility; Embedded Navigation Systems; Supplemental Navigation Systems; Advanced Navigation Approaches;
8. Search Systems
Does Your Site Need Search?; Search System Anatomy; Search Is Not an IT Thing; Choosing What to Search; Search Algorithms; Query Builders; Presenting Results; Designing the Search Interface; Where to Learn More;
9. Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and Metadata
Metadata; Controlled Vocabularies; Technical Lingo; A Thesaurus in Action; Types of Thesauri; Thesaurus Standards; Semantic Relationships; Preferred Terms; Polyhierarchy; Faceted Classification;

Part III. Process and Methodology
10. Research
Process Overview; A Research Framework; Context; Content; Users; Participant Definition and Recruiting; User Research Sessions; In Defense of Research;
11. Strategy
What Is an Information Architecture Strategy?; Strategies Under Attack; From Research to Strategy; Developing the Strategy; Work Products and Deliverables; The Strategy Report; The Project Plan; Presentations;
12. Design and Documentation
Guidelines for Diagramming an Information Architecture; Communicating Visually; Blueprints; Wireframes; Content Mapping and Inventory; Content Models; Controlled Vocabularies; Design Collaboration; Putting It All Together: Information Architecture Style Guides;

Part IV. Information Architecture in Practice
13. Education
Transition in Education; A World of Choice; But Do I Need a Degree?; The State of the Field;
14. Ethics
Ethical Considerations; Shaping the Future;
15. Building an Information Architecture Team
Destructive Acts of Creation; Fast and Slow Layers; Project Versus Program; Buy or Rent; Do We Really Need to Hire Professionals?; The Dream Team;
16. Tools and Software
A Time of Change; Categories in Chaos; Questions to Ask;

Part V. Information Architecture in the Organization
17. Making the Case for Information Architecture
You Must Sell; The Two Kinds of People in the World; Running the Numbers; Talking to the Reactionaries; Other Case-Making Techniques; The Information Architecture Value Checklist; A Final Note;
18. Business Strategy
The Origins of Strategy; Defining Business Strategy; Strategic Fit; Exposing Gaps in Business Strategy; One Best Way; Many Good Ways; Understanding Our Elephant; Competitive Advantage;The End of the Beginning
19. Information Architecture for the Enterprise
Information Architecture, Meet the Enterprise ;What's the Goal of EIA?; Designing an Enterprise Information Architecture; EIA Strategy and Operations; Doing the Work and Paying the Bills; Timing Is Everything: A Phased Rollout; A Framework for Moving Forward;

Part VI. Case Studies
20. MSWeb: An Enterprise Intranet
Challenges for the User; Challenges for the Information Architect; We Like Taxonomies, Whatever They Are ;Benefits to Users; What's Next; MSWeb's Achievement;
21. evolt: An Online Community
evolt in a Nutshell; Architecting an Online Community; The Participation Economy; How Information Architecture Fits In; The "Un-Information Architecture";

This is a perfectly good resource, if you're looking for the theoretical underpinnings of how IA should work. I was, however, looking for more specifically technical information, along the lines of algorithms and integration techniques. For this I ended up going with Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications, which is more geared in that direction. Again, if IA is your whole intention, then this is a great resource, but if you're looking for technical detail, look elsewhere.

This book really opened my eyes, as I haven't really thought about Information Architecture as a discipline, which is probably a natural thing for me, as I am a programmer. What I found intriguing about this book is the "take a step back" approach by the authors to analyze a business's overall strategy for user experience. This forces the product owner to ask: how should users find things on this site? What kind of things would I want to find as a user? How can the site's navigation be improved to promote easier searching? The answers to these types of questions and help your Information Architect begin to formulate on overall architecture strategy.

After a good introduction to what IA is, the authors take the reader through the basic principles of this discipline. In this section, the authors discuss organization and labeling of systems, navigation, and searching. In the third section of the book, the authors go into the practice of actually implementing the principles in the previous section. Finally, the authors examine case studies from two different sites, where they examine how IA fit into the overall goal of the application.

I felt this book gave me a basic understanding of what Information Architecture is, and what types of things to look out for in developing an IA strategy. I would recommend this book if you have large amounts of data you want web users to have access to.

Although this book does provide a nice overview of the field of IA, it provided me with very little useful information in regards to advanced IA techniques and practices. The few bits of useful information that I found we're sandwiched between pages upon pages of common sense, no-brainer techniques.

If your a beginner in the fields, or an outsider hoping to learn about IA, perhaps you might benefit from this book. If you've been in the industry for awhile, I'd suggest getting your IA info from a better source. Information Architecture: Blueprints For The Web is a good one. So are Defensive Design for The Web, and Getting Real, by 37 Signals.

Very good book that has some really good sections on IA documentation, planning navigation, and good tools for putting things to gether. All chapters have plenty examples of web sites so you can visualize what is being taught. This book was used in an IA class I took recently.