Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I had been looking around for a book like this for some time now: one that guides me through the crucial conceptual design phase of web site development. Most books on web site design are really about user interface design. This book offers a top-down planning approach to getting from the recognition of a need for a web site through to the final working design. It plugs up a lot of the gaping holes that topic-specific design texts leave open.

The over-riding concern and emphasis in the first section of the book is on how to organize the information on the web site in such a way that the target audience can readily get at it. To this end, the authors focus on three 'systems' that need to be developed, implemented and coordinated on a web site: a navigation system, a labeling system and a searching system. Once these systems are thought through and designed then the rest of the work becomes a matter of filling in the information content, functionalities and the bells and whistles.

Clear, concise and even a bit humorous, this book will definitely give you a peace of mind if you find yourself a bit overwhelmed at times when deciding on just how you will approach building a web site.

A book on web design written by librarians. Skeptical? So was I. But darned if they don't hit the ol' web design nail right on the ol' head. (Okay, they're not really librarians - but both authors come from a Library Science background.) When I started on my Interaction Design masters degree, there wasn't anything written sepcifically about it. So my education was based on other fields - architecture, rhetoric, psychology, graphic design. Now we're starting to see some good Interaction Design books coming from experts in those other fields.

The strength of this book is its emphasis on defining a navigable structure for a site. It covers structure, navigation, searching/browsing, and this is the first book I've seen that spends a whole chapter on button and link labelling systems. It's added labelling to my ID vocabulary.

I do agree with another reviewer who wanted more in-depth examples, but with enough web experience it's easy to come up with examples on our own. So I gave the book the fifth star.

This and Jennifer Fleming's Web Navigation (both O'Reilly books) are must-haves for web designers.

This book can easily be divided into 2 sections. The first is an overview of how and why information is organized. The second is how to apply that information when planning and designing a large website. To the author's credit, they took a potentially dull topic and actually made it interesting. I would have appreciated less background and theory and more practical advise on how to plan a website though. There are some gems in this book, but you really have to dig to find them. Since there is really no "hands on" advise this is a good book to read while traveling. If your designing a large enterprise website you would be wise to read at least the second half of this book...especially if you are in management.

The basics of information architecture must be understood by anyone designing a web site. Granted, some people intuitively know these basics, but for the rest of the world, this book will introduce you. Coming to IA from the highly organized world of library science, the authors know the ins and outs of making information available in an easy to use organizational system. Obviously, anyone going into IA should read this book; it's considered a standard. It's not a bad idea to loan it to your content developers and coders, too, though. If they know a little better where you're coming from when you suggest ways to organize information and pages, they may be more receptive to your suggestions. The only drawback is that the sites used for examples are a bit dated now, and there are some innovative things being done currently with navigation that aren't covered here as a result. Get this book now, and if they come out in a year or two with a revised edition, take a look at the new examples.

Today many Website design technologies and rigid content requirements have made Web development a more demanding task. Although there are many fine Website design books around to assist Webmasters, a return to the basics of design layout is in serious order.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web offers readers the guidance they need to design Websites that are easy to manage, navigate, and expand as mission requirements change. Rather than discussing strict HTML and Web graphics design, the authors focus upon the actual mapping out of Websites to insure that they are properly structured and will deliver content in an efficient and orderly manner.

Rosenfeld and Morville outline the main job tasks of the information architect and the disciplinary background they should possess or cultivate. They cite backgrounds in library science, journalism, engineering, marketing, graphics design, and computer science as essential disciplines to be embraced. When brought together and put into practice they will perform important roles in developing an eye and mindset for successful Web development.

The authors discuss important Website design considerations such as the productive use of screen real estate, navigational bars, frames, pull-down menus, and other features that can be employed to effectively deliver Website content. Although this line of instruction is not the main emphasis of the book, the brief addressing of these features assist readers to gain added perspective of the overall strategy of delivering, you guessed it, Web content!

Readers are instructed to perform thorough research to determine answers to questions such as: What are the goals? What can your clients afford? Who are the intended audiences? Why will people visit a site? What types of content should and should not be part of the site? Answers to these and other questions should be determining factors throughout the entire Web development process.

Readers will find the discussions involving brainstorming extremely helpful. This activity should be of major concern during the Web development process. The use of boards, flipcharts, mockups, design sketches, developing prototypes, metaphor exploration, creating scenarios, and structured blueprints can greatly enhance the entire development process.

Reading this book will be for many a refreshing and stimulating experience. Readers will gain valuable behind-the-scenes insight necessary to successfully design Websites that not only look good but perform well to achieve intended goals. Good HTML, programming language scripts, and flashy Web graphics are not enough. Pick up some solid visionary thinking skills. Highly recommended!

This is another example of a book I wished I'd known about a year or so ago. I'm an amateur web designer and up until just recently maintained web sites for three different volunteer groups. Now one of them has decided to get another person to run the site. If I'd known about the concepts presented in this book, I might still be running it! The book discusses how to organize the content on a wbe site and covers a lot of areas the average site designer might not consider on first glance. There's nothing more frustrating than being in the "middle" of a site and "getting lost" with no way out other than to start over. While this is an extreme example, too many sites suffer from navigational problems.

This book offers choices on how to organize the information on your site, various ways to design it, the types of systems you can use to search for specific data on the site, researching and planning it (with a great outline on what you should include in your research), and the business of creating and maintaining your design. The book's authors stress the importance of keeping everyone in the process involved in it at all times, as well as pointing out that just because you finally finished it does not mean your job is over! There's always the job of keeping the site as current as possible.

Anyone responsible for maintaining a site (even if it's just your own) should take a look through this book.

Overall, this book is good beginning read in the field of information architecture. For anyone interested in the topic, my recommendation would be to do additional reading. The authors provide an excellent bibliography at the end of the book which could serve as an excellent point of departure for the student of IA.

As far as the readibility of the book is concerned, it is easy to read although the authors bear responsibility for poor grammar and sentence structure in certain parts of the book. It is my opinion that this doesn't make the book less valuable as a resource.

A couple of other points about the book that bear mention. The authors used the example of the Henry Ford Health System Web site throughout the book. This is a great example. There are a few other examples used in the book However, I think the authors could have provided even more examples. My recommendation for the authors would be to provide the public with a second, more detailed edition. Remember this book was published in early 1998. We've come a long way since then and the web is replete with examples of good architecture.

Overall: Thumbs Up!

a DEFINATE ASSET for ANY role in website development- from the project managers, designers, to even developers- it would even be a good book for clients who want results or are working closely with the agency developing content for their site. i am going to ask my boss to buy this book for everyone at work! this book reinforces many basic website organization "rules" while offering many that i never thought of- all to help me have a fresh approach to organizing websites and interfaces each time i begin a new project at work. it teaches you what to look for to constantly learn while working and visiting other sites. i've been to one of louis' seminars and would also reccommend you to go to one!

In an e-world crowded by a cobweb of sites, one could surely do with some information architecture. This book is the first step toward understanding the importance of IA in the success of a site.

The most endearing part about the book is the fact that the authors have not overlooked the practical difficulties. It's easy to preach theory, it's darned difficult to put it in practice. Thanks to their many years of experience, the authors hand out quite a few useful tips to iron out those real-world wrinkles. In Chapter 3 (Organizing Information), for instance, the authors deal with tackling internal politics of the organization so that the site doesn't reflect "the strong undercurrent of politics."

The authors have kept a very wide spectrum of readers in mind. In their words, "...we wrote this book to be accessible to anyone who has used the World Wide Web more than once or twice." That's the reason why anybody who has anything to do with the Web will find this book helpful. And that's also the reason why those who dream in pixels and drop-down boxes may not get satiated. But then, a good starter is as important as the main course. I'm sure Rosenfeld and Morville are putting together a delectable fare for the main course. I'm waiting. And drooling...

There's a reason all the famous web-design folks recommend this book. It's still about the only book that addresses the design of _information_, and it still does the job very well.

O'Reilly has become justifiably famous with its user-friendly technical volumes, but this one is a bit of a departure. There isn't anything in here about how to code anything; there are no handy lists of functions or commands for easy reference. What there is is a thorough, focused but wide-ranging discussion of the issues facing someone who wants to make electronic information usable and accessible via a website.

(That includes database design, by the way. There isn't all that much detail and it's in the context of making websites searchable, but there's good discussion of e.g. controlled-vocabulary terms and how users actually look for information.)

The overall approach is refreshingly big-picture: the authors emphasize, for example, navigation _systems_ and labelling _systems_ (rather than just "labels"), and they devote an entire chapter to "conceptual design." No wonder, three and a half years after its initial publication, it's still the standard reference work in a field that usually puts books out of date overnight.

And no wonder Jakob Nielsen thinks well enough of it to write the foreword. If you know who Nielsen is, you probably already have this book; but since none of the information on this page credits his contribution, it can't hurt to let readers know.

Ostensibly devoted to websites but generally applicable to any context in which electronic information has to be organized, this book should be somewhere on the shelf of every IT professional. If you like Steve Krug's _Don't Make Me Think!_ (as I do), you'll like this one too -- maybe better. (Krug's book is a good one to show your boss; this is a good one to read whether your boss sees it or not.)