s510: introduction to information science fall ‘14 designing information architecture: theory and...

S510: Introduction to Information Science Fall ‘14

Designing information architecture: theory and practice

I. IA as theory

• Information interaction as a basis for IA

• Information shape and semantic space

• Cognitive work analysis

II. IA practice

• What do IAs do?

• What do IAs have to know?

• IA deliverables


I. IA as theory

Information interaction: Providing a framework for information architecture

Toms believes that there is a gap in our understanding of how we interact with information technologies

The model of information interaction can address this gap and provide a theoretical basis for IA

~What is an example of a way in which a web interface enhances the information task? Of an interface that hinders an information task?

~Apply the concept of information interaction to your use of a web site - what happens?


I. IA as theory

Toms argues that the initial focus should be how people interact in information-rich environments

Interaction: situated action with an IS involving querying, browsing (filling a gap in HCI)

Primarily use of GUI with some command line work

We “immerse ourselves” in info

IA enables access by providing a systematic and primarily visual approach to the organization of

content

IA facilitates the quest for informationToms, E.G. (2002). Information interaction: Providing a framework for information architecture. JASIST, 53(10), 855-862.


I. IA as theory

How information interaction (II) occurs

We can come to a system with an “information task”

Problem-solving: we go through a patterned process and end with a relevance judgment

We can also have chance encounters, encounters with information, scanning activities

These are less patterned but still end with some type of judgment

Then we browse, navigate, search, evaluate…

II is the basis of the person’s use experience and is shaped by web technology


A model of information interaction

Formulate goal: object or purpose

Select category: approach system and select search term

Note cues: landmarks

Extract information

Integrate information

EvaluateToms (2002; 658)

I. IA as theory


I. IA as theory

Spatial semantics and individual differences in the perception of shape in information space

Dillon argues that information spaces have shape, meaning that we perceive these spaces using a combination of structural cues

Using a sociocognitive approach, IAs can improve the design of these spaces by attending to spatial and

semantic affordances that are relevant for the audience

~ In what ways do you interact with the semantics of digital information spaces?

~ Based on this article, what should IAs do to improve the design of information spaces?


I. IA as theory

Problem: users experience disorientation in navigating large digital spaces to locate and use information

Complexity can overwhelm users’ abilities to filter and represent spaces in ways that allow navigation, seeking and use

The primary response has been to focus on visual display and the manipulation of interface variables

This is good for building usable artifacts but does not explain why interface characteristics produce the results that emergeDillon, A. (2000) Spatial semantics and individual differences in the perception of shape in information space. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(6), 521-528


I. IA as theory

A major source of cognitive overhead for users is the need to navigate complex information spaces

We use knowledge of genre and semantics to infer structure

This ability varies with expertise and experience

Semantics are crucial to the process through which a discourse community learns to shape its interactions over time

Design solutions attempt to reduce the load on short term memory with visual cues

They should also focus on semantic space because it is also important for users


I. IA as theory

A better approach focuses on spatial and semantic information, particularly on individual differences

Because when tasks are computerized, differences between users are increased, not reduced

Differences that matter

Deep, relatively constant psychological processes

Spatial ability or memory span

Knowledge-base differences are more transient and subject to alteration with training and experience

These interact to affect the user’s ability to perceive structure or shape in information space


I. IA as theory

How it works

A user perceives an information display and creates a dynamic working model of the information space based on current contents and format

Relevant spatial attributes combine with activated memories of just-processed information

Semantic attributes of the information genre applied top-down

Result: a continuously updated and modifiable dynamic representation of the space for a task


I. IA as theory

A case study of collaborative information retrieval

Fidel et al use a “cognitive work analysis” approach to conduct a case study of collaborative IR to uncover the factors that influence people's information behaviors

After contrasting psychological, social, and multidimensional approaches to information

behaviors they focus on the human-information interactions that occur in people's routine work activities

~ How does collaboration in the workplace influence people's information behaviors?

~ What is the advantage of using cognitive work analysis to study ways people use information in the workplace?


I. IA as theory

Recent activity has focused on theoretical development in human-information interaction

Critical: what is the set of variables that matter when considering this interaction?

Prior work as focused on a single dimension

They use a naturalistic approach to uncover the factors that make a difference in this type of II

They found that the factors that influence CIR are in different dimensions that interact with each otherFidel, R., Pejtersen, A.M., Cleal, B. and Bruce, H. (2004). A multidimensional approach to the study of human-information interaction: A case study of collaborative information retrieval. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(11), 939 - 953.


I. IA as theory

The prevailing approach in information behavior research in LIS is psychological

It focuses primarily on cognitive factors and less on others, such as affective and perceptual factors

How cognition shapes IB

Allows quantification and measurement, and prediction

The objects of study are cognitive states and processes in relation to information behavior

Important concept is “information need”

Problem: ignores sociocultural, organizational, and technical dimensions


I. IA as theory

The social approach focuses on social, organizational, and political states and processes as impetus for IB

Focuses on the social context, interactions, and discourse through which II occurs

Does not consider “information need” as central to the understanding of IB

The study of IB cannot be based on isolated individuals, or outside a specific context

Problem: research with the social approach offers few descriptive generalizations about information behavior


I. IA as theory

Multidimensional approach assumes IB takes place in complex contexts

Also that we are goal driven

The better this complexity is understood and analyzed, the more relevant the outcomes of research will be to the design of information systems and services

Requires flexible methods to understand information seeking and use in context

Studies using this approach typically focus on a specific group of people, in a certain context, performing a particular task


I. IA as theory

They use “cognitive work analysis”

Based on general systems thinking, adaptive control systems, and ecological psychology

Focus on work activities, organizational relationships, and constraints of the work place

Also actors’ cognitive and social activities and values, priorities and personal preferences performing tasks on the job

It is a holistic approach that makes it possible to account for several dimensions of IB and CIR


I. IA as theory

Component used here is the “decision ladder”

First: analyze the situation to understand problems and circumstances involved

Second: evaluate options, considering possibilities and consequences of each option

Third: make a decision and plan how to carry it out

Dimensions

Environment, work domain, organizational analysis

Task analysis in work domain terms; in decision making terms; in terms of strategies that can be used

Actor’s resources and values


Designing information architecture: theory and practice

I. IA as theory

• Information interaction as a basis for IA

• Information shape and semantic space

• Cognitive work analysis

II. IA practice

• What do IAs do?

• What do IAs have to know?

• IA deliverables


Information architecture without internal theory: An inductive design process

Haverty argues that IA as a profession is characterized by a lack of theory and that because of the way peoples work, the process must be inductive

This approach better allows the IA to understand the relationship between site structure and the user experience

~ What does it mean to describe IA as constructive induction?

~ In what ways would IA benefit from theory?

II. IA practice


Haverty argues that IA must be inductive

It does not have an existing body of theory which typically guides the work of a field

Theory constrains acceptable solutions through formal validation

Without it, IAs tend to treat each problem as novel

Also, it supports emergent phenomena

The IA domain has a small set of initial components and a relatively simple set of rules

These lead to a large number of complex patternsHaverty, M. (2002). Information architecture without internal theory: An inductive design process. Journal of the ASIST, 53(10), 839-845.

II. IA practice


IA as constructive induction

This is a process for generating a design solution using two intertwined searches

First: identify the most adequate representational framework for the problem

Second: locate the best design solution within the framework and translate it to the problem at

hand

CI is useful when existing theory cannot adequately explain the object of study

II. IA practice


Steps of CI

1. What are the basic design problems for the system?

Determine goals, vision, business and other requirements

Decompose the problem

Each requires a design solution

Haverty 2002, 841.

II. IA practice


Steps of CI

2. Find a framework for each design problem

Identify a solution within the framework

May involve looking at work in other fields

Each requires a design solution

Haverty 2002, 841.

II. IA practice


Steps of CI

3. Translate solution into a context of the current design problem

This is a creative step

Involves understanding the original concept and knowing how to repurpose it

Haverty 2002, 841.

II. IA practice


Steps of CI

4. Integrate solutions into an overall IA

Validate the solutions against the original high level goals and objectives of the site

May involve member checking and usability work

•Haverty 2002, 841.

II. IA practice


II. IA practice

How has the job of the web administrator has changed over time

Several years ago, a “webmaster” would

Plan and develop the site

Design web pages

Hand code HTML

Write scripts and programs

Create content

Configure, maintain, and secure the web server

Today, these tasks are a smaller part of the jobhttp://www.boyscouttroop261.org/Webmaster.jpg


II. IA as practice

These days

Coders mark up the pages

Content developers write the pages

Graphic designers create the images

Programmers and database designers manage the back end

Technicians configure, maintain, and secure the computer equipment

http://jceo.org/_uploads/web%20team.JPG


II. IA as practice

And the web site administrator

Describes how the site should be organized

Describes what a web site ought to look like

Explains how it integrates into an overall management or marketing strategy

Manages web designers and developers

The job has evolved into more of a management position

What has it become?


II. IA as practice

These days most large scale information design projects are done by teams

In the team, the IA plays a key role

IAs are deeply involved in web design but can work with any type of information design project

Software, game design, educational CDs

It is a professional role in web design and the design of digital media collections

IAs are responsible for developing and selling the overall structure and organization of the site


II. IA as practice

http://www.xmlbystealth.net/images/NY-69194-full.jpg


II. IA as practice

The evolution of the web site development has been in the direction of greater specialization

Technical

Managerial

Conceptual

Database designer

Programmer

HTML coder

Graphic designer

Content developer

Information architect

The company


II. IA as practice

It is a professional role in web design and the design of digital media collections

IAs are responsible for the overall structure and organization of the site

Involves organizing a site’s content into categories and creating an interface to support those categories

Also designing navigation and searching systems to help people find and manage information

A systematic, user-centered question-based process for creating digital products to communicate meaning and improve users’ performance


II. IA as practice

What should an IA know?

LIS: information organization and access

Computer science: programming and databases

Usability engineering: how people use the site

Graphic design: developing imagery to support the site’s mission

Writing: to explain to peers and decision makers

Psychology: understanding the intended audience

Marketing: developing the site so it can be sold to its intended audience


II. IA as practice

What else does an IA have to know?

Interaction design: creation and maintenance of tasks and processes that users will encounter in an information space

Project management: strategies, skills, and procedures to organize, lead and bring tasks to closure

Content management: processes, policies, and procedures governing the creation and

transfer of content

Knowledge management: processes, policies, and procedures that govern the organization’s

use of its “intellectual capital”


II. IA as practice

What does an IA do?

Planning: what are the main goals and strategy for the site?

Given the constraints what can be done?

What are the relevant content domains?

How are these domains related to each other?

What is the structure of these relationships?

Designing: what arrangement best supports the structure and organizational requirements?

Managing: what people, tools, resources are available?


Basic activities of IA

Structuring information

Data (facts and figures) to which we give meaning

Knowledge: Internalized and interpreted information

Structuring information spaces

Levels of granularity of different elements

Organizing content

Arranging these elements into meaningful categories and establishing relations among them

Labeling content and naming categories

II. IA as practice


A broad view of IA work

It involves developing and communicating a holistic view of a web site

It includes the overall social and technical structure of the site and the relationships among its elements

It requires the classification of site goals and objectives

IA places the web site into a larger social context

How will it affect the work flow, communications patterns, and distribution of power in the

organization?

How will it appear to its users?

II. IA as practice


What IAs do:

Illustrate key concepts or steps through graphics

Design site maps

Create metaphors to brand content and promote navigation

Develop style and formatting templates for elements of information

Conduct user analyses and test user experience

Create scenarios and storyboards

Build taxonomies and indicesDillon and Turnbull, 3

II. IA as practice


Becoming an information architect

Versatility is important

Expect to be a project manager, a designer or both

Become familiar with the various tasks that must be accomplished by a web team

“Typically, IAs collaborate with a variety of people, [Garrett] notes, from marketing and design pros to business executives and customers. In some ways, they serve as the linchpin between various groups.”Hoffmann, A. (2007) Information Architects: Web Builders with a Sales Bent http://career-advice.monster.com/job-industryprofiles/technology/Information-Architects/home.aspx

II. IA as practice


II. IA as practice

In a typical project you can expect to:

Gather information from end-users and stakeholders

Design and conduct online surveys, interviews and the ethnographic technique of contextual inquiry and

analysis

Test the system in a manner with experts

Run usability tests in the lab

Encourage people to use the prototype

Solicit feedback, analyze search logs and continually learn from personal interaction with employees requesting information and research


II. IA as practice

An IA helps clients define their Internet strategies

Research, design, architect, develop and implement solutions that execute those strategies

Typically involves defining and documenting a site’s structure, navigation and interactivity

Based on translating client business rules and user needs into web structures and processes

The work becomes a blueprint contributing to the overall strategic direction, vision and scope of a

project

The IA works with “user experience modelers” to analyze and model user tasks and usage scenarios


II. IA as practice

Model development requires attending to several perspectives

Content: features of the information space

Users: the common tasks and uses of the data

Organization: the constraints and requirements of stakeholders providing the data

Technical: the most appropriate standards and technologies

A workable model must balance internal organizational aspects (types of information and resources available) with external aspects (user and technical perspectives)


Checklist: a mechanism for reminding and prompting attention to issues or topics

General: outlining the steps in a process

Specific: listing detailed items to be addressed

Find design problems early

Manage and leverage software and hardware infrastructure

Identify technology gaps

Enable most productive use of information assetsDowney, L. and Banerjee, S. (2011). Building an Information Architecture Checklist: Encouraging and Enabling IA from Infrastructure to the User Interface Architecture. Journal of Information Architecture 2(2)

II. IA as practice


Purpose: remind reviewers of pertinent areas and specific issues to be addressed during systems design

IA checklists focus more on process, design, and design review

Do not include issues of infrastructure, platform, services, technology, policy, and standards

Exception: an informal search checklist

Includes system architecture, performance, access control, relevance tuning, federated search and analytics

II. IA as practice


Purpose: remind reviewers of pertinent areas and specific issues to be addressed during systems design

Focus on process, design, and design review

Preparing and organizing information

Architecture: structure and composition of repository, information collection or individual document

Intelligence: content, metadata, categorization

Accessing information

Search and retrieval: querying information and obtaining matching results

Findability: quality of being locatable or navigable

II. IA as practice


Revised checklist

Information organization: Taxonomy, modeling, structure, semantics

Information generation: content, user experience, system interface, scalability, standards

Information integration: analytics, search, composition

Information consumption: search, metrics, monitoring

Information governance: stewardship, master data management, reuse, policy

Information quality of service: security, availability, reliability, usefulness

II. IA as practice


Design of social space

http://www.susqu.edu/campus_activities/Images/Social_Space/blueprint.jpg

II. IA as practice


Design of information space

http://www.prosight.com/files/screenshots/solutions-architecture-overview.jpg

II. IA as practice


Design of information space

http://www.chathamanimalrescue.org/images/site2.gif

II. IA as practice


Another view

http://www.mnsu.edu/its/web/wtf/categories1.jpg

II. IA as practice


II. IA as practice

Site map for DoD Information Analysis Centers

http://iac.dtic.mil/site_map.html


II. IA as practice

UN Environment Program: Division of Technology, Industry and Economics

http://www.uneptie.org/energy/site_map/index.htm


http://knowledgefoundry.unc.edu/Webpage_for_Russian/Russian_Content_Map_v3_ch2.jpg

II. IA as practice


II. IA as practice

Prototypes

An outline or storyboard of a functional prototype

Could also be a working prototypes with HTML, Flash, Director, or PowerPoint

Written reports

A narrative description of the site linking it to organizational mission, messages, and

marketing constraints

Change management

How will the site grow and change over time?

What will be involved in maintenance?


II. IA as practice

To evaluate the visitor’s experience, use search, access and error logs

To check on search terms, where people go, and places where problems occur

To evaluate the site

Competitor analysis and comparison with previous versions

Have typical visitors do card sorts to assess chunking

Assess completeness of content and functionality: can you do what you are supposed to be able to do?Toub, S (2000). Evaluating information architecture: A practical guide for assessing web site organization. Argus Associates.


II. IA as practice


Assess how the component parts are organized and interlinked

Determine the parent-child relationships and look for similar siblings grouped together

Determine degree of overlap among sections

A good hierarchy has both high within-category similarity and low between-category

similarity

A bad one has too much overlap between categories

This can be done by inspection


II. IA as practice


Evaluate the labeling scheme

How predictable are they?

How well do they reflect major categories and labels used in the site’s sector?

How effective are they?

Other criteria for evaluation

Does the site use language that visitors can understand?

How does the site handle errors?


II. IA as practice

Other criteria for evaluation

How often does the navigation require that the visitor return to the home page to go elsewhere in the site?

How effective is the use of icons?

How well are the forms constructed?

Is the design consistent throughout the site?

How well do the help file, site map or other finding tools work?

Is there a site map or other help function?


The elements of user experience: User-centered design for the web

Garrett argues that IAs must attend to the elements of the user experience when designing a digital space

The focus is on the five planes: strategy, scope, structure, skeleton and surface

Goal: take all aspects of the user experience into account

~ What are three main design scenarios and what are the problems with each?

~ How can an IA understand user needs better than the users?

II. IA as practice


II. IA as practice

The key to a successful web site is a successful user experience

This produces value in some way for the site’s owners

Increased sales, conversion rate, decreased abandonment

The goal is to improve efficiency

Helping them work faster or make fewer mistakes

There is a conceptual framework that can be used to deconstruct the elements of the user experienceGarrett, J.J. (2003). The elements of user experience: User-centered design for the web. Boston, MA: New Riders.


II. IA as practice

The planes of user experienceThe surface plane

Web pages, text, images, multimedia + functionalities

The skeleton plane

Buttons, tabs, blocked out space (for text/images etc)

The structure plane

The hierarchical organization of the information chunks

The scope plane

The range of content on the site

The strategy plane

What the site is supposed to do


II. IA as practice

Garrett’s model of the user experience

Web as interface

Web as hypertext

http://www.cmsreview.com/Resources/images/JJGElements.gif

s510: introduction to information science fall ‘14 designing information architecture: theory and...

Documents

information spacedillon

ia information shape

information architecturetoms

information science

design of information

theory information interaction

ia practice

ia deliverables s510