Inside the Librarians Studio: Web Information Architecture

Inside the Librarians Studio: Web Information Architecture Jane Stewart Senior IM Practitioner, Systemscope June 4, 2008

About Systemscope Government-focused strategic consulting firm established in 1990 Three practice areas: Information Management E-Government Management Consulting SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 2

Today s topics What is web information architecture? What is a web site? How is IA practiced? Library science and IA What does IA look like? Who is responsible for IA? How do you know if it s effective? The ever-changing web Challenges & opportunities in IA SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 3

Career history B.A. Student > 1982 Dilettante 1982 > 1988 MSLIS Student 1989 > 1990 Information Specialist / Associate 1990 > 1998 Communications Manager 1998 > 2000 Information Architect 2000 > 2001 Director, IM 2001 > 2005 Consultant, IM and IA 2005 > Now SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 4

Information architecture experience Started small library, projects, initiatives At Industry Canada CMS-enabled inter-jurisdictional Web presence Government On-Line gateways and clusters Recently Large departmental Internet and intranet sites 25,000 > 100,000 pages SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 5

IA projects an evolving practice Service Canada Office of the Auditor General Agriculture and Agri-food Canada Fisheries and Oceans Canada Canada Revenue Agency National Research Council Citizenship and Immigration Canada Canadian Heritage Transport Canada Science & Technology SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 6

What is IA? A brief history Conceived to meet the challenge of organizing web sites to support findability and usability A specialized subset of the broader IA challenge of organizing digitized information in general Enterprise IA: organizing documents, files, other information assets Web IA still growing and changing Much like the web itself Only one component of what makes a web site work SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 7

What is a web site? SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 8

What is a web site? Communications platform Service delivery channel Marketing tool Software interface Hypertext system Sales tool Document repository Directory Meeting place sometimes all of the above SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 9

Accessed through a browser, most require: Organizing systems Labeling systems Navigational systems Searching systems and that s where IA comes in. SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 10

At the ideal web design round table Business strategy Product and service management Subject matter expertise Communications, marketing & public relations Web writing and editing Library science / information management Human factors / usability Visual design Technology development / computer science SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 11

How is IA practiced? Research Design Thinking and prototyping Testing & refining Documenting Implementing SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 12

The practice of IA starts by asking: What is it supposed to do? Context Users Who is it for? IA What does it contain? Content SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 13

Context Clarify the purpose of the site Why does the site exist? Review strategies, priorities, mandate Interview internal stakeholders Important to cover the stakeholder waterfront Understand the constraints Resources, capacity, capabilities, timelines Legal and policy requirements What else is out there? Competitive/comparative analysis SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 14

Users Who is it intended for? Who uses it? What do they use it for? Understanding user goals and tasks is probably the single most important input to IA How do they use it? Popular pages, search queries, etc. SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 15

User research methods Understanding behaviour is more important than understanding opinions What users do, not what they think Direct methods Interviews, card sorting, field observation, usability tests Indirect Web analytics, search analytics SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 16

Usability / user experience research A growing body of research you can consult for guidance about what works on the web A general rule: don t break well-established conventions It s all about reducing the amount of cognitive effort it takes to use your site See Steve Krug s Don t Make Me Think http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 17

Content Inventories, audits, analysis What does the site contain? How much is there? What is it about? Where does it come from? Unstructured, semi-structured, structured? Is there ROT? (redundant, outdated, trivial) SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 18

Summarize the research What you know, and what you don t know Research Summary document Findings Principles Priorities Goals and objectives Performance measures SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 19

Design: top down vs. bottom up Home Page Top down design Bottom up design SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 20

IA & library science: Collections Very difficult to organize something without boundaries Particularly true for portals or other aggregator sites Scope: what s in, and what s out? Criteria for collection policies Subject Type Audience Date Quality Budget SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 21

IA & library science: Faceted classification What are the facets of the content that the site contains? How will users want to access the information? How can you enable access by multiple facets? SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 22

Using facets to build an IA Typical web facets Topics Tasks Audiences Locations Publication Types Date One of these will be the primary organizing principle for site navigation SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 23

Facets + controlled vocabularies For each facet, a constrained set of allowable terms The terminology should be user-centric Will be used for site labels and navigation (This is where the user research comes in) May have to trade off semantic precision for usability Examples: Pleasure craft vs. recreational vessel vs. boat Employment opportunities vs. jobs Post-secondary institutions vs. colleges & universities SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 24

The power of facets Facets can add considerable flexibility and adaptability to an IA A way to make unstructured information behave more like a database Used for: Physical organization of files Primary navigation and supplementary navigation aids Special index pages for audience, publication type, etc. Adding facet values to content in the form of metadata Enabling dynamic assembly based on metadata values SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 25

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Design: grouping and labeling Affinity diagramming (post-its) Differentiation and co-location Relationships between concepts Hierarchical Equivalent Associative Objective: a strong, logical hierarchy Top-down: Meets user and organizational goals Bottom-up: Contains all content SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 32

Documenting IA Constantly evolving approaches Depends on who is using it, and what for Use paper prototypes as the design evolves Simple, fast and everybody gets it Visio is a great tool for this As IA matures, new tools are coming along Generate site maps, wireframes, HTML prototypes and documentation SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 33

Formal IA specification Physical / logical structure Faceted taxonomy with controlled vocabularies Content types (collections) Page types (wireframes) Navigational elements and the rules for their use Menus, breadcrumbs, indexes, site map, maps Persistent challenge: linking the IA to the research SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 34

A faceted taxonomy SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 35

Site structure diagrams Also done in Excel or in Word tables SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 36

Annotated wireframes SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 37

Other possible IA components: Content models / content structure Content renovation guidance Thesauri Metadata application profiles Search engine optimization / site search IA maintenance procedures SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 38

And now the hard part. Many challenges to IA implementation and management Who gets to decide? Who enforces it? Who gets to change it? What s the rationale for changing it? How will you know whether or not it s effective? SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 39

Related challenges All the web s a stage Web is just like print, only cheaper and easier! BSOS : bright shiny object syndrome Web anti-gravity law: what goes up may never come down Someone has to advocate for the users SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 40

How do you know if it s good? By measuring user success Finding information Accuracy/relevance Efficiency Relationship to other channels (phone, e-mail, in person) Completing a task Success rate Number of errors Efficiency SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 41

Six pillars of effective web management SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 42

Related web guidance and control Governance Editorial / web writing Information / content lifecycle Publishing processes Search engine optimization Visual design / branding Accessibility Legal aspects Privacy, copyright, official languages Technology standards SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 43

Web utopia? Hierarchies vs. networks SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 44

In conclusion At the core of IA there is a lot of library science Collections Classification Controlled vocabularies Information retrieval But highly successful web sites will always require and benefit from collaboration across multiple disciplines and fields of knowledge SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 45

IA is strategy IA is a form of design And most important, IA is user advocacy SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 46

Recommended Reading Garrett, Jesse James. The Elements of User Experience, 2003. Krug, Steve. Don t Make Me Think, 2 nd edition, 2005. Morville, Peter and Louis Rosenfeld. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3 rd edition, 2006. Weinberger, David. Everything is Miscellaneous, 2007. Wright, Alex. Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, 2007. http://usability.gov (Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines) SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 47

Thank you! Jane Stewart Senior IM Practitioner stewart@systemscope.com http://www.systemscope.com SLA-ECC Librarians' Studio - June 4, 2008 48