Linknote — — 192 words

Information architecture

A plea for the lost practice of information architecture — Vicky Teinaki

A pile of well-known information architecture books: How to Make Sense of Any Mess, Information Architecture (x 2), Design By Definition, Information Ecology, with a toy dinosaur

I was sad to learn earlier that Vicky Teinaki has died. Vicky had been a designer for a few different government departments and public sector organisations.

I didn’t know her well. But I have read her blog posts for years, and I was delighted to encounter her in meetings about structured information since I joined the civil service a few months ago. I was struck by how she demonstrated both fresh thinking and wisdom.

Just a few days after I started in my information architecture role at the Scottish Government, she published this excellent article about the discipline.

It serves multiple purposes expertly. It is a comprehensive but concise history of information architecture, tracking its major milestones over the past 20 years.

Vicky argued that information architecture had become diminished when it got absorbed into user experience, and then got forgotten entirely when it suddenly became easy to churn out high-fidelity visual prototypes without tackling underlying structural decisions.

The post is also an incredible bibliography of key information architecture resources. I have turned to this blog post numerous times over the past six months, and I know I will continue to do so.

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Information architecture — User experience — User research

Work:

First click tests — building up the elements of user experience for Learn Foundations — Website and Communications Blog

First click heatmap

> We had developed an information architecture and tree tests as part of our programme of user research for Learn Foundations. The next step was to use first click tests to pit the new template against existing courses.

The latest post in my series for the Website and Communications blog about our user research work around the University of Edinburgh’s virtual learning environment.

Linknote — — 66 words

Information architecture — User experience

Work:

Card sorting has informed a new information architecture for Learn courses — Website and Communications Blog

Results of the card sorting study

How we used card sorting to help us devise a consistent information architecture for Learn VLE courses at the University of Edinburgh.

775 students participated in the study — and no two students submitted the same card sort. This highlights the great challenge faced by the Learn Foundations project in attempting to create a more standardised template that meets the wide variety of needs across the University.

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Human-centred approaches — Web

Four modes of seeking information and how to design for them

This is an old article, but some good brain food for those information architects out there. A good primer on some different ways people try to find content.

In my work on intranets and complex websites, I noticed a range of situations where people didn’t necessarily know what they needed to know. Additionally, when I opened my browser history to look for examples from recently-visited sites, I noticed that the majority of my own time was spent trying to find things that I had already discovered. These two modes didn’t fit into the concepts of known-item and exploratory information seeking. I call these “don’t know what you need to know” and re-finding.

I spent a while letting this rattle around my head, talking with IAs and designers, and realized that most only thought in terms of known-item searching. When discussing the other types of tasks, they’d ask with a horrified look, “So how do you design for that?”

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Human-centred approaches — Web

Design navigation for clarity and fidelity

There is nothing worse than a vague, meaningless link. Well, there is. It’s a link that promises much more than it can deliver. I call that sort of link a dirty magnet.

Left out of Gerry McGovern’s list of dirty magnets is my personal favourite — Further information.

Think about it. Everything on a website is further information (at least, it should be). There is nothing more useless or uninformative than a page called Further information.

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Web

Design for navigational momentum and unity

When trying to persuade people not to overload their navigation menus, I have often drawn an analogy with road signs. These must be a model of brevity, because drivers need to be able to digest them quickly.

Web users may not be travelling at 60mph, but they still want to get their stuff done quickly.

I enjoyed this Gerry McGovern article that draws a similar analogy:

The core purpose of navigation is to help you move forward. Designing digital navigation is not that different from designing navigation for a road. You always want to be able to help people maintain their momentum and get to their destination as quickly as possible. The essence of momentum is to help people move forward, and this is the essential purpose of navigation—to help people move forward.