Archive for the ‘Information Architecture’ Category

Loren Baxter, Director of User Experience at ReadyForZero writes for UX Magazine about Why Persuasive Design Should Be Your Next Skill Set. This insightful article discusses this new trend in the user experience discipline.

“Persuasive design is the process of creating persuasive technology, or “technology that is designed to change attitudes or behaviors of the users through persuasion and social influence, but not through coercion.””

Aaron Schmidt at Walking Paper reposts his June Library Journal column, Services Before Content. He discusses the need for creating engaging user experiences for patrons in addition to offering them free content.

“I like pBooks and eBooks. I like movies. I like music. What’s more, I think these things have a place in our libraries and have played a crucial role in their evolution. I’m afraid, though, that the pervasive concept of library as commercial content provider is preventing us from adapting and evolving. Libraries will have to build a new foundation if they are to recover from these economic hard times—a foundation of valuable services, of user experience, not just free content.”

Cameron Chapman at Six Revisions has authored a fantastic piece on Information Architecture 101: Techniques and Best Practices. Jam-packed with info on IA topics such as personas, design patterns, wireframes, and more this article is not to be missed!

“…too often, a website’s content breaks the boundaries of most CMSs. Without a clear understanding of how information architecture works, we can end up creating sites that are more confusing than they need to be or, at worst, make our content virtually inaccessible. It’s a shame, considering that the basics of good information architecture are no more difficult to learn than the basics of good web design.

This guide covers the fundamentals of information architecture for organizing website content. We will look into popular IA design patterns, best practices, design techniques, and case examples.”

If you’re considering a website redesign in 2010 you may want to check out these 35+ Usability Resources for Web Designers. Steven Snell at DesignMag compiles a handy list of both premium and free usability resources to test out your new site. He also lists related websites and blogs, checklists, and articles.

Cameron Chapman at Noupe has put together a Usability Testing Toolkit including Resources, Articles, and Techniques. This quick guide provides links and screenshots to nearly 50 resources in the following categories:

• Sites Dedicated to Usability Testing
• Usability Testing Articles and Guides
• Usability Testing Tools and Methods
• Screencasting Software
• Additional Roundups and Resources

I was just at the North Suburban Library System in Chicago where I gave a workshop on card sorting which is a type of usability test to discover how your users think about your website content so that your can organize it in a way that’s findable. I have made the content of the workshop available in a wiki if anyone is interested in learning about how to conduct card sorts. Here’s a description of the workshop:

“Web users spend an average of 8–10 seconds and three clicks on your Web site looking for what they need before they get frustrated and click away. Whether you are developing a new Web site or redesigning an existing one, it is imperative to determine an intuitive and usable navigational structure and taxonomy for your user community. Card sorting is a technique used in the information architecture field to determine a classification scheme that speaks to your user population. Discover how to use this quick and inexpensive technique to understand how your users think about your Web site and its content. Learn how to run both an open and a closed card sort, analyze the results, and make recommendations based on your data. This workshop explores both online and offline card-sorting techniques as well as analysis software. Make sure your information is findable and increase usability by involving your users in the process of designing your Web site — they will thank you for it!”

Boxes and Arrows has made podcasts available from Day 1 of the IA (Information Architecture) Summit 2009 which was held in Memphis, TN from March 20-22. More podcasts are to be published over the next two weeks. Here are a few that look interesting:

• Portable Research: Observing Users on the Go – Nate Bolt
• The Semantic Web: What IAs Need to Know About Web 3.0 – Chiara Fox
• Motivating Teams: Inspiring People To Do Great Work – Dorelle Rabinowitz
• Designing Rules: The Engine of User Experience – Dan Brown
• Site Redesign: When Hell Freezes Over Use A Blowtorch – Melissa Matross

Andrew Maier at UX Booth has written an excellent primer on IA titled Complete Beginner’s Guide to Information Architecture. If you have any interest in the field of info architecture, you will want to check out this guide. Here is the Table of Contents:

• Who is an Information Architect?
• What does an Information Architect do?
• Notable Information Architects
• Tools of the Trade
• Related Resources
• IA Books
• Miscellaneous Resources