Usability: Information Architecture
Information architecture, or IA for short, is the art of structuring information in a way that makes it easy for users to find it. To show what goes on which page, information architects create wireframes (sometimes called schematics), and to show which page goes where in a site hierarchy, they create site maps.
Wireframes have the problem that they aren't dynamic, so the information architect annotates them with discussions about the pages' behaviour. Unfortunately annotations often get missed, so some behaviour (e.g. error messaging) ends up being defined by developers or project managers. Some information architects use user journeys (sometimes modeled as use cases) to overcome this issue.
Sitemaps depend on a site being completely describable by a tree hierarchy. Typically sites have at least a few pages that fall outside the tree hierarchy described by the site's navigation, e.g search results or help pop-ups. Consequently those pages are often not as tightly defined as other pages on the site.
Today in Elegant Hack (elegant_hack) there was a link to a Squidoo article about Information Architecture put together by Austin Govella. It contains links to articles, sites, books and mailing lists about IA. The author's own blog, Thinking and Making (thinkingia), also often contains useful and thought-provoking articles about IA.
Wireframes have the problem that they aren't dynamic, so the information architect annotates them with discussions about the pages' behaviour. Unfortunately annotations often get missed, so some behaviour (e.g. error messaging) ends up being defined by developers or project managers. Some information architects use user journeys (sometimes modeled as use cases) to overcome this issue.
Sitemaps depend on a site being completely describable by a tree hierarchy. Typically sites have at least a few pages that fall outside the tree hierarchy described by the site's navigation, e.g search results or help pop-ups. Consequently those pages are often not as tightly defined as other pages on the site.
Today in Elegant Hack (elegant_hack) there was a link to a Squidoo article about Information Architecture put together by Austin Govella. It contains links to articles, sites, books and mailing lists about IA. The author's own blog, Thinking and Making (thinkingia), also often contains useful and thought-provoking articles about IA.