Organizing Information
Inventory
Take inventory of your information. This step essentially amounts to collecting relevant information about your site. Spreadsheets help. The type of information one should collect: URL, writers working on the pages, general content, titles, and status/decisions concerning the information in question.- This cannot be skipped, because you cannot begin organizing a body of information unless you know what that body of information is.
- Its a tedious and lengthy process, dividing work among other contributors is helpful.
Hierarchy
Lynch says hierarchical organization is a virtual necessity for organizing on the web. Hierarchy is describe here as moving from general information down to specific information. Forming categories for information allows you to chunk information and organize by relevance.- general overview of the site is usually home page. I'm assuming with a comprehensive menu and listed categories.
- each unit of information has a rank which depends on its importance and relevancy to the general/specific categories.
- The great chain of being.
Taxonomy
One of the biggest challenges in organizing information is deciding on classification, or a controlled vocabulary. Includes:- categories
- how links are used
- navigation and interaction elements
Brainstorm
Lynch suggests considering your primary objectives and goals before settling on a specific organizational paradigm. Different types of sites are useful for different things. It is important to note that designers often have prejudices for structure and organization methods, but these are prejudices obliviously don't always help the designer plan for an optimized organizational pattern.Card Sorting
Card sorting is a sort of user testing technique which asks team members or users to sort a body of cards with categories written on them based on what seems logical or intuitive. Sometimes users are asked to come up with new names for categories - in this sense does card sorting ask for taxonomical insight from potential users? Card sorting utilizes the "wisdom of crowds" approach to organization.- Name major cats, no dupes.
- complete inventory (step one).
- prepare instruction. Do NOT coach. Whats the difference, really.
- allow freedom of thought.
- provide supplies
- install surveillance cameras in order to record every movement of your test subjects.
Remember to chunk information. This ties into considerations about length.
Site Structure
Do not make a confusing web of links, says Lynch. This is interesting, especially since for this class we are writing on a Wiki which seems to violate this advice. I'm probably wrong, though.efficient web design is matter of balancing the relation of menu items on your home page with more specific content pages. hierarchy of menus.
- Menus are important for site navigation, but large menus are annoying.
Search
Search bars are amazing, and this section of Lynch's reading addresses the design philosophy contradiction I stated above. Search option is basically necessary when your site has many pages, such as this Wiki. It would be tedious and difficult to navigate through trails of links on this wiki to reach desired information.- No browsing options tells users that they have discovered all instances of a given keyword or phrase.
- Browsing is useful, but Lynch reminds us of the long-tail phenomenon in which roughly 20% of a website will get 80% of the traffic. Search engines adapt a site to the specific needs of a user. This is a video that Vsauce did relating to "long-tail"
Themes
- Sequence: Simple chronological organization. Sometimes supports digressions.
- hierarchies are the best way to organize complex bodies of information. Most sites contain a home page in which general information can be arranged for users to explore other sections of the site.
- hub and spoke: individual pages linked from the home page. More complexity means more links to other pages that are constituent to new pages or sequence of pages.
- global navigation links help the user feel liberated and reduce the amount of actions required to backtrack or jump to other sections of the site.
- Webs are great for supporting free flow of ideas and encourages idiosyncratic navigation patterns. Can be confusing. Aimed towards highly educated and experienced users looking for detailed and sometimes specialized information.
Info Architecture
Diagrams
site diagrams help visualize the intended organizational concepts for the site and allows you to share and communicate with others who will be working with the site. Elements include but are not limited to:- labeling of pages/templates
- click depth
- levels of user access
- link relationship - very important. So important.
- file structure and site directory. What does file structure mean?
- logical grouping and structural relationships
- content is divided and sub divided.
Two variations: simple for general use, and more complex for further web development purposes.
Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Visio, Concept Draw, Omni Graffe. Use this software.
A good site diagram helps programmers with their job, as the intended structure translates well from diagrame to file directory.
Wireframes
Wireframes are rough outlines of how typical web page on a site would appear. It helps people focus on strategic goals without being consumed with speculation of the visual layers of web design. I;d say that diagrams are macro web design and wireframes are micro web design, if that makes any sense.Where to put things
It's interesting that Lynch write about the middle and corners and rule of thirds for home page design, because modern websites, especially the ones tooled for marketing purposes, use massive images in the center of their home pages.Most of web content should probably accommodate "reading gravity"
- headlines at top
- search engine have bias for the top of pages
- top left, because western language.
Research shows that users have essentially become habituated to expect where certain elements might appear on web pages.
What is that picture used for E-rhetoric?
