O'Reilly - Safari Books Online - 0596527349 - Information Architecture for the... - The Diigo Meta page

• 13 May 08
  

  Philip Guth

  We use the term information to distinguish information architecture from data and knowledge management.

  0596527349 taxonomy

  • When designing taxonomies on the Web, you should remember a few rules of thumb. First, you should be aware of, but not bound by, the idea that hierarchical categories should be mutually exclusive.
  • Taxonomies that allow cross-listing are known as polyhierarchical. Ambiguous organization schemes in particular make it challenging to divide content into mutually exclusive categories.
  • Second, it is important to consider the balance between breadth and depth in your taxonomy. Breadth refers to the number of options at each level of the hierarchy. Depth refers to the number of levels in the hierarchy.
  • This study finds that the world produces between one and two exabytes of unique information per year. Given that an exabyte is a billion gigabytes (we're talking 18 zeros), this growing mountain of information should keep us all busy for a while.
  • We use the term information to distinguish information architecture from data and knowledge management.
  • Data is facts and figures. Relational databases are highly structured and produce specific answers to specific questions. Knowledge is the stuff in people's heads. Knowledge managers develop tools, processes, and incentives to encourage people to share that stuff. Information exists in the messy middle.
  • There is general consensus that the number of links you can safely include is constrained by users' abilities to visually scan the page rather than by their short-term memories.
  • Structuring involves determining the appropriate levels of granularity^[2] for the information "atoms" in your site, and deciding how to relate them to one another. Organizing involves grouping those components into meaningful and distinctive categories. Labeling means figuring out what to call those categories and the series of navigation links that lead to them.
  • An information architecture must balance the needs of users with the goals of the business. Efficient content management and clear policies and procedures are essential.
  • But the practice of information architecture will never be reduced to numbers; there's too much ambiguity and complexity. Information architects must rely on experience, intuition, and creativity. We must be willing to take risks and trust our intuition. This is the "art" of information architecture.
  • For a fascinating study on the idiosyncratic methods people use to organize their physical desktops and office spaces, see "How Do People Organize Their Desks? Implications for the Design of Office Information Systems" by T.W. Malone, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems 1 (1983).
  • Most of the heavy-duty databases we use are built upon the relational database model. In relational database structures, data is stored within a set of relations or tables. Rows in the tables represent records, and columns represent fields. Data in different tables may be linked through a series of keys.
  • Metadata is the primary key that links information architecture to the design of database schema. It allows us to apply the structure and power of relational databases to the heterogeneous, unstructured environments of web sites and intranets. By tagging documents and other information objects with controlled vocabulary metadata, we enable powerful searching, browsing, filtering, and dynamic linking.

  11 more annotations...

Would you like to comment?

Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.