Week 4 - Designing Web navigation Systems

Everybody who’s driven a car at any point in their lives knows there’s that day you can’t forget when you got lost in an unfamiliar area or city or part of a city you’re not accustomed with. It’s frustrating and confusing experience which always leads to anger and even fear. Thank god for GPS technology and smart phones today!

Navigating through websites, even though might not cause fright, can sometimes lead to frustration and anger when you find yourself literally lost with the system/site. Your navigation system, simply put is the important part of the IA. If people can’t navigate comfortably and find stuff easily within your site, you might as well not have a website in the first place. We should be able to know where we are, what is it, where was I initially, how do I get back to where I was and what can I do here.

There exist different types of navigation systems:

·          Embedded navigation systems which include global, local and contextual navigation systems integrated and infused within the web pages themselves. Most large websites integrate these three navigation systems, with each solving specific problems

·         Supplemental navigation systems which include sitemaps, indexes, guides (wizards and configurations), and search that exist outside the content bearing pages with different ways of accessing the same information. They are external to the basic hierarchy of a web site and provide other choices for finding and completing tasks. They are very critical in ensuring usability, searchabiliy and findability within large web sites. They might sometimes be overlooked by both site owners and usability pundits who usually focus more on taxonomy and simplicity and miss the very important point that the taxonomy and the embedded navigation systems will fail for a significant percentage of users and tasks.

Designing the navigation user takes IAs to the user experience design, which involves integrating IA, interaction design, information design, visual design and usability engineering. Here, the skills within each is of these domains is going to cross paths such that the end-user gets the best experience when they access your site. Hence the IA has a series of factors to consider when they’re putting their navigation system in place.

·         If your site or intranet is going to be accessed on the web, you’ll have to consider inbuilt features within web browsers like internet explorer, google chrome or Firefox which end users will use to access the site. On the other hand we have Open URL which permits us to directly access any page on a web site.

·         Defining reference points to easily tell the end user where they are or guide them to easily find themselves within the system is very important.

·         Context is the King in the design of navigation systems. Unlike in real life where landmarks and cardinal points to guide us find our way around, in the online information world you usually have the “you’re on your own” feeling of isolation in which you constantly find yourself in the middle of unfamiliar sites and have to make sense out of it. Your sites should always provide contextual clues to allow users to know which site they’re in even if they did have to bypass the main page and find themselves deep within.

·         Flexibility within your navigation system can be greatly improved by hierarchy. The current hypertextual capabilities of the web of the web permit both vertical and horizontal navigation. So we can move from top to bottom or side to side across the hierarchy such that users can get to anywhere from anywhere.

Advanced navigation systems include personalization & customization, visualization and social navigation.

·         Personalization involves tailoring web sites/pages with respect to specific user or individual needs and preferences. On the other hand, customization actually gives the user direct control over some presentation, navigation and content options. Both of these can be used to refine or supplement navigation systems.

·         Visual experiences on a site can be a major plus, but are they really necessary with every website? The IA should seriously consider the pros and cons within the environment within which they find themselves before implementing any visual effects on the site. It becomes a matter of necessity or attractiveness. Whichever precedes the other can lead to the right direction.

·         Social navigation is not yet a big mainstream practice, but is on the rise. This paradigm is based on the premise that value for the individual user can be derived by observing the actions of other users and is already covering some ground with sites such as Amazon and The New York Times whose sites create a feedback loop between design and behavior, creating flexible and adaptive navigation systems that significantly add value and advance the usability of their websites and intrantes.

Week 3 - Labeling in Web Information Architecture

Labeling, simply put, is one of the various forms of representation available out there. Large chunks of information are represented on websites through labels, with their primordial goal being simply to communicate information efficiently, with meaning, without taking up too much of a page’s vertical space or a user’s cognitive space.  Most web developers or anyone developing content for a web site creates labels without even realizing it. This usually makes us to take the labeling act for granted, thereby leading to poor labeling on web sites to the detriment of the end users of these sites. IAs should therefore take more time and pain to create good, informative and useful labels because these are often the most obvious way to clearly show the user your organization and navigation systems.

There are various varieties of labels:

·       Contextual labels – this is usually a series of hyperlinks that lead to chunks of information on other pages or to another location on the same page.

·         Headings – they simply describe the content that follows them

·         Navigation system choices – they represent the options in navigation systems

·         Index terms – keywords, tags and subject headings that represent content for searching or browsing.

·         Iconic labels – they represent information in much the same way as text can, but constitute a more limited language than text; hence they’re more typically used for navigation systems or small organization system labels, where the list of options is small.

Designing labels might prove to be the most difficult task an IA ever performs. This part of the job has proven to be more of an art than traditional science, hence the more it’s performed or rehearsed, the better the architect will become in realizing it. Several guidelines are available in designing good labels. The IA should always keep in mind that as with all aspects of an IA, content, users and context are of prime importance. Some of these guidelines include:

·         Narrow scope whenever possible – try to limit the audience and stick to fewer subject domains

·         Develop consistent labeling systems, not labels – labels are systems in their own right & should be designed as such, taking into consideration style, presentation, syntax, granularity, comprehensiveness and audience.

When designing category names for your labeling system, there are several dos and don’ts to take into consideration:

·         Clever category names cause doubt and hinder site exploration.  The more confident people feel about their decisions, they more likely they are to engage with your website.

·         Descriptive category names have a higher chance of being discovered and clicked on than clever made up words or internal jargon because people understand them.

·         Check for overlapping categories

·         Use classification schemes that communicate attributes your users can decipher.

·         Explicitly state the difference between options at the fore-front of things.

There exist various sources of labeling systems:

·         Your site – an existing website with labeling systems can be your first stop to your label design. You might want to capture all the existing labels in a single document as a reference point for editing and redesign.

·         Comparable and competitive sites – if you have to develop and design from scratch, you might want to carry out a needs assessment from the end users, and then try to judiciously study comparative sites with similar needs as the first reference point to starting your labels design.

·         Controlled vocabularies and thesauri – these are professional vocabularies often readily available and have been designed for broad usage. So rather than trying to reinvent the wheel you can copy from what others with library and subject-specific backgrounds have already spent judicious time on. Some of these sources are:

o   Taxonomy warehouse

o   ThesauriOnline

o   Controlled vocabularies

o   Web Thesaurus Compendium

Creating new labelling systems from scratch might not be the most enticing of tasks to be performed by an IA, but we generally do not have a choice when there exist no prior labelling systems or when you need to do more customizing than expected. The most important sources in this case are usually your content and your site’s users. You’ll have to carry out crisp content analysis, consult with content authors and also consult with advanced users or user advocates who can speak on the user’s behalf.

After all the above has been effected, there still remains a lot of tuning and tweaking to get your labels/labeling system right, correct and efficient. Tuning and tweaking will involve processes like first, sorting the list of terms alphabetically, review the list for consistency of usage, punctuation, letter case, etc…, which terms to include in the labeling system and are they comprehensive enough to encompass all the possibilities that your site may eventually need to include? You should also plan ahead for scalability and consistency within the labeling system.

Week 2 - Organization in Information Architecture

Organizing information might be one of the biggest challenges to any Information Architect (IA). IAs thrive to organize information such that visitors to the various websites they design seek whatever they want efficiently and within a reasonable amount of time.

Within organizations, the challenges IAs might face are not only limited to the classification of the information into various groups and sub-groups or categories and sub-categories, but the actual internal political and socio-cultural environment within the organization itself. We all know politics exists in every organization and preferences on what department or unit features on the home page of the company’s website or intranet might be a major limitation to the actual information designers and architects.

The initial process of sorting out categories, sub-categories, groups, sub-groups, departments and units within departments can be a major brain-storming exercise. Usability Card Sorting can come in very handy in this initial design process in which actual end-users of the site can be put into adequate use to help in the conception design. This technique might prove to be a major plus in your overall arhitecture.

Organizing information within websites and intranets is one of the principal functions an IA performs and a major factor in determining the success or failure of an intranet or website design project. Information within websites and intranets can be organized in either Flat or Deep hierarchies. Each of these hierarchies has its pros and cons, and deciding which to choose for your design might not only depend on the architects’ view point but by history, culture and other existing systems within an organization.

The concept of Organization schemes and Organization structures within Organization systems permit users to navigate deep within or across hierarchies on a daily basis. The organization schemes can be exact (alphabetical, chronological or geographical), or ambiguous (topic, task, audience, metaphor or hybrids. Organization structures, even though more of a perception with a virtual, rather than physical physiognomy, do play a primordial role in website design. These can either use a top-down approach (hierarchy), in a simple model or taxonomy, or might be of a database model (bottom-up approach).

With the world becoming a single online village today, Social Classification of information within websites and intranets is of growing popularity. Collaborative categorization in the form of free tagging might be simple, but has proven to be a very powerful tool with major successes like Flickr in which users tag objects with one or more key words. These public tags serve as pivots for social navigation.

For me, in order to be able to create a cohesive organization system to be used to build an enterprise website or intranet, the designer should coordinate and include all of the above organizational systems, structures and models and be flexible enough to know when and how to apply and deploy which, depending on the context or environment within which they find themselves.

Week 1 - Web Information Architecture Overview

The word information makes me think "make sense of gibberish". Collecting raw data and making sense out of it has become an obsession to the modern man today that the saying "Knowledge is Power", developed hundreds of years ago, is just making more sense to our present world.

With terabytes upon terabytes of data/information processed in a single day by both individuals and companies alike, data processing, mining and information management has taken on a different toll.

Putting all these data shape and information into a shape and form that is not only palatable and gullible for human consumption has led to the development of very lucrative trades like "Information Architect".

When we hear the word Architecture, it makes us to think Buildings, Structures, Shapes, Designs, Drawing Boards and White Boards. When this word is assigned to information, we start thinking of designing and structuring data for applicable human consumption.

Web information Architects collect data, design enterprise level websites within which they structure the data into consumable and digestible information with a touch of aesthetics such that the average human being can not only retrieve, but can make sense of, and use this information fruitfully.

There's always the question "Do we need Information Architects (IA)? Who's qualified to practice Information Architecture? 

I'll say "Yes", we do need IAs. Have you ever been directed to a website just to get a phone number to talk to an individual and it took you over five minutes to retrieve this information? How frustrating! I do believe a public, or even private website should be designed with human interaction in mind, The designer should put themselves into the consumers' shoes and try to consume their own produce. If it it's not appetizing, then it's a subject for revision and improvement.

As to who's qualified to practice this very lucrative trade, I'll leave that open to you who are reading this article.

However, I'll like to stress that a mastery of the following attributes might come in very handy for the Information Architect - Mastery of the language in which the website will be published, Human centered interaction, artistic touch to captivate not only the eye, but the mind, top notch organizational skills to able to structure, organize and classify information.

This leads us to the basic principles of IA. 

IA can be considered both an art as well as a science. As a science, it follows specific taxonomies to help classify and structure information such that a single glance at a particular web should catch the user's attention on the major attributes or topics under which detailed information and sub-links are placed.

The art of Organization and labeling, developed in the yesteryear's with Library Science all come into play to produce a good IA.

The art and science of design brings its importance in setting up navigation and search systems within a website, whilst accommodating Thesauri and controlled vocabularies with back-end Metadata about the information that’s available for consumption.

About Me

Divine N. Awah is a Sr. IT Systems Architect/Oracle Exa DBA currently working with Mythics, Inc

He was born back in the mid 70's in the city of Buea - Cameroon, West/Central Africa.
He obtained a Master's Degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Dschang and worked for about two years as an Agro-Industrial Engineer in Cameroon before migrating to the USA with his family in 2002.
In the States, Divine obtained another Master's degree in Information Systems from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), as well as two Master's Certificates in Enterprise Application Development & Oracle Database Administration from the Johns Hopkins University Computer Career Institute (JHUCCI).
He has over 17 years experience in Technology & Information Systems from a Desktop/Application Support Specialist to a Database Administrator, Performance Engineer & Technical Architect/Engineer.


He has three wonderful children, a 17 year old girl & two boys, 12 & 3 respectively & currently reside in the state of Maryland in the Washington DC metro area.

In his spare time, Divine coaches, watches and plays football (soccer), as well enjoys reading a good book/paper back & watching a nice movie with the special one. He also enjoys a good night out for a beer/shot or two with close family/friends/peers...