1 Great resource

I thought this article was easy to understand and very thorough. It was complete and made it easy to help me explain this to a client. Thank you for providing this resource.

posted at 05:54 pm on December 2, 2008 by Elizabeth W

2 IA for small projects

Throughout my schooling wire frames, site maps, use cases and the like were part of the projects. I really value this type of planning.

But after school I found myself working at a small company building sites for small clients. Planning for these projects involved gathering requirements from the client, creating a mockup and then building the site.

Just because our clients were small didn’t mean their sites were small. Instead, the budget was the most limiting factor. These clients didn’t see a lot of value in planning ahead and the larger the project was the more difficult it became to build.

I’m still searching for the best balance between IA and time/cost but this article is going to help. Thank you.

posted at 06:30 pm on December 2, 2008 by Dana Larson

3 Data Flows and Trust Boundaries

Thank you for this discussion on the benefits of IA for clients. The suggested talking points are perfect.

I wonder if some other aspects should also be considered in your Phase One, if not before. These are the dynamic information (data) flows and trust boundaries, and thus consideration of the sensitivity of the data being handled and who can access what. Without doing this, ad-hoc security controls need to be added later in the project’s life cycle which will be more costly and probably less effective.

Also, in creating use cases, it’s also worth trying to think about misuse cases, but this can be a harder concept for people to grasp.

posted at 07:46 pm on December 2, 2008 by Clerkendweller (London)

4 An Excellent Article!

This article, in my opinion, can easily turn into a book if you elaborate on some of the points, and provide templates.

This is a concise and comprehensive discussion of Information Architecture. Thanks…

posted at 08:12 pm on December 2, 2008 by PM Hut

5 Super good illustration

Kevin did a fantastic job with the illustration for this idea; it’s brilliant!

posted at 08:21 pm on December 2, 2008 by Dave Rau

7 information architecture in web design

I think that information architecture is the most important part of web development. The approach I use is the pry as much information from the client as I can about what their site’s purpose is, and get as much content as possible from them, and then design the site around that. From an interaction standpoint, information architecture is nothing more than a series of links, where they appear, and where they are on the page. That’s the way I approach is to the client, rather than showing them some idiotic diagram.

posted at 09:40 pm on December 2, 2008 by Information Architecture

8 excellent

If this article would be a video, I’d out it on [url=“http://iatelevision.blogspot.com/”]IA Television[/url] every day :-)…

thx

posted at 02:27 am on December 3, 2008 by Jan Jursa

9 Keep it simple

I’ve been doing this kind of IA planning with clients since 1995, and one thing I’ve learned is your planning documents have to make sense to the client. Keeping it simple is a good way to do that. IA doesn’t have to be complex, but it is essential to even the smallest website project. Heck, even the odd client who needed just a temporary one page placeholder site, we still sat down and outlined what content would need to be on that page and how it would be presented, and I still wrote up a simple document to get sign off on that.

But I find IA most valuable in helping to discover what it is the client actually needs/wants, because clients often don’t know what they need or want.

posted at 09:07 am on December 3, 2008 by Space Gorilla

10 A lot to take in!

I run a relatively young web design business and at the moment we are trying to find the best way to manage our projects and clients. I found this article really helpful as I do the site as a whole.

The article raises a lot of very interesting points, from a novice point of view its very difficult to know where to start! How have other users of this site learnt how to apply these principles? Can anyone recommend a resource which examines the subject in greater detail, or where we can see detailed examples of each stage to use as a starting point?

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

posted at 10:46 am on December 3, 2008 by Jerome Iveson

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