s512: information systems design spring 10 ia as theory and practice i. can ia be based on theory?...

S512: Information Systems Design Spring ‘10

IA as theory and practice

I. Can IA be based on theory?

• Inductive thinking

• Information interaction

II. Practice: doing the job

• Incorporating theory into practice

• Doing the research

• Preparing to create an IA

III. Designing and building

• Working in the IA world


http://library.thinkquest.org/ 25126/science1.html




An example of deductive research:

Select theory

Derive a hypothesis

Gather data

Analyze data

Determine extent to which data analysis supportshypothesis

Reject or fail to reject hypothesis

How well does this describe the work of IAs?



An example of inductive research:

Gather data

Analyze and reanalyze the data

Organize the data within broad topics

Create categories within the topics

Identify relationships among the categories

Synthesize the patterns into conclusions

How well does this describe the work of IAs?



Haverty argues that IA must be inductive

It does not have an existing body of theory which typically guides the work of a field

Theory constrains acceptable solutions through formal validation

Without it, IAs tend to treat each problem as novel

Also, it supports emergent phenomena

The IA domain has a small set of initial components and a relatively simple set of rules

These lead to a large number of complex patternsHaverty, M. (2002). Information architecture without internal theory: An inductive design process. Journal of the ASIST, 53(10), 839-845.



IA components include content, structure, navigation, interaction

On any given site, there are many interactions that can emerge when people use it, influenced by the IA of the site

IAs use combinations of these components to define the framework that constrains user interactions

Problem: we don’t understand well how to study and design for emerging user experiences

We don’t know how each contributes to the user experience

This is why we need inductive analysis



IA as constructive induction

This is a process for generating a design solution using two intertwined searches

First: identify the most adequate representational framework for the problem

Second: locate the best design solution within the framework and translating it to the problem

at hand

CI is useful when existing theory cannot adequately explain the object of study



Steps of CI

1. What are the basic design problems for the system?

Determine goals, vision, business and other requirements

Decompose the problem

Each requires a design solution

Haverty 2002, 841.



Steps of CI

2. Find a framework for each design problem

Identify a solution within the framework

May involve looking at work in other fields

Each requires a design solution

Haverty 2002, 841.



Steps of CI

3. Translate solution into a context of the current design problem

This is a creative step

Involves understanding the original concept and knowing how to repurpose it

Haverty 2002, 841.



Steps of CI

4. Integrate solutions into an overall IA

Validate the solutions against the original high level goals and objectives of the site

May involve member checking and usability work

Haverty 2002, 841.



If IA develops theory

Determine design problems

Use theory to create design solutions

Integrate and design solutions



Information interaction as a basis for IA

Toms argues that the initial focus should be how people interact in information-rich environments

Interaction: situated action with an IS involving querying, browsing

Primarily use of GUI with some command line work

We “immerse ourselves” in info

This is affected by IA: enabling access to content by providing a systematic and primarily a visual approach to the organization of content Toms, E.G. (2002). Information interaction: Providing a framework for information architecture. Journal of the ASIST, 53(10), 855-862.



How information interaction occurs

We can come to a system with an “information task”

Problem-solving: we go through a patterned process and end with a relevance judgment

We can also have chance encounters, encounters with information, scanning activities

These are less patterned but still end with some type of judgment

Then we browse, navigate, search, evaluate…

Information interaction is the basis of the person’s use experience



Try to determine the client’s understanding of the audience

Who do they think their users are?

What type of experience do they want people to have when using the site? What do they want them to do?

Where do they want them to spend the most time?

Do the research

Learn about the client’s business

What is their value proposition?

What are the main ways they generate revenue?







• Incorporating theory into practice







Incorporating theory into practice

Withrow: cognitive psychology has much to offer IA

The difficulty is figuring what to use from research and how to use it

Example: mental categories

A grouping mechanism, a way to bring together items or concepts through some unifying characteristics or attributes

How can these be used?Withrow, J. (2003). Cognitive psychology & IA: From theory to practice. BoxesandArrows. http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/cognitive_psychology_ia_from_theory_to_practice.php



These categories can be formed in many ways

Visual similarity, shared purposes or uses, rules of inclusion and exclusion, organizational

culture

There are also differences affected by cultural differences, socialization, and cohort effects

A web site should reflect inclusive mental categorization schemes

These can be uncovered with open ended card sorting

An IA can then be developed based on the users’ arrangement of content categories

Metadata as well



Visual perception is also important

Visual cues are often the basis for mental associations users make among items on the interface

Withrow, J. (2003).



Proximity and similarity matter



Implication:

Navigation bar design

Navigation items that are across the page and appear dissimilar are unlikely to be perceptually associated

Display of local navigation bars

Items should be proximal and similar so they are perceived as being together

They should also be associated with the appropriate section in the global navigation bar and not be perceived as global navigation



An IA challenge is to design a structure that works for more than one target user group

Research shows that often there is no single user group

Try to identify distinct segments within the target user population, each with characteristic goals and values

Then design a project that can support all segments with a single structure

An alternative is to build a different site for each segment but this not an efficient way to work

It avoids design challenges that can lead to creative solutions



Schleicher and Kush, J. (2001). Retail ecologies, e-commerce, and information architecture http://argus-acia.com/white_papers/ethnography.html



Maintenance: buying less meaningful objects not necessarily tied to social relationships (stamps)

Provisional: selecting objects relatively low in meaning with social relationships more involved in the purchase (school supplies)

Consumption: buying objects with high meaning which will provide value far beyond their basic utility with social relationships less involved (music)

Pilgrimage: focus is on the objects and on the social relationships involved in the shopping experience (wedding rings)



Generic IA features

Flexible search terms

Clear labeling

Descriptive content

Contextual links to related products

IA for maintenance

Shallow browsing

Navigation shortcuts

Saving product selections



IA for provisional

Saving product selections

Enriched search results

IA for consumption

Evocative labels

Personalization

IA for pilgrimage

Interaction with others

Evocative labels



Doing the research

Theoretical reasons

Research on organizations can help developers avoid problems that can undermine projects

Practical reasons

A necessary step in the project life cycle

Saves time, money, and effort

Allows you to figure out what you have to do

To get a sense of the existing situation

Understand the constraints and who can impose them



How to do the research

There are different ways to set up the problem

Ask an open-ended question

Set up a relationship and test it

There are a variety of ways to study an organization

You can talk to people interviews

You can ask people to fill out forms surveys

You can watch people observation

You can test people experimentation

There are variations within these approaches as well



There is a difference between academic and IA research

There is less need for rigor

You don’t have to worry about generalizability

Peer review is not an issue

There are good reasons to use good research practices

If your methods are reliable, you can reuse them

High quality data leads to strong conclusions

Consistency within and across projects

Over time this can lead to best practices

You can then train new employees more easily



Settle on strategy or strategies

Individual email or telephone interviews? Individual face-to-face interviews?

Group meetings? Group email or conference calls?

Each has its advantages and drawbacks

Face-to-face interviews and group meetings are good ways to gather information

In addition to the research value, these strategies also serve a social function

You learn about stakeholder biases and political and power relationships



IAs want to understand what people want when they use the web

User centered research is a good way to get at this

People’s activities tend to be goal directed - they

Use information for problem solving

Want useful information that matters to them

Want it to help them resolve problems/needs

Want it to help them with their work or life

Want cues throughout the site

Want reasonable and intuitive navigation



Consider this question:

“What should our team create to give people experiences that are useful, usable, and

desirable, that create value for our business and our clients?”

How can we answer it?

Rettig emphasizes the importance of an ethnographic approach

“Go where people work, learn, live and play. Discover unexpressed or masked needs. Let your design be driven by genuine understanding of the people you are trying to serve.”Rettig, M. (2000). Ethnography and information architecture. http://www.enteract.com/~marc/asis/slide0009.htm



Gather the data and begin analysis

This involves sorting and categorizing

Goals, activities/tasks, main content areas

Prepare a preliminary listing and use “member checking”

Be prepared for conflict, disagreement, and compromise

There should be a deliverable (a design document)

It summarizes the key points of the site and acts as an initial blueprint

The major stakeholders should all sign off



Learn about the audience by defining the user experience

This establishes a clear definition of the audience

It helps in understanding how users will react to the site

This involves another round of conversations and/or meetings

Get them to rank the range of potential audiences

Ask them to describe the needs and goals of the most important audience members

Use these results to create user scenarios

These are stories about how people will use the site



In practical terms, this means:

Observation: go into the setting and watch people

Shadowing: follow them around

Examining artifacts and their uses

Interviews: interview people in their workplace

This can be structured or unstructured

Sampling: can involve time or task sampling

They fill out activity diaries on your schedule

Self-reporting: they have the greatest amount of control

Ask them to take pictures or keep journals



Navigation models depend on people’s goals and needs

Perfect knowledge

Optimal rationality: follow the highest probability path

Based on “information scent” or imputed meaning of content/labels

Satisficing: following what looks like the best path and stop when the content is a close enough match

Mental map: model of site structure

Rote memorization

Information foraging: consuming local resources and moving on



Learn about the competition

Find out who the main competitors are and analyze their sites

Criteria #1 #2 #3 #4DesignNavigationLook and FeelSearchPersonalizationScriptingCurrency



I. Theory: What is IA based on?




• The information ecology of IA







Working in the IA world

The IAs must be matched to its organizational context

It provides an image of the client’s mission, vision, strategy, values, and culture

The site is a “major component of the evolving conversation between” the business (or

organization) and its customers (or clients)

It influences the ways in which the audience thinks of the organization’s products and services

This is why alignment is so important for IAsRosenfeld and Morville, Ch2



Working with content: documents, applications, services, schema, metadata on the site

Ownership: what are its origins? Who creates and controls content?

Format: what are the different types of formats used?

Structure: the document? database entry? structural markup?

Metadata: what is being used? What should be used? How is it managed (controlled or user-generated)?

Volume: how much?

Dynamism: what is the rate of change?



Rapid IA prototyping

A structured method moving from exploration to design to testing

Based on user and business requirements

Users: how they tacitly group, sort and label tasks and content

Business: understanding and incorporating goals and concerns

Importance of stakeholder analysisSinha, R. and Boutelle, J. (2004). Rapid information architecture prototyping. Proceedings of the 5th conference on Designing Interactive systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques. 349 – 352. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1013115.1013177



Rapid prototyping is useful for the design of top-down IA

Exploring the content domain

Understanding user conceptual structures and stakeholder perspectives

Generating several candidate designs

Doing quick comparative testing to choose among them

Methods

Free listing: all the words associated with a category

Shows shared concepts and boundaries of domains

Generates a list of tasks that can be done on the site



Methods

Types of tasks

Core tasks: the core functionality of the site

Boundary tasks: the most demanding, unusual, or sophisticated functionality on the site

Horizon tasks: could be done on future versions of the site

Distribution: 50-80% core tasks, 10-25% horizon tasks and 10-25% boundary tasks

These describe the boundaries of the information domain



Methods

Card sorting: users arrange content into categories and hierarchies

Cluster analysis groups the open sorts into hierarchies

Closed sorts allow quick testing of the hierarchies to see if tasks belong in specific categories

Stakeholder analysis

Techniques for understanding the range of perspectives and goals within a business environment



Card sort

This is a low-tech approach to develop a taxonomy

It demonstrates how people group items

Allows you to develop structures that maximize the chances of users being able to find what they want and:

Is easy and cheap to conduct

Identifies items that can be difficult to categorize and find

Identifies terminology that is likely to be misunderstood

Infodesign. (2002). What is Card Sorting? http://www.infodesign.com.au/usability/cardsorting.html



You have to have predefined the major categories

Label each card with a description of potential content

Have respondents create and name piles of cards that share similar relationships

Then cluster the groupings

Pay attention to items that do not have a consensus

Would re-naming the item improve the situation, or does it need to be included in more than one category?

The results indicate how users organize the content

Use the findings to the develop the site architecture



Preparing the card sort

Ensure that each term is clear and unambiguous

Include all the items you need to categorize

Shuffle or randomize cards prior to each session

Use the same instructions so all participants have the same understanding of the process

Leave participants alone while they are sorting the cards, but make sure they can easily ask you

questions

Provide additional blank cards for people to write group names and rubber bands to gather groups of cards together

s512: information systems design spring 10 ia as theory and practice i. can ia be based on theory?...

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