Introduction

• Margaret Hanley• Business Analyst/Senior Information Architect

BBC• Worked on three continents – Australia, USA

and UK• Been both a consultant and internal staff to

companies like Sensis (Yellow Pages in Australia), Argus Associates (US), Ingenta (UK and BBC (UK)

IA Tools and Deliverables

• Some IA tools

• Deliverables to go with them

IA tools

• It depends…– Based on what you want to do, achieve and

the amount of time you have

One example

• The BBC health site

• Needed to be re-organised but there was no budget for external consultants or user testing

• Only had 2 weeks

• What to do?

One example• 2 week timeframe• Business Context – Interview the editor and

the team working on the project to identify goals, users and any changes that will happen within the next 6 months

• Users – Identify existing personas, do card sort with BBC staff who meet the persona profile

• Content – do content analysis of the site• Deliverable - New top-down structure with

labeling that was acceptable to team

Second example

• 3 months

• Come up with a new way to think about Internet Directory structure

• What to do?

Second example

• Business context– Interview opinion leaders– Interview stakeholders– Read business plan

• Users– Test with internal users of the system– Search log analysis

• Content– Analyse the directory structure– Do competitive analysis

Second example

• Deliverables– Report– Results of all parts of the methodology– Project Plan for the next phase of

development

Difference between the two

Health web site• One person (though

experienced)• Two weeks• Known problems with

known solution

Directory• Four IAs

• 3 months• Unknown solution

required lots of thinking

Types of methods - UsersCard sorting (open and closed)Deliverable – Top-down structure with site mapBench marking and task based testingDeliverable – Understand problems with the siteCommon tasks and problems identifiedUser interviewsDeliverable – Users mental models, understanding their

environmentPersona development, scenarios and tasksDeliverable – modeling typical user so that the user can

be referred to within the design process; wireframes, task flows

Types of methods - usersSearch log analysisDeliverable – most common words, types of

facets entered by actual users; what is cannot be found easily on the site

Server log analysisDeliverable – understand how the user currently

moves through the sitePrototypingDeliverable – A tested design before the actual

development

Types of methods - contentContent inventoryDeliverable – list of content in the site, to know what is

thereContent analysis and audit – looking through existing

contentDeliverable – way to understand the connections and

patterns between contentComparative analysisDeliverable – identifying best features and elements of

existing sites Content modellingDeliverable – content objects or templates for pages

Types of methods - contextOpinion leader interviews

Deliverable – business objectives and measures for the site

Stakeholder interviews

Deliverable – what is or is not working now; what has been tried already

Workshops, advisory committees

Deliverable – commitment to the same vision for the information architecture solution

Deliverable – task flow

Buy

Register

Install

Use Update EnhanceUpgrade to

new product

Up-Sell(thesaurus)

Cross-Sell(thesaurus)

Support(how-to)

Support(help, tips)

Train(online course)

Notify(patch, driver)

Suggest(add-on)

Suggest(new product)

Web site actions

Customer actions

= enabled by personalization

Process Flow for Customer Interaction

Deliverables - affinity diagramme

80%

Loadbalancing

web servers

How to setDHTML event

properties

Developingweb-enabledapplications

Assessingsecurity &

firewall needs

EnterpriseEdition:

Deployment

DeployingXML

applications

36%48%

48%

44%

Web ProductsServers

Deliverables - wireframes

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Deliverables – rules of thumb

• You create deliverables for someone– Yourself– To communicate with the client, design team

or development team

• Create deliverables with them in mind; don’t overdo them

• If possible negotiate at the beginning of the process – what is exactly required for it to be implemented, discussed or designed

Thank you

Questions or comments?

Margaret Hanley

mairead@yahoo.com