che Usability?

Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld are back with an updated Third Edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.

Keeping most of the organization of the Second Edition, the Third Edition addresses emerging web technologies and features such as:

• Tagging 
• Folksonomies
• Social Classification
• Guided Navigation.

Divided into six sections, the book provides:

1. an overview of information architecture 
2. the components of architecture
3. tools, techniques, and methods that take you from research to strategy and design to implementation
4. a series of short essays that provide practical tips for those who work on information architecture 
5. the business context of practicing and promoting information architecture, including recent lessons on how to handle enterprise architecture 
6. case studies on the evolution of two large and very different information architectures.

Must-read chapters
If you don’t have time to read the book cover to cover, these chapters are essential:

• 6: Designing Labels
• 7: Navigation Systems, and
• 10: Research.

Chapter 6, “Designing Labels,” presents approaches for creating consistent, effective, and descriptive labels for your web site. Morville and Rosenfeld explain important concepts such as:

• labels as contextual links
• labels as headings
• labels as index terms
• iconic labels, and 
• card sorting exercises.

Chapter 7, “Navigation Systems,” looks at the design of browsing systems that helps your users understand where they can go within your site. Important subjects to review in this chapter are:

• integrating global, local, and contextual navigation
• user personalization
• collaborative filtering, and
• social navigation.

Chapter 10, “Research,” covers integrating information architecture into the web development process through user interaction and feedback. There is a lot of good information in this chapter, but the section on card sorting is a must for web site managers and developers of large scale web sites and intranets.

Who should read this book
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web is a good resource for novice web designers and anyone who manages large scale web sites or intranets.
 
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
Authors: Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld
ISBN: 0-596-52734-9

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 9:33 am and is filed under Book reviews, Usability design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.