Siolon

Navigation and IA Navigation is without a doubt one of the most essential elements of any interface, and as a result adequate time and thought is necessary to ensure your interface’s navigation is usable and comprehensive.  From the all important global navigation that stays the same throughout the site, to local navigation which changes based on the content of the page, to contextual navigation which exists within the content itself.  They all work together to form a powerful navigation experience. Information Architecture as an Extension of Web Design - features some good points on navigation and IA. Information Architecture Deliverables: Site/Navigation Structure - (read more...)

Information Architecture (IA) is one of the most important and exciting concepts in designing applications, but it also one of the least understood by a majority of designers, programmers, business analysts, etc. Hopefully through the following overview of the major concepts and benefits you can immediately improve both the utility and finabitliy of information in your application. After all, content (information) is the most important thing to any application so doesn’t it deserve some foresight? Defining Information Architecture (IA) The Findability Flower The Information Architecture Institute has the following definition to begin our study. They define IA as: The structural design of shared information (read more...)

If you spend anytime at all doing interface design work you know the value-added from wireframes early on in the development process. It helps to point the customer to what’s important in the early-going, namely, labels, location of content, navigation, etc while not worrying about the font or what color the background is going to be. It’s this stage that information architects flex their muscles. I have created a wireframe for MOSS 2007. It is based on the master page that comes out-of-the-box with SharePoint 2007. If you want to make it WSS-specific, all you really have (read more...)

At work we are currently re-doing the architecture of our user interface (UI) layer. We sat down to discuss what our objectives should be in doing this initiative, and I found the objectives so compelling that I think it could apply to any user interface. Below are the major objectives in constructing a UI: consistency, usability, navigation, visual appeal, interoperability, performance, and accessibility. I should first say that this list and its corresponding description are not intended to be exhaustive. I realize that there are many layers of complexity in this endeavor. Also, you’ll see how inter-dependent (read more...)

The WordPress developers have been engaged in debate for a while now on how we should name the section currently entitled “Blogroll.” I believe strongly that “Links” is the preferred title especially to users using WP as a CMS. Regardless of what I think, there has been a vote set up to give us a better grip on what the user wants. Vote Now! (read more...)