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A Primer on Information Architecture: Introduction

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...)

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The Value-Up Paradigm

The paradigms I’m going to contrast are how we view the entire development process. I will refer to two different paradigms: the first is the “work-down” approach which I will contrast with the “value-up” approach. I read about this in Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System concerning the new Microsoft approach to software development including an introduction to the Agile SDLC. However, I’m not here to promote Microsoft Team System or Agile methodology; instead, I’m here presenting a paradigm that is pertinent regardless of your chosen SDLC or technological platform.I will start by defining both (read more...)

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Engaging the Entire Development Team

Before I left college the only experience I had in software development was as a one-man team. I did all the design and back-end development. There wasn’t a conflict of interest between designer and programmer, because they were both one person! As I left college and got into the “real world” I found that it was impossible to do large-scale software development by oneself. All of the sudden there were information architects, program managers, user interface experts, database administrators, technical writers, and on and on. I came to realize the value of specializing in one field. (read more...)

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