Book Review: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition
Have you ever decided how to organize information on a Web site, probably by designing a navbar of sorts? Then you’ve been an information architect!
Because you have taken that role, you may as well read the definitive beginner’s guide. Authors Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville do an excellent job describing what Information Architecture (IA) is, how it overlaps with other disciplines, and begin describing how to produce controlled vocabularies, wireframes, and labels. As Rosenfeld and Morville point out, IA is so new that there are no absolutely concrete ways of doing anything, but they’ve been consulting on it long enough to know what works so far. The case studies on the information architectures of evolt.org and Microsoft’s MSWEB Intranet provide invaluable insight as to how IA can be applied for value in the real world.
So far, the book has given me some great ideas on interface design and how search should work. I’ve even gotten to bust out a software vendor on their lackluster search during a meeting, while actually having a clue as to what I was talking about (more about that in a future blog post).
Not the most fun read in the world, especially in the beginning parts of the book, but I definitely recommend it to anyone who has a hand in developing software.