Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition

By Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville,

Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Number Of Pages: 500
Publication Date: 2002-08-01
Sales Rank: 1902164
ISBN / ASIN: 1600330150
EAN: 9781600330155
Binding: Hardcover
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media
Studio: O'Reilly Media
Average Rating: 4

In Chapter 6 of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the authors discuss the details of good search-engine design. In a bitingly humorous segment, they analyze a Web site's search-page results: "Let's say you're interested in knowing what the New Jersey sales tax is.... So you go to the State of New Jersey web site and search on sales tax. The 20 results are scored at either 84% or 82% relevant. Why does each document receive only one of two scores?... And what the heck makes a document 2% more relevant than another?"

With a swift and convincing stroke, the authors of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web tear down many entrenched ideas about Web design. Flashy animations are cool, they agree, as long as they don't aggravate the viewer. Nifty clickable icons are nice, but are their meanings universal? Is the search engine providing results that are useful and relevant? This book acts as a mirror and with careful questioning causes the reader to think through all the elements and decisions required for well-crafted Web design. --Jennifer Buckendorff

Book Description:

Today's web sites have moved far beyond "brochureware." They are larger and more complex, have great strategic value to their sponsors, and their users are busier and less forgiving. Designers, information architects, and web site managers are required to juggle vast amounts of information, frequent changes, new technologies, and sometimes even multiple objectives, making some web sites look like a fast-growing but poorly planned city-roads everywhere, but impossible to navigate. Well-planned information

architecture has never been as essential as it is now.

"Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition, shows you how to blend aesthetics and mechanics for distinctive, cohesive web sites that work. Most books on web development concentrate on either the graphics or the technical issues of a site. This book focuses on the framework that holds the two together.

This edition contains more than 75% new material. You'll find updated chapters on organization, labeling, navigation, and searching; and a new chapter on thesauri, controlled vocabularies and metadata will help you understand the interconnectedness of these systems. The authors have expanded the methodology chapters to include a more interdisciplinary collection of tools and techniques. They've also complemented the top-down strategies of the first edition with bottom-up approaches that enable distributed, emergent solutions.

A whole new section addresses the opportunities and challenges of practicing information architecture, while another section discusses how that work impacts and is influenced by the broader organizational context. New case studies provide models for creating enterprise intranetportals and online communities. Finally, you'll find pointers to a wealth of essential information architecture resources, many of which did not exist a few years ago.

By applying the principles outlined in this completely updated classic, you'll build web sites and intranets that are easier to navigate and appealing to your users, as well as scalable and simple to maintain. "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition is a treasure trove of ideas and practical advice for anyone involved in building or maintaining a large, complex web site or intranet.

Review:

The worst O'Reilly Book I've ever read

I usually love O'Reilly - I've never bought a book of theirs that I didn't find occasion to go back to for some reason at some point before this book. Most O'Reilly books have info that you can reference when your actually working on a project - this book doesn't even prepare you for discussing the task intellegently. Granted, if this were not an O'Reilly book I would have given it 2 stars, but I have higher expectations from O'Reilly.

An example of what I found incredibly frustrating about the book follows. I expected the section called "Designing Elegant Navigation Systems" (the last section in the chapter "Designing Navigation Systems") to contain advice about what to include in the navigation system and suggestions for designing navigation systems. I got one page of babeling that included sentances like "Based on the hierarchy, you will be able to select key pages (or types of pages) that shoudl be accessible from every other page on the web site." At no point to they suggest what sorts of pages should be accessible. They don't mention the ones that should be obvious: feedback, home, and search; nor do they discuss if or when it's desirable to have one link from each major subsection in the global navigation.

The whole book was disapointing to me, I don't really feel that I learned much of anything on the subject. I knew nothing of the field to start with, so I feel I should have come away from any well written book on the subject with some comprehension of the field.

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