6. A definition
“The craft of structuring, organizing, and
labeling information to make it easier
to find and understand.”
7. Questions to answer
What are the common information needs?
What are common information-seeking behaviors?
What content goes where?
What content goes together?
What content is most important?
31. From “Information Architecture in Real Life” Are Halland:
https://www.slideshare.net/aregh/information-architecture-in-real-life-part-i
From “Information Architecture for the WWW” 2nd ed.
47. It’s necessary
to organize stuff
Read about my experience consulting for the US Department of Veterans Affairs: http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/2009/07/shame_and_disgust.html
48. It’s necessary
to organize stuff
…and ethical too
Read about my experience consulting for the US Department of Veterans Affairs: http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/2009/07/shame_and_disgust.html
91. “AI requires machine learning, machine learning
requires analytics, and analytics requires the
right data and information architecture (IA). In
other words, there is no AI without IA.”
— RobThomas, general manager at IBM Analytics.
From VentureBeat, January 2018 https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/12/the-road-to-ai-leads-through-information-architecture/
92. From presentation “AI and ML Demystified”; Carol Smith at Midwest UX 2017:
https://www.slideshare.net/carologic/ai-and-machine-learning-demystified-by-carol-smith-at-midwest-ux-2017/16-AI_and_ML_Demystified_carologic
93. From presentation “AI and ML Demystified”; Carol Smith at Midwest UX 2017:
https://www.slideshare.net/carologic/ai-and-machine-learning-demystified-by-carol-smith-at-midwest-ux-2017/16-AI_and_ML_Demystified_carologic
Information architect as
teacher of algorithms
95. Reconsidering the IA of books…
FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS
What do you mean by “content everywhere”?
The way I talk about it, “content everywhere” doesn’t mean splattering your
message in every corner of the Web. It’s about investing in content that’s
flexible enough to go wherever you need it: multiple websites, apps, chan-
nels, and other experiences. Why? Because devices of all shapes, sizes, and
capabilities are flooding the market, and users expect to get your content on
all of them, which you can read about in Chapter 1.
Right now, most organizations can barely keep up with their large, unwieldy
desktop websites, much less multiple different sets of content for all these
different experiences. Content everywhere is all about learning how to pre-
pare one set of content to go wherever it’s needed—now and in the future.
What do you mean by structured content,
and why is it so important?
Today, most digital content is unstructured: just words poured onto a page.
To signify where one part ends and another begins, writers use formatting,
like upping a font size to be a headline or putting an author’s name in italics.
This works fine if your content is only going to be used on a single page and
viewed on a desktop monitor, but that’s about it.
Structured content, on the other hand, is created in smaller modules, which
can be stored and used in lots more ways. For example, you could display
a headline and a copy teaser in one place, and have a user click to read the
rest—something you can’t do if the story is all one blob. You can give the
same content different presentation rules when it’s displayed on mobile,
such as resizing headlines or changing which content is prioritized or
emphasized—automatically. In this way, adding structure actually makes
content more flexible, because it allows you to do more with it. You can learn
about this in Chapter 5.
But don’t I need different, simpler content for mobile?
Inserted an FAQ before
the TOC for additional
context, navigation, and
orientation
96. Reconsidering the IA of books…
FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS
What do you mean by “content everywhere”?
The way I talk about it, “content everywhere” doesn’t mean splattering your
message in every corner of the Web. It’s about investing in content that’s
flexible enough to go wherever you need it: multiple websites, apps, chan-
nels, and other experiences. Why? Because devices of all shapes, sizes, and
capabilities are flooding the market, and users expect to get your content on
all of them, which you can read about in Chapter 1.
Right now, most organizations can barely keep up with their large, unwieldy
desktop websites, much less multiple different sets of content for all these
different experiences. Content everywhere is all about learning how to pre-
pare one set of content to go wherever it’s needed—now and in the future.
What do you mean by structured content,
and why is it so important?
Today, most digital content is unstructured: just words poured onto a page.
To signify where one part ends and another begins, writers use formatting,
like upping a font size to be a headline or putting an author’s name in italics.
This works fine if your content is only going to be used on a single page and
viewed on a desktop monitor, but that’s about it.
Structured content, on the other hand, is created in smaller modules, which
can be stored and used in lots more ways. For example, you could display
a headline and a copy teaser in one place, and have a user click to read the
rest—something you can’t do if the story is all one blob. You can give the
same content different presentation rules when it’s displayed on mobile,
such as resizing headlines or changing which content is prioritized or
emphasized—automatically. In this way, adding structure actually makes
content more flexible, because it allows you to do more with it. You can learn
about this in Chapter 5.
But don’t I need different, simpler content for mobile?
Inserted an FAQ before
the TOC for additional
context, navigation, and
orientation
Navigation
97. Story arc from Donna Lichaw’s
The User’s Journey
(Rosenfeld Media, 2016)
…and conferences
106. Now is
the time!
• Tribal information architecture is over
• Moving beyond website information
architecture
• More gaps than ever before
• The ethics of finding and using information
more important than ever
107. if we have time
a thought about
Venn diagrams