Organising Organising Information in your Information in your

WebsiteWebsite

Organising Organising Information in your Information in your

WebsiteWebsite

Steps and SchemesSteps and Schemes

Slide 2Organising Information

Organizing Information

• The Information Architect– Determine site’s content and

functionality – Specify site’s organization, navigation,

labeling and searching systems– Detail how the site will accommodate

change and growth over time– The aim is to allow users to find their

way through the site quickly and easily

Slide 3Organising Information

Elements of Information Architecture

• Organization systems• Navigation systems• Labeling/Indexing systems• Searching systems

Slide 4Organising Information

Five Steps

1. Divide the content into logical units 2. Establish a hierarchy of importance

among units 3. Work out relationships among units 4. Build site to closely follow your

information structure 5. Analyze how it looks and works

Slide 5Organising Information

How we Search for Information

• Searching for information is an iterative, interactive process

• What you find at the start of your search may influence what you search for or find later

• Associative learning can occur

Slide 6Organising Information

Types of Organization Schemes

• Exact Organization Schemes– Divides information into well-defined,

mutually exclusive sections (the phone book)

– This is called ‘known-item’ searching. You know what you are looking for

– Exact organization schemes are easy to design and maintain, as it is easy to categories objects

Slide 7Organising Information

Alphabetical Organization

• Phone books, dictionaries• It is often an umbrella for other

schemes• Many different ways in which

information can be organized– by last name, product name, service

name, department

• Supports different types of searching – rapid scanning, browsing

Exact Organization

Slide 8Organising Information

Chronological Organization

• Suitable for certain types of information– archives of press releases, newspapers and

magazines– history books– diaries– TV guides

• It is easy to categorize items once there is agreement on when an event occurred

Exact Organization

Slide 9Organising Information

Geographical Organization

• If place is important then a geographical organization scheme works well

• A travel site

Exact Organization

Slide 10Organising Information

Ambiguous

• Categories don’t follow an exact definition

• Sometimes they are more important and useful than exact organization schemes.

• Books can be searched for by author, title or subject

Slide 11Organising Information

• Libraries use Dewey Decimal systems. These are useful because we do not always know what we are looking for

• Difficult to organize and maintain• Can be difficult to use

Ambiguous

Ambiguous Organization

Slide 12Organising Information

• Ambiguous organization groups items into intellectually meaningful ways

• Topics that are related can be placed side by side

• In an alphabetical listing, items beside each other may have nothing in common other than they share their first initial letter.

Ambiguous Organization

Ambiguous

Slide 13Organising Information

• With ambiguous organization the designer has made an intellectual decision to group items together

• Grouping of related items supports associative learning

• Ambiguous systems involve more work in design and maintenance but they can often prove more valuable to users

Ambiguous OrganizationAmbiguous

Slide 14Organising Information

Success depends on

• The initial classification system worked out

• The ongoing indexing of content items

Ambiguous Organization

Slide 15Organising Information

Some Ambiguous Organization Schemes

• Topical Organization– Organization is by subject or topic– Yellow pages– Book Chapters of non-fiction (text books)– Academic courses and departments– Most websites should provide some kind

of topical access to content regardless of organization scheme used

Slide 16Organising Information

Breadth of Content• Refers to the boundaries and

limitations regarding the topics dealt with

• Topics must have relevance to the organizations products/services and must have space to grow for future products etc

• Selecting the number of topics is a big task

Slide 17Organising Information

Task-Oriented Organization

• This organizes content into a collection of processes and functions.

• Software application menus are an example of this type of organization. Think of the menus - File, Format, Help etc. The user selects and navigates depending on what process he/she wants carried out

Slide 18Organising Information

Task-Oriented

• This type of site organization will increase with the increased use of intranets for business-to-business transactions and the increased use of the Internet for e-commerce

Slide 19Organising Information

Audience-Specific Organization

• Where there are two or more clearly defined audiences

• The audience is segmented with different content provided for each segment (the college website – has some content aimed at staff with different pages aimed at students)

Slide 20Organising Information

Audience Specific

• It works well if there is value to the company from customizing content for each audience.

• It allows clutter-free pages, which present only the options of interest to the particular audience.

Slide 21Organising Information

Hybrid Schemes

• These include elements of other schemes like topical and audience-specific into one website

• Can lead to confusion for viewer• Need careful arrangement of

pages

Slide 22Organising Information

What Scheme to Use?• The success of any website will

depend on how well it serves the needs of the target audience and how well it serves the goals of the organization

• Information organization plays a very big part in this success

• The scheme chosen depends on the site’s content and purpose