ITC200 > The Structure Plane
Finally, our concerns shift from the more abstract issues of strategy and scope to the concrete factors of what my users will actually see when the come to the site – however, these concrete decisions still involve strategy and conceptual matters as well.
Defining our structure will include two fundamental points:
- Information Architecture – the ordering, grouping, organizing and presenting of content
- Interaction Design – the discipline of creating a structured experience for the user
Both interaction design and information architecture share an emphasis on defining patterns and sequences in which options will be presented to users.
Information Architecture
Information architecture deals with the options involved in conveying information to the user Both are about understanding the users, the way they work and the way they think:
(Sinkula) Example Information Architecture
The basis of web designed information architecture is concerned with creating organizational and navigational schemes that will allow users to move through the website efficiently and effectively.
The information architecture that you will create will require that you create categorization schemes of your site’s content corresponding to the objectives you have set out for your site and questions and needs of the user.
There are two general methods of tackling the job of information architecture:
- Top-Down: this approach involves creating the architecture directly from the site objectives and user needs by starting with the broadest categories of possible content and functionality to accomplish the strategic goals
- Bottom-Up: this approach also derives categories and sub-categories, but it does so based on an analysis of your content inventory and your functional requirements by grouping items together in lower-level categories and creating higher-level categories from them
Creating a balance between these two methods of creating your architecture will ensure that you are creating an architecture that will allow your inventory to be grouped properly and allow for flexibility of change and updates
It is not necessary to adhere to any particular number of categories or sub-categories – as long as they are clearly defined and are appropriate for your users
A user will be able to follow a process involving more steps if those steps are logical and clearly defined vs. a confusing process involving less steps
Architectural Approaches
The basic unit of information in an architecture is the node, which corresponds to any piece or group of information within your site – most nodes represent pages, but, a node can be as small as an item number of a product
Nodes can be arranged in many different types of structures:
- Hierarchical: The most common architectural structure is the hierarchical structure where nodes have parent/child relationships and the user would move either up or down through this structure
- Matrix: A matrix structure allows the user to move from node to node along two or more dimensions – an example would be allowing users to browse products by color and allowing others to browse by size
- Sequential: A sequential structure is one of the structures you are most familiar with from reading books in a series of sequential pages – they tend to be limited to applications in which the order of content presentation is somewhat linear and essential to meeting user needs
Interaction Design
Interaction design concerns itself with describing possible user behavior and defining how the system will accommodate and respond to that behavior. Interaction designers typically use flowcharts to describe the options involved in performing and completing user tasks:
(Fraser) Registration & Login: A Simple Solution, p.5
See Also:
- Shapes of the Visual Vocabulary | Jesse James Garrett
- Visual Vocabulary for Information Architecture | Jesse James Garrett
Early in the days of programming the focus was on what the computer system did and how it did it – but eventually we started catching on to the idea that instead of designing software to just work for computer efficiency sake, we realized that it was a need to design software for the efficiency of the user as well.
Conceptual Models
Conceptual models are the impressions of the users of how the components we create will behave – users come in with their own mental model of how it should work.
Knowing your conceptual model will allow you to make consistent decisions based from the users mental model of how a site should work.
An example of a conceptual model would be a typical shopping cart – where the user comes in with the impression that they can put things in the shopping cart and take them out and even put more in before they go up to the register to actually check out:
(Sinkula) Example Shopping Cart Interaction Design
This example has been so widely used on the web that it is now a convention – and if broken you risk confusing the user where they might leave to go find a site with the shopping cart they are used to.
Using conceptual models that people are familiar with makes them feel about adapting to your site that they’ve never been to before.
Ideally, the users won’t have to be told what conceptual model we’re following – they should pick it up intuitively as they use the site because it matches their expectations.
Error Handling
Let’s face facts that people are in a hurry and they are going to make mistakes – so what are you going to do when they make mistakes?
The first and most obvious defense against errors is to merely design the website so it is “error proof,” right? – Easier said than done.
By using conceptual models based off of research you can make errors less likely and even difficult to make – but even some are about to happen.
They website should do what it can to help the user figure out what they’ve done wrong and help them recover from their error – “Are you sure you want to do that?”