Column Two

T. Scott Stromberg has written a beautiful post on the art of wireframes in information architecture. To quote: One of the greatest advantages of sketching is that it can become a foundational tool which can easily be used to more fully explore your design treatments and architectural studies. The ability ...

Patrick Kennedy has been featured in a podcast on IA mentoring. To quote: I am now live on the air…on the net. The latest edition of Gerry Gaffney’s UXpod, user experience podcast, features yours truly speaking on the subject of mentoring. It follows my presentation at last year’s OZCHI and ...

Matthew C. Clarke has written an article on IAs as change agents. To quote: The kind of work IAs do leads to changes in the way people behave. We are in the business of providing tools and structures designed to allow people to do something in a different way (hopefully ...

Sam Ng has written an article on card sorting mistakes. To quote: Card sorting is a simple and effective method with which most of us are familiar. There are already some excellent resources on how to run a card sort and why you should do card sorting. This article, on ...

Thomas Vander Wal has written a piece on the current state of tagging. To quote: It was in del.icio.us that we saw tagging that really did not work well in the past begin to become valuable as the clarity in tag terms that was missing in most all other tagging ...

Gerry McGovern has written an article arguing that web redesign is bad strategy. To quote: A website redesign approach is usually embraced by organizations who are reacting to the fact that their websites have fallen into disrepair. Something is not working and the belief is that a nice redesign, some ...

Donna Maurer has uploaded her card sort analysis spreadsheet. To quote: Over the past few years I have been slowly developing and refining a spreadsheet I use for analysis of card sorts. I have used it on many projects and find it invaluable for helping me manage the data and ...

Ross Dawson has launched his web 2.0 framework today. To quote: The intention of the Web 2.0 Framework is to provide a clear, concise view of the nature of Web 2.0, particularly for senior executives or other non-technical people who are trying to grasp the scope of Web 2.0, and ...

Lou Rosenfeld continues his series of articles on a no-knead approach to information architecture. To quote: Now comes the fun part, Step #3: determine each audience's primary tasks and information needs. Duh.I realize that this sounds painfully obvious. But can you describe -- with even minimal confidence -- the major ...

Iain Barker has written an article on measuring the success of a classification system. To quote: I developed the following enhancement to Donna Maurer's card-based classification evaluation technique as a direct response to a client that wanted to engage with the process of restructuring their content-heavy intranet. My client knew ...

Lou Rosenfeld has continued his series of articles on a no-knead approach approach to IA. To quote: Determine who your most important audiences are. Many organizations -- academic institutions, for example -- already have an excellent grasp of who their primary audiences are, but you'd be surprised at how many ...

Joe Lamantia has written an article exploring the concept of text clouds (versus tag clouds). To quote: "Text cloud" might be a more accurate label for these visualizations than tag cloud. In addition to recognizing fundamental differences - text clouds differ from tag clouds in composition (no tags at all) ...

Jorge Arango has written an article on deep context, relating to the practice of information architecture. To quote: In Hall's model, High context (HC) communications convey much of the meaning of a message in information that is pre-programmed beforehand in the speakers and the setting of the communication. In other ...

Luke Wroblewski has shared a diagram on the utility of tagging that has been created by Tom Chi. To quote: Master diagram-maker and designer, Tom Chi recently put together (and graciously allowed me to share) an insightful illustration that communicates how the utility of tags is bi-modally distributed across personal ...

Karen Loasby has written an article on the last five years of information architecture. To quote: In 2001, FreePint featured an article on the still-new concept of information architecture (IA) in "Information Architecture and web Usability Resources". Five years on, IA may still be an unfamiliar term for many, but ...

Gene Smith has written an article that describes tagging systems, classifying them in different ways and exploring why users tag. To quote: This is my cheat sheet for the paper "Position Paper, Tagging, Taxonomy, Flickr, Article, ToRead" (PDF). I'd recommend reading it (if you find tagging interesting you probably already ...

Tom Reamy has written an article on enterprise information architecture, focusing on semantic and organisational issues. To quote: Yes, EIAs can be a force for change, but so can anyone. The real question is: should the discipline of Enterprise Information Architecture be defined to include organizational change as one of ...

Joshua Kaufman has published an article on card sorting. To quote: If you're designing a system to organize content, you can either come up with your own labeling system -- which may or may not be shared by others -- or you can talk to the actual users of the ...

Donna Maurer is running a survey on card sorting, to gather input for her upcoming book. Details as follows: As part of my book on card sorting, I'm running a survey about how you've used card sorting in a way that may be different to the standard technique. There are 7 simple questions, ...

Lou Rosenfeld has published the results of IA surveys conducted over the last few months. To quote: For the new edition of the polar bear book (almost done!), Peter Morville and I conducted five surveys of the information architecture community. All of the results are now available via the IA ...