Although information architecture work is highly skilled and best left to the genius of people like Garrett Dimon the reality is that everybody from designers to website owners find themselves working on it. So what are the most common mistakes and how do we avoid them?

In my opinion there are two pitfalls that many people fall into when structuring the content for their site; confusing naming conventions and overwhelming options.

Confusing naming conventions

The biggest mistake I observe when it comes to information architecture is in the naming of pages and sections. The problem manifests itself in three ways:

• Use of jargon: Every industry and company has its jargon. Web design is certainly no exception with more acronyms than you can shake a stick at. The problem is that you can never assume your users will know all the acronyms. They maybe new to the sector or use a slightly different variation of your companies terminology. The names of your sections and pages should be free of jargon and where possible, product names that the users will not have previously encountered. Page and section titles should be descriptive of their content in the plainest language possible.
• Long names: Although naming should be descriptive they should also be short. Ideally all menu items should be one or two words long. The idea is that users should be able to quickly scan down the list of pages available and identify the one most likely to have content they need.
• Inconsistent naming: Be careful that the way you refer to pages does not change depending on which section you are in. Every link to a page should be referred to in the same way. Where a page title needs to be longer than the wording used in menu items make sure it mirrors it closely. Inconsistent naming can cause confusion and doubt in users making them unsure if they have previously viewed a particular page.

Overwhelming options

The second common pitfall is that of presenting the user with too many options. I commonly come across site structures with more than twelve links in a menu bar at any one time. This goes against conventional wisdom that the optimal number of options to present a user with is between six and eight. Anything more than this and they quickly become overwhelmed and struggle to process the options available.

The desire to present the user many options is an understandable one. As with the homepage there is pressure placed on website managers by different stakeholders to ensure particular content is not “buried” deep within the site. There is also a misconception that the number of clicks in a site should be minimized.

Like many of the misconceptions relating to the web, the belief that users do not like to click is based on out of date thinking. The major problem with clicks was that they meant the loading of a new page and in the pre-broadband days this meant a delay. Of course today that is becoming less of a concern as broadband becomes more pervasive. What is more I think it is safe to say that users do not mind additional clicks if it keeps the process of navigating a site simple and intuitive.

With the myth surrounding clicks dispelled that leaves only the fear of content becoming buried deep within the site structure. How will anybody ever discover a crucial product if it is buried four levels down? Also what do you do with a page that could sit under multiple sections? What if the user looks in the wrong place?

The answer to these concerns are simple. There is more to site navigation than the sites hierarchy. A good website will provide lots of navigational tools to help the user find content and to ensure key content is made clearly visible. These include:

• Search: Search results can contain side links to key content or even weight that content more heavily so it appears nearer the top of the results.
• Related links: By adding in a related links box into each page you can highlight related content that the user maybe interested in.
• Shortcuts: Shortcuts are commonly used on home pages to highlight important content buried deeper in the site structure. However, these links could potentially be used on any page of the site.
• Body links: Its easy to forget the humble body link. However they are a powerful way of highlighting a page on the site no matter how deep in the site it is buried. One technique is to automatically transform any occurrence of a defined keyword into a link to content you wish to promote using either Javascript or some server side processing.
• Tagging: More and more sites are introducing tagging as a navigational method. By clicking on a tag associated with an individual page you are then taken to a list of other pages including that tag. However, there is no reason why key pages associated with a particular tag could not be highlighted in some way to draw further attention to them in the listing.

With so many options available for highlighting content it quickly becomes apparent that positioning in the site hierarchy should not be an issue of contention.

Getting a sites structure right is hugely important and avoiding these common mistakes is a good starting point to achieving that. But what other tips do you have for creating the perfect information architecture? Post them in the comments.

Looking for web design services? Then contact Paul directly or visit Headscape

A couple of weeks ago, after a long time of silence on what will come after Internet Explorer 7, it was revealed on the IEBlog that the next version of Microsoft's web browser will be Internet Explorer 8. The name isn't too much of a surprise I'd say, but it's good to find out that the IE team still exists and are still working on IE.

But a couple of days ago much more significant news came from the same source: internal builds of IE 8 now pass the Acid2 test. The significance of the Acid2 test may not be obvious to everyone, but in practice this means that IE 8 will support display:table and generated content, among other things.

I know that I sometimes complain about IE. I also think I have the right to do so, since over the years I have spent countless hours working around bugs in IE. But I think this is great news. Fantastic. Beyond what I had hoped. Thanks for continuing to work on improving standards support in IE. I hope you can deliver something that is at least as good as the competition with IE 8.

Now where's the Mac version?

IE is the only major browser that is only available on a single platform. If Apple, Mozilla, and Opera can all make their web browsers available on multiple platforms, why can't (or won't) Microsoft?

Or should we be happy that it is only available for Windows? Perhaps if IE was available for multiple platforms we would be seeing more sites that tell us that we have to install IE before they will let us in? I know a lot of developers who are locked into using only Microsoft technology would love that.

Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.

Posted in Browsers, Web Standards.

It’s Friday! Merry Christmas everybody!

My family is in Ireland. Jessica’s family is in Arizona. We live in Brighton.

Every Christmas, we take it in turn to visit one of our families; Ireland one year, Arizona the next. Last year we were going to go to Ireland but because of a beaureaucratic incident with Jessica’s passport, we ended up having our first Christmas in Brighton and my mother came over from Ireland to visit us instead.

It was a great Christmas but it kind of messed up our scoring system. What are we supposed to do this year? Is Ireland still due for the next visit or was last year a de-facto Irish Christmas? Oh, what a conundrum!

I think we’ve found the perfect answer. We’re going to Arizona but we’re bringing my mother over with us. She showed up in Brighton today. Tomorrow we make the long trip across the Atlantic: Brighton to Gatwick, Gatwick to Houston, Houston to Tucson, Tucson to Sierra Vista. The shortest day of the year is actually going to be very long indeed for us.

Once the traveling is done, I aim to spend the holiday season being slothful and indolent in the high desert. Doing absolutely nothing—it’s what Christmas is all about.

Tagged with christmas arizona ireland

So I'm trying to streamline my software life today and one of my pass-times is to fish around and listen to new music before it "graduates" into the hyper-organized world of iTunes. My need was simple: a lean, low-overhead MP3 player that can load in a snap and not be in my way or slow my system down. I fished around a lot and couldn't really find anything to my liking.

Then I thought about Winamp. For those old enough to remember, Winamp set the bar years ago for media players way back when MP3 had come into our lives. It was small, fast and completely badass. It did what it was designed to do beautifully. Here's a snapshot of what Winamp looked like for years:

Nothing crazy. A media player. Shuffle. Playlist support. Worked just fine. So I decide to go to Winamp.com to grab it. Well, it turns out Winamp has grown up a lot since version 2.0 (pictured above). The new version has all kinds of features and a "Pro" edition with even more features. But in looking for something lean, Winamp's svelte physique was no more. In fact, he'd gained a lot of weight:

The above is a chart of Winamp's installer file size as it has evolved from version 1.0 through today's version 5.5. The bars represent kilobytes. Version 1.5 of Winamp comes in around 350kb in size. The current version nears 9MB (or 9000kb) nearly twenty five times the size.

Now I know, there are all sorts of new features in Winamp 5.5 that are missing in 1.5. And some of them may be worth a boost in size. Let's say version 5.5 is, oh I dunno, five times better (a tall order if you ask me). That still doesn't warrant a 25X increase in installer size...which will translate into a larger memory footprint, a greater demand for CPU cycles, and so on.

The unmitigated piling on of features is an evil thing. It's like a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet. Yeh, its great to be able to eat as much as you want for one low price. The problem is your stomach is only so large and you start feeling gross after awhile. When I wear my product manager hat, I like to follow one particular rule: before adding a new feature, weigh its benefit against its cost. It's cost in terms of complexity, dilution of the broader value of your product, its performance impact on your product and...is it adding to the overwhelmed (gross?) feeling of using unnecessarily bloated software.

Digging around, I was able to find a huge list of all the old versions of Winamp on oldversions.com. I grabbed version 2.0. It has the one feature the newer versions don't: it's slim and fast and loads in a split second. And yes, it actually feels good to use something so lean and efficient.

Rejoice! The Thomas Heatherwick Christmas card has arrived! This Heatherwick tradition has three simple rules – the stamp that plays a central part in the design, an unusual production technique and the involvement of the Mount Pleasant sorting office. The result is that rare thing – the Christmas card that never gets thrown away.

And this year’s card is no exception, the stamp is the star atop a Christmas tree that looks as though it has been drawn in the snow with the stamps own perforations, revealing shiny metallic green. The stamp is cancelled with a gold frank that becomes part of the design and the whole thing is shipped in a glossy see-through envelope. Beautiful. Thank you Heatherwick Studio!

Leah and I have been piloting some new approaches to get around some of our frustrations with the limitations of wireframes:

• they can focus time and attention on all the wrong details and activities
• they constrain creativity
• they split up designers and teams to work alone

We call our approach “sketchboards,” a technique that allows designers and teams to explore and evaluate a range of concepts, getting to better UX solutions faster. We’ve found that this approach:

• allows us to iterate faster towards more creative solutions
• better supports the design of flows and highly interactive experiences
• incorporates the input of the entire team; our clients and partners love it
• defines what we need to document in wireframes, or just skip ahead and begin prototyping

The video below takes you quickly through the sketchboard technique, but be sure to read the essay that contains more details, templates, and examples.

Leah and I will be sharing this as an agile-friendly approach in a workshop titled “Good Design Faster” at UXWeek 2008. Come join us!

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