Category Archives: information architecture
Review of the BBC News website redesign
There’s been a lot of discussion and comment about the BBC News redesign, but I’m mostly interested in the information architecture. First thing I noticed was the change of URL from some weird news.bbc.co.uk address to the simple www.bbc.co.uk/news. I’m sure there’s good reasons for this, and it makes SEO sense. But let’s look at [...]
Farewell Left-Hand Navigation
BBC News is soon, amongst other things, to abandon left-hand navigation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2010/07/bbc_news_website_redesign.html I’m really interested in the demise of left-hand navigation. When it was originally introduced, it was pretty difficult for people to get around websites. We didn’t have JavaScript and page includes and content management systems. This meant that to do anything sophisticated, each [...]
Northern User Experience report – “Ambient Findability”
Went the the Northern User Experience meeting last Monday.We discusses Ambient Findability by Morville – who’s a bit of an IA (Information Architecture) guru for co-writing the seminal work, ‘Information Architecture for the World Wide Web’. It’s a couple of years since I read the book, but I do remember finding the book rather academic [...]
Barcamp North East 3 Report
Just got back from BarCamp NorthEast 3. I’ll assume that you either know about it. If not, you can read up about the event at barcampnortheast.com, or about BarCamps at barcamp.org. The Sessions Okay, in no particular order – just whatever order I remember them in (not including the one I did – see below): [...]
Findability, SEO, and Web Standards
Interesting looking book coming out soon on web standards and findability. We design with web standards at the University of Salford, and our search engine results seem pretty good for both the Staff Channel and the Student Channel.
IA Summit Europe 2007
Just booked my ticket for the Information Architecture Summit Europe 2007. It’s in Barcelona at the end of September. I’m doing a poster on Taxonomy in Higher Education. Some great sessions, which it’s going to be hard to choose between. And I’m really looking forward to meeting more people who work in the fields. I [...]
Guest Blog Entry: The Promise of Information Architecture
Link to my guest blog entry which Brian Kelly asked me to write for UK Web Focus: reflections on the web. The theme was some ideas to think about before my talk at the Institutional Web Management Workshop on The Promise of Information Architecture
Bee Foraging
When bees search for nector, there are a couple of methods they use. One is to fly around a bit and use their sense of smell. On the web, this is the equivalent of web browsing. The other method is to follow instructions of bees who found nectar using their sense of smell. This is [...]
IA at IWMW
Just got back from this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop where I gave a plenary on The Promise of Information Architecture and ran a workshop on Information Architecture in Practice. During the plenary, I asked the audience how many institutions had at least one full-time information architect. Only three hands went up – and I [...]
ask.com and thesaurus
I see that ask.com is know using thesaurus concepts. Search for a term, and look at the left hand bar. It includes options to expand your search, narrow your search or view related names (i.e. terms). It shows best bets, with more links for further options. This application if information architecture concepts is a huge [...]
