1 Information Architecture Designing and Organising Digital Information Spaces

2 Introductions Huibert J. Evekink, Amadeus Global Travel (Spain) Margaret Hanley, BBC (UK) Jane McConnell, NetStrategy JMC (France) Peter Morville, Semantic Studios (USA) Organised by Information Today in conjunction with i-expo.

3 Peter Morville Background Library and Information Science (1993) Information Architecture + Findability CEO, Argus Associates ( ) Co-Author, IA for the World Wide Web (1998, 2002) Current Roles President, Semantic Studios President, Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture Adjunct Faculty, UM School of Information VP, User Experience, Q LTD

4 Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture International non-profit organization Launched in November 2002 Advance practice and profession of information architecture IA library, tools, events, discussion, events, news, job board 500 members from 40 countries

5 Part I. The Case for IA

6 1.The combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within an information system. 2.The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content. 3.The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information. 4.An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

7 Architecture Design Technology

8

9

10

11

12

13 Why is IA Important? Cost of finding (time, frustration) Cost of not finding (bad decisions, alternate channels) Cost of construction (staff, technology, planning, bugs) Cost of maintenance (content management, redesigns) Cost of training (employees, turnover) Value of education (related products, projects, people) Value of brand (identity, reputation, trust)

14 Web Site Statistics Wasted expense: most sites will waste between $1.5M and $2.1M on redesigns next year. Forfeited revenue: poorly architected retailing sites are underselling by as much as 50%. Lost customers: the sites we tested are driving away up to 40% of repeat traffic. Eroded brand: people who have a bad experience, typically tell 10 others. Forrester Research Why Most Web Sites Fail

15 Time Spent Searching Employees spend 35% of productive time searching for information online. Working Council for Chief Information Officers Basic Principles of Information Architecture Managers spend 17% of their time (6 weeks a year) searching for information. Information Ecology Thomas Davenport and Lawrence Prusak

16 The High Cost of Not Finding The Fortune 1000 stands to waste at least $2.5 billion per year due to an inability to locate and retrieve information. While the costs of not finding information are enormous, they are hidden within the enterprise, and…are rarely perceived as having an impact on the bottom line. The High Cost of Not Finding Information An IDC White Paper, July 2001

17 Intranet Statistics After spending two years and $3 million on development and usability testing, Bay Networks expects to see $10 million in productivity gains…as a result of its new (intranet) information architecture. Working Council for Chief Information Officers Basic Principles of Information Architecture

18 Intranet Statistics The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross- company intranet usability study. The return on investment? One thousand percent or more. Intranet Usability: The Trillion-Dollar Question Jakob Nielsens Alertbox, November 2002

19 Importance of Usability B2C site managers told us that ease-of-use was the most important element of their sites design. Financial services execs rated usability as the most important contributor to the success of a bank or brokerage site. Get ROI from Design Forrester Research, June 2001.

20 Organi$ation Delphi Groups research on user experiences with corporate Webs reveals that lack of organization of information is in fact the number one problem in the opinion of business professionals. Taxonomy & Content Classification A Delphi Group White Paper,

21 Vividence Research Tangled Web 2001 Results collected from 69 major web sites. Most Common User Experience Problems Poorly organized search results53% Poor information architecture32% Slow performance32% Cluttered home pages27% Confusing labels25% Invasive registration15% Inconsistent navigation13%

22 Why is IA Difficult? Language is Ambiguous synonyms, abbreviations, acronyms, misspellings, homonyms, antonyms, contronyms, etc. Organization is Subjective categorization and information seeking behaviors vary widely among individuals. Goals are Complex find (precision/recall), sell (push/pull), user experience Information Architecture is… abstract, detailed, systemic

23 business goals, funding, politics, culture, technology, human resources audiences, goals, tasks, information needs, experience, behavior, vocabularies document and object types, metadata, volume, existing site, structure, relationships

24 Invisible Information Architecture

25 IA Therefore I Am Peter Morville Semantic Studios Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture Findability