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Information Architecture

July 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

large-scale Web site structure, navigation, and usability

When it first appeared in 1998, Information Architecture became an instant classic amongst information architects. It now appears in its third edition, much enlarged and updated. The new edition reflects the rapid expansion and technical sophistication of large interactive web sites in the last few years. Rosenfeld and Morville deal with all the issues raised in organising information and navigational systems in the design of large-scale sites. Their important starting point is a recommendation that big sites should use three types of information organisation, which they identify as hierarchical, database, and hypertext.

Information Architecture Visitors to a site should have more than one possible route to the same piece of information. They ask some quite fundamental and interesting questions in their updated chapters. These cover issues of organisation, labelling, navigation, and searching – plus new chapters on thesauruses and meta-data.

The new edition has been given many more case studies, and lists of resources on IA have been added, many of which did not exist at the time of the first edition, and there’s a very good bibliography which painlessly blends print and web-based information. Navigation has been expanded into global, local, and contextual systems, and there is a lot more detail on search engines.

Another section which has been considerably expanded is that on classification systems and ‘knowledge management’. That is – where to put things, how to arrange, label and store information.

There’s also a much-enlarged section on the management of web development projects – from the initial strategy meetings through content analysis and mapping, to delivery and maintenance.

They present real life case studies, including one which details how a strategy report was written for Weather.com. Anybody who needs help with report writing will profit from reading this chapter. ‘Information Architecture’ was a relatively new term only a few years ago, but now as you can probably guess, it is of use to anybody who needs to organise information, ideas, or even physical objects – such as books in a library.

There’s an excellent account of how to draw up site maps and flow diagrams which help to explain the deep level architecture of sites to those who are going to populate them with content.

The same is true for page layout diagrams – which they call ‘wireframes’. These test the arrangement of items on main pages before they are passed on to a graphic designer. Architecture and usability are tested before the application of a graphic. It’s rather like designing the layout of a web page with table borders switched on – before setting them to zero.

They take an enthusiastic line on the use of navigational metaphors (the shop, the office, the library) about which other commentators such as Barbara Fleming and Jakob Nielsen are more cautious. The argument against this approach is that the metaphor of an office or a library will not mean much to people who are not familiar with them. And of course the same is true for icons and symbols.

This is a book for serious designers, project managers, and of course information architects. It is also a contribution to design theory which, en passant, makes librarians into the heroes of the information age. The valuable experience embedded within it will make useful reading for anybody organising information, designing a site, or providing content for it. If you read the first or second edition, it’s worth reading the third for the wealth of new material.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Sebastopol (CA): O’Reilly, third edition, 2006, pp.461, ISBN: 0596527349


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Filed Under: Information Design, Web design Tagged With: Information architecture, Information design, Navigation, Structure, Usability, Web design

Information Architecture

July 25, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the basic principles of organising information

Books on Information Architecture are coming thick and fast at the moment. Christina Wodtke’s approach will appeal to anyone who wants to learn the main principles, without having to wade through lots of abstractions and jargon. Her written style is very much influenced by web-based writing. She is concise, straight to the point, and entertaining. She starts out by looking at the basics of navigation, screen layout, subject categorising, usability, and liquid pages.

Information ArchitectureAll the time, she keeps the site visitor in mind. It’s a friendly, practical approach, and she illustrates all her points with plenty of screenshots. The main novelty she has to offer is to puncture some of the common suppositions about web design. For instance she argues quite persuasively against a one-size-fits-all approach:

Beware of gurus peddling simple answers. Instead, seek better tools to help you think up better solutions. Think first. Design second.

As is common with good advice, a lot of it seems very obvious when spelled out – but it is useful to be reminded that on the homepage of a site you should ‘show people the range of your offerings’.

She also recommends ‘see also’ pages of the kind at which Amazon excel. If someone visits pages dealing in laptops and novels, there’s a good chance they will also be interested in software and magazine subscriptions.

There’s a particularly good chapter on meta-data where she explains the reason why ‘information about information’ is important. This also includes a clear account of controlled vocabularies – one of the latest issues in usability and Web promotion.

She explains the systems of what are called ‘global navigation systems’ – the links, buttons, and tabs which normally appear at the side(s) and top of every page.

The latter part of the book deals with the process of mapping out and designing a site. This is something that should be done with pencil and paper. She includes storyboarding techniques, sitemaps, content inventories, wireframes – and even illustrates how to conduct cheap, small-scale usability testing.

This is another top quality production from New Riders – who have almost cornered the market in books on this subject.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Christina Wodtke, Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2002, pp.348, ISBN: 0735712506


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Filed Under: Information Design Tagged With: Data management, Information architecture, Information design, Web design

Information Design

June 29, 2009 by Roy Johnson

essays on the theory and practice of information design

There has recently been a great deal of debate amongst members of the design community about the status of their profession, the exact meaning of ‘information design’, and the nature of what it is they are supposed to be doing. This collection of essays is a contribution to that debate and an attempt to think about the future of information design. The first part of the book offers a number of theoretical statements, in the best of which Robert E. Horn – one of the earliest pioneers of writing about hypertext – provides a useful historical survey of designers of information.

Information DesignHe summarises his argument by claiming that there now exists a ‘visual language’ in which words, images, and shapes are combined into what he calls a ‘unified communication unit’. In another interesting essay, Romedi Passini discusses the issue of ‘wayfinding’ – which he points out is not merely a matter of signs. People navigate their passage through known and unknown terrain using markers and semiotics more subtle than pointing fingers and boards saying ‘This Way’. This essay is crying out for more illustration, which is rather surprising in a study of design.

Part two is concerned with practical applications, and offers examples as broad as tactile signage in an institution for visual disorders, graphic tools for thinking, and visual design in three dimensions. The longest and possibly most successful contribution is by C. G. Screven on signage in museums and other public places – successful because it unites theory and practice.

The third part deals with design in the field of information technology. An essay by Jim Gasperini breathes some new life into the collection with his consideration of fiction, drama, and hypertext, and there are brief excursions into fractal sculpture and multimedia.

If ‘information design’ is now a coherent discipline and an honorable profession, then it could do with asserting itself more forcibly than do some of the contributors here. [Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville’s Information Architecture for the World Wide Web should be compulsory reading for all of them.] However, it’s a start, and one which anybody engaged with the current debates will do well to study.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Robert Jacobson (ed) Information Design, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, pp.357, ISBN 026210069X


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Filed Under: Information Design, Theory Tagged With: Data management, Information architecture, Information design, Product design

Making Knowledge Visible

July 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

practical information architecture – projects and policies

Elizabeth Orna is a big hitter in the field of information architecture and design. Her previous studies – Information Strategy in Practice, Practical Information Policies, and Managing Information for Research have all been very well received. This latest study Making Knowledge Visible sets out her ideas for making information more accessible and more useful. It is based on practical research projects conducted at institutions as diverse as the Co-Operative Bank, Essex County Council, The Tate Gallery, the National Health Service, and the Inland Revenue.

Making Knowledge Visible In the first two chapters she sets out her terms and definitions, then presents an overview of her arguments. Her central idea is a distinction she makes between knowledge and information. Knowledge resides in people’s brains: it is transformed into information when they express it in some form and make it available to someone else. That second person inverts the process by absorbing the information and transforming it into personal knowledge. She uses the term ‘Information Products’ to describe the medium in which these transformations take place: these could be books, reports, data bases, or web sites.

In any organisation these information products constitute a very valuable asset, and they ought to be complete, up to date, documented, and searchable. So much should be quite obvious, but anybody who has worked in industry, commerce, or government knows that this is often not the case. Orna is quick to observe:

I gave up being surprised a long ago by how often those essential products look as if they had been designed to repel all boarders, drive users to distraction, dissuade potential customers from purchase of goods or services, and impede staff in their work.

Fortunately, she goes on to give examples of organisations who have profited from making their own IPs explicitly to themselves. Those who have taken the trouble to value their information have profited from doing so.

But she doesn’t shy away from negative examples There’s an excruciating account of trying to bring rationality and coherence to the Department of Trade and Industry which makes you feel glad you don’t work there.

A lot of the discussion of information is often abstract, but she does make the interesting point that the value of information and knowledge are unusual compared with other commodities:

  • Transactions in them among people can benefit all parties
  • They don’t wear out from use
  • Information can be used in multiple ways by many people simultaneously

Most of the ‘black museum’ cases she exposes result in financial losses inefficiency, and employee frustration; but she also includes the example of the Cambridge police mishandling of public records which resulted in the employment of Ian Huntley as a school caretaker, even though he had a police record for attempted rapes. The result was the tragic murder of two children.

She also deals with some interesting examples which come to light as a result of the Freedom of Information Act. Institutions are obliged to comply with the new requirements to make certain of their information publicly available – but how can they do so accurately unless they have a complete and up-to-date inventory of their own data?

The main lesson which emerges is very simple and quite obvious – but it is seldom implemented. That is, there needs to be an organisational overview and a coherent approach to the management of information within an organisation – and the strength of Elizabeth Orna’s approach is that she does show how it is possible.

One other feature of her work I found attractive is that she moves easily between the world of print and the web, seeing the benefits of both. For those who want to pursue these issues at a more advanced level, she also considers metadata and the Dublin Core.

Information design is a subject which spins out in all directions to include other subjects – information architecture; typography and graphic presentation; usability; web design; systems analysis; and organisational structures. One of the strong features of Orna’s work is that she takes them all into account.

All her claims are meticulously documented, and each chapter carries its own bibliography and list of relevant URLs. It’s also worth noting that the book itself is very elegantly designed by her usual collaborator Graham Stevens.

This is a book aimed at information and systems analysts and managers, web designers, communication specialists, plus teachers and students of business management. I think librarians, project managers, and business consultants would also have a lot to learn from what she has to say.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Elizabeth Orna, Making Knowledge Visible, Aldershot, UK: Gower, 2005, pp.212, ISBN: 0566085631


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Filed Under: Information Design Tagged With: Data management, HTML, Information architecture, Information design, Making Knowledge Visible

Secrets of Successful Web Sites

July 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

business strategy and management of web design projects

David Siegel is a Web design guru who made his name with the best-selling Creating Killer Web Sites. That was a manifesto on graphic presentation: this is his thesis on the organisation and management of web design projects. The first part of the book offers fifteen case studies; the second part is a methodology of web site design. This takes into account the business and strategic issues of making a site effective, as well as the technicalities of colour, page design, and navigation. The book will appeal to individual designers who want to create their own business – those people with ambition to move from the spare bedroom into their own office.

Secrets of Successful Web SitesThe case studies deal with companies such as Land Rover, National Geographic, Virgin, Porsche, a brewery, and a university. There’s also a fascinating account of the origins of Salon web magazine and how it functions. These are lively mini-essays which reveal the secrets of good business strategies – as well as some of its dangers and pitfalls.

The later chapters describe the planning and design strategies used on a typical web project. At its centre is the project or development web site – where prototypes, help files, and work in progress are posted for comment.

He takes his analysis right through to the launch of a web site, and even the fine details of whose names should appear in the credits. It’s full of interesting tips, such as getting clients to agree on structure and navigation before introducing colour – which is very subjective and almost always causes disagreements.

He’s very good on writing business proposals: how to work out what to charge, and what details to take into account when drawing up estimates for a job – as well as how to spot danger signs.

There are also some useful tips on contracts of agreement and copyright of work . These are backed up with downloadable template documents at the book’s own web site.

So, like his Killer Web Sites, this is full of thought-provoking ideas expressed in an energetic and ‘committed’ style. It’s also a beautifully designed and printed book. Anyone who is interested in e-commerce and web-based business will be interested in what he has to offer.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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David Siegel, Secrets of Successful Web Sites, Indianapolis (IN): Hayden Books, 1997, pp.304, ISBN: 1568303823


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Filed Under: Web design Tagged With: Information architecture, Project management, Secrets of Successful Web Sites, Web design

The Computer and the Information Revolution

June 28, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the history of mathematics + technology = computers

This is book which gets mentioned in any serious history of computers. It’s a study of the mathematical, mechanical, and then the electronic developments which led to the creation of modern computers. The first part of The Computer and the Information Revolution offers an account of the development of mathematical systems, ending with the creation of binary notation in the nineteenth century. This paves the way for part two, which is a history of automatic calculation – first by mechanical devices, then by electronic means. It’s a book dense with a sense of history, and Ifrah’s span reaches effortlessly from 3500 BCE (Before the Common Era) to the maths underlying computer technology in the post-war years.

The Computer and the Information RevolutionHis approach can sometimes be a little disconcerting. One minute we’re in ancient Greece, next in the eighteenth century. A more smoothly integrated chronological narrative would have strengthened his case, just as more pictures and diagrams would have spared him page-length descriptions of the machines he discusses. This is a book which is crying out for illustrations.

However, he more than makes up for this in his wide-ranging inclusiveness. Even small-scale and failed inventors are mentioned. He is particularly good at explaining the relationship between mathematical theory and what was technologically possible at any given point. He points out that there are big gaps in the development of information technology – very often caused by the absence of nought/null in the numbering system.

It’s an odd book, because the translator and editor fills in what he clearly regards as important gaps in the author’s knowledge, and the chronology is patchy too. There’s a lot of back-tracking to make up for a lack of continuous narrative.

However, his account gains a great deal of impetus as all strands converge for the creation of the first modern computers. His description of Alan Turing’s conceptual breakthrough in 1936 and his relationship to John Van Neumann’s idea for a program stored in memory become positively gripping.

In fact it’s a shame he doesn’t stick with his theme once computers had been built, because the latter part of the book spins off into cosmology, genetics, and a mosaic of reflections on culture,science, and ‘the future of mankind’. Nevertheless, for anyone remotely interested in the development of information technology, this is a book which should not be missed.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Georges Ifrah, The Computer and the Information Revolution, trans E.F.Harding, London: Harvill, 2000, pp.410, ISBN 1860467385


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The Renaissance Computer

July 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

information architecture in early print technology

The Renaissance Computer is a collection of essays which seek to explore the similarities, connections, and lessons to be drawn from a comparison of the advent of digital technology with the age of print in the immediate post-Gutenberg period. In the 15th century the printing press was the ‘new technology’. The first ever information revolution began with the advent of the printed book, enabling Renaissance scholars to formulate new ways of organizing and disseminating knowledge.

The Renaissance ComputerThe basic argument is that the proliferation of printed texts was as revolutionary and presented similar problems of information architecture, storage, and retrieval as we feel we have now in our digital age. The earliest attempts at memory and storage systems were remarkably similar to the Windows operating system, though the fact that they were made physically manifest made them cumbersome and non-portable. Nevertheless, it would have been wonderful to visit Giulio Camillo’s memory theatre, where a visitor occupied the stage, and all the knowledge of mankind was stored on the tiered rows of what would normally be seats.

Editor Jonathan Sawday looks at precursors of the modern computer in the work of Milton, Hobbes, Pascal, Liebnitz, and Descartes. There’s a chapter on the role of illustrations in early modern books, another looks at the role of the index, title page, marginalia, and contents page as early examples of hypertext and navigation.

The authors also point to the amazing persistence of some outmoded technological forms:

Recent work on the circulation of manuscript collections of poetry in the seventeenth century…has demonstrated that this form of publication survived for two centuries after the invention of the printing press. The modern researcher who, seated in the rare book rooms of the Huntington Library or the British Library, laboriously copies out passages from an early printed book is participating in an ancient tradition.

There is a very interesting (and more readable) chapter on Thomas Heywood’s Gunaikeion (1624), an encyclopedia on women. The link with computers is no more than the suggestion that it’s a cut and paste composition, but the content sounds so interesting it made me feel I wanted to read a copy.

These chapters are scholarly academic conference papers – and the have both their strengths and weaknesses. Wide ranging and well informed, but often looking for connections where none exist or finding them to little purpose.

The idea of a Renaissance computer is only a catchy idea. These studies are of how information was organised in text form, how it was understood and retrieved, and how the Renaissance book tackled issues of information architecture which many people now think of as something new.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Neil Rhodes and Jonathan Sawday (eds), The Renaissance Computer: knowledge technology in the first age of print, London: Routledge, 2000, pp.212, ISBN: 0415220645


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Filed Under: Information Design, Literary Studies, Media Tagged With: Computers, Cultural history, Information architecture, Information design, The Renaissance Computer

Web Navigation

June 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

navigation, structure, and usability for web design

Web sites have sometimes been described in terms of ‘generations’. David Siegel for instance describes how first generation sites were rapidly thrown together with no greater ambition than to get pages of HTML code onto the Web. The second generation added graphics, started to be concerned with page layout [even though HTML code is not designed for that purpose] and often added eye-popping special effects. Third generation sites have brought some of these excesses under control, and are designed to make the user experience more meaningful. Web Navigation is emphatically third generation.

Web NavigationThere’s no doubt that clever designers have managed to produce some visually stunning Web pages – but many information architects are now beginning to ask questions such as “Can visitors find their way around the site?” and “Is this site achieving its purpose?” The eye candy effects of flashy graphics often mask a lack of content and an incoherent maze of links which visitors are glad to leave quickly via the nearest exit. Jennifer Fleming’s Web Navigation is a serious and articulate plea for intelligent Web site design, and it is based on principles which owe more to information theory and coherent structure than to the luminous-glamour school of graphics-based design.

Like most good designers, she insists on a user-centred rather than client-centred approach to web design. What’s the difference? you might ask. Well, intelligent designers are now beginning to realise that web sites are often created to impress the commissioning clients, rather than the people who will be using them. Men in suits will applaud spiffy graphics when a new site is revealed at a presentation – but they will probably never need to log on again.

The book’s structure reflects the clarity of her purpose. There are six chapters on the foundations of navigation design, then in the second part an analysis of successful sites. There are four appendices: technical tips, a glossary of navigational terms, a list of web resources, and a bibliography. The accompanying CD comes with trial versions of software (including the highly praised Dreamweaver) and it has a marvellous ‘netography’ with listings of articles, web sites, and online resources covering navigation, usability and testing, organisation of information, information design, document markup and scripting. [I loaded the disk, browsed the sites she recommends, and all the links were working.]

Her advice is to provide clear, simple, and consistent navigational aids – and she offers a particularly strong warning against using metaphors such as the office or the supermarket [though curiously, the CD uses icons]. Navigation that works should:

  • be easily learned
  • remain consistent
  • provide feedback
  • appear in context
  • offer alternatives
  • be economic in action and time
  • provide clear visual messages
  • use clear understandable labels
  • be appropriate to site’s purpose
  • support user’s goals and behaviour

Now that’s an important free lesson for you! She is in favour of any interactivity, such as rollovers (‘OnMouseOver’) which provide feedback, and is sceptical of the ‘Back’ button on the grounds that users might enter a site at any page. Where would they be going ‘back’ to? She also raises other interesting navigational questions, such as ‘where will you be when you’ve finished reading a page, and where will you wish or need to go?’

She recommends multiple navigational routes and aids, plus guidance. For instance, a site might have a framed and ‘no-frames’ version, a graphics and no graphics version. It will certainly have navigation hot spots at the top and bottom of every page, maybe a contents list in left-hand frame, plus icons, labels, and anything else which helps users find their way around.

One of the interesting features of her approach is that she illustrates her argument with detailed reference to the work of other ‘information architects’ such as Jakob Nielsen, Clement Mok, Edward Tufte, and David Siegel. The reader is thereby presented with a range of approaches to this relatively new subject. There are lots of bibliographic suggestions and URLs in side-bars on the page – and those I checked were all up-to-date, which is an important feature in such a fast-changing medium.

It’s a book aimed at professionals. For instance, her descriptions of the site design process assume that there will be teams of designers in sessions at a corporate level using flipcharts, video recordings, and even team-working software. There’s lots on brainstorming and chunking in what are now called ‘focus groups’. But these principles could be followed by what I suspect is more likely to be the average reader – somebody working in a spare room at home.

This is a book for people who want to take web design seriously. It’s significant that she spends so much time discussing the thoughtful planning, research, and testing of a site, rather than the creation of flashy effects and animated gimmicks which adorn so many KEWL sites. She has powerful and revealing arguments in favour of a consistent design process (so that the arbitrary element of success or failure can be removed). This is fairly obvious when you think about it – but that’s true of many good ideas.

She includes a full account of professional designers at work, with pointers to the resources they use – such as David Siegel’s free downloadable ‘profiling’ materials at www.secretsites.com for instance.

This is the business studies version of web design manuals, packed with thought-provoking information on determining user goals and expectations. She describes the use of personal interviews, people ‘shadowing’ users throughout the working day, and ‘disposable camera studies’ where users record what they find interesting. Not many individuals will have the resources to be so thorough, and sometimes the ‘feedback-usability-testing’ approach makes this all seem like a science rather than the sales-pitch that it is – as if we can predict how many people will come to our site to buy widgets.

In the second half of the book her notions are put to work analysing the navigational methods and structure at sites built for shopping, entertainment, learning, and community services. This struck me as slightly less interesting than the first part, but still worth reading for the revealing tips and guidance notes embedded in her analysis. The observations, as before, are that successful sites are customer-oriented, and that they give extra consideration to online customers because they lack the navigational support provided during comparable user experiences in libraries, airports and shopping malls.

If there is a weakness in her examinations, it’s that these are often not much more than descriptions of sites – though they are nevertheless well-illustrated mini-lectures, with plenty of screen captures. For instance, she heaps praise on Amazon.com for their search facility and one-click ordering system. However, this doesn’t take into account that the company, despite its multi-million dollar turnover, hasn’t actually made a profit so far.

It’s worth noting that a lot of what she says about helping users through the layers of a site is based on the US-centred assumption that people are going to spend a lot of time browsing – because they have free local telephone calls. But European (certainly UK) users will not have such luxuries. They’ll hit a site, search for what they’re looking for, then disconnect quickly. This economically-driven difference in user behaviour should be taken into account by anyone theorising about navigation, browsing, and web design.

But there are many good tips offered en passant – including some which might seem obvious, but which are often ignored by site designers. For instance, I’ve noticed that in the UK, quangos and government departments are very often reluctant to display their postal address [possibly reflecting the arrogant nature of these organisations].
But she insists that

Making your street address, phone number, and email address easily available is not only about completing an online sales pitch…It’s about other elusive qualities: trust and community.

Similarly, many UK universities would do well to heed her advice on making themselves more accessible and well-presented. How many times have you visited a university site and found no lists of courses on offer or staff who teach them? She points to the short-sightedness of this approach:

A large percentage of visitors to a university site are applicants for admission, or are thinking of becoming applicants…If a university can answer their questions fairly easily, it bodes well for the entire process. A positive experience on the Web – especially for college applicants, who tend to make decisions on gut feelings – is a powerful factor in decision-making.

It’s good that she chooses different (and challenging) types of sites to analyse. Searching for information is quite a different matter to being entertained or pushing round a virtual shopping trolley. The section on information sites [Lycos, Computers.com] is particularly interesting, because she forces us to think about different types of questions which might be asked of a site, and the different approaches to searching users develop.

Until recently, just providing information via the Web was a laudable pursuit. It was enough to be one of the forward-thinking few who recognised the power of the Web for mass communication. Those days are gone, replaced with a new challenge: providing increasingly complex layers of information, and making it all seem simple.

Very near the end of the book she presents a simple formula for successful sites. Aspirant site designers would do themselves a favour by writing her tips on Post-It notes and sticking them on their monitors:

  • keep every page below 20K
  • recycle headers
  • keep graphics small and simple

Jennifer Fleming has a background in library and information science, and her advice and observations strike me as more seriously well-founded than most of the web design manuals I have ever seen. This is a wonderfully rich and thought-provoking study which anybody analysing or building web sites should put on their list of essential reading.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Jennifer Fleming, Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience, Sebastopol: O’Reilly, 1998, pp.253 plus CD-ROM, ISBN: 1565923510


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Filed Under: Information Design, Web design Tagged With: Experience design, Information architecture, Information design, Navigation, Usability, Web design, Web Navigation

Web Style Guide

July 5, 2009 by Roy Johnson

principles of good design, navigation, and usability

This is a guide to Web site design, not to HTML coding. In fact, it will be entirely suitable for someone who has a basic grasp of HTML, but who wants to learn about the strategic issues of how to communicate via this amazingly cheap and democratic medium. The Web Style Guide began its life as advice to users at the Centre for Advanced Instructional Media at Yale University. Lynch and Horton start out with basic design concepts and information architecture, and wisely advise following the principles of good navigation which arise out of centuries of print culture – whilst making plenty of subtle distinctions between different applications and user groups, such as web sites for training, teaching, and reference.

Web Style GuideThey deal with issues of page length, typography, information chunking, and the use of frames; and they spell out the advantages of cascading style sheets. There is even a chapter on editorial style – on how to write most effectively for Web pages: summary first, short sentences, and chunked information. They go into a lot of detail on graphics and multi-media, and they end up with really useful tips on animation, audio, and compression.

Even though they take a ‘No HTML’ approach, it might have been useful to show how some of the effects can be created. On the control of vertical and horizontal white space on the page, they are fans of the David Siegel one-pixel spacer trick, where a small graphic spacer is stretched out to create indents, half line spacing, and even empty vertical columns. It’s a shame that Yale University Press has not decided to do justice to the original of this publication by reproducing some of the pages in colour. The section on graphics for instance is undermined by grey-toned pictures.

There is a consistent stress on user-friendliness and web-centred design, and their advice comes in the form of compressed wisdoms which suggest they’re based on a lot of experience. The style is wonderfully concise: almost every sentence is a well-crafted digest of advice.

Hypertext links pose two fundamental design problems. They disrupt the flow of content in your site by inviting the reader to leave your site. They can also radically alter the context of information by dumping the reader into unfamiliar territory without preambles or explanation.”

I first read most of this book by downloading PDF files from their website. At that time the text actually looked more attractive on screen than it did in print. However, this has been rectified in the latest edition. This is now a very attractive book, and an excellent publication which combines the basic principles of information architecture with well-informed tips on website design.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, New Haven: Yale University Press, second edition 2002, pp.164, ISBN 0300088981


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