IA or Web Content?

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:40:05 +0000

At its most basic definition, information architecture is the construction of a structure or the organization of information. An Information Architecture is the “blueprint” of an enterprise expressed in terms of information models which show what information resources are required; their processes and information, and the infrastructure and processes required to manage and store them.

Data Repositories

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:34:32 +0000

If there is any bigger time waster in IT, I’m not sure if there is one larger than redundant data. At the core of it all, IT is about collecting, storing, retrieving, moving, transforming and reporting on data. If the same data is stored in multiple places, let’s say two or three, that’s twice or three times the amount of effort to perform all of these functions.

What is not included here, is the time it takes staff to synchronize and determine what the “truth” or information of record is.This activity often turns into projects, and projects that occur anyone wants to build anything that uses or attaches to this data. It is necessary to determine who entered what, and when it was done to determine which information is more current.

Where and What are Your Truths?

While we all know this, we almost all accept it as a problem that we ourselves did not create. It is almost always left to be done later, which we all know never seems to happen. One of the ways that some organizations deal with this is to use data warehouses and store information about validity and truth within the meta data repositories. More data, more work, more synchronization and more updates.

Yes, it’s better than redoing the research projects each and every time we wish to use the data, but not necessarily the best use of our time.So what can be done now? As we seek to develop projects that need or use the data, we can seek to reuse data that already exists where possible, and seeks out those who will take responsibility for keeping it current.

Easier said than done, but if we are to find those who experience pain in not doing this, it is possible. The other things we can do is build bridges back to the best known source of the information and attempt to decommission the areas we find not to be valid or reliable as we find them. There are very few projects on our books that are willing to incur the expense in doing this type of work, but as business and IT organizations, we need to treat this as some sort of “tax” or “levy” for using common information in the first place.

Organizations who are information intelligence focuses, those who primarily provide and use data to create revenue are the most able to gain from such a perspective. Problems we created years ago don’t go away over night, but the best way to eat an elephant is chunk by chunk, and if we don’t put this one on the menu, no one will ever eat it, and the pain will cost us far more over time than these one time taxes ever will!

Content Management Basics

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:30:02 +0000

I’ve been known to rant when I see the pages and pages of links that come up when one searches for “Information Architecture” and all they get is content management garble. I will have to succumb to the fact that when dinosaurs are extinct, the kids that survive will be the ones who believe this stuff and gone will be the good stuff like information models such as logical and physical diagrams, server diagrams and data dictionaries. All the makings of mature information architectures.

I do however have to spend some time discussing content management – the credible side of information architecture. Many organizations have deemed these folks “librarians” of the content provided by content owners. Christina Wodke defines IA as “The art and science of structuring and organizing information systems to help people achieve their goals. Information architects organize content and design navigation systems to help people find and manage information.”

In it’s utmost simplest terms, Content management is an other name for publishing. The main objective of publishing is to get the right content to the right person at the right time at the right cost. Publishers manage publications. Key staff include contributors (authors) and editors. Authors create content. Editors decide what content should get published, and how much editing that content requires.

The web was invented by Tim Berners Lee as a publishing tool. HTML was created to be a publishing mark-up language. That’s the core reason the term web ‘pages’ is used. Content management is web-based publishing. The early stages of web publishing, like the early years of printing, were very dependent on the programmer, in the same way book publishers are reliant on the printer. It was a major technical feat to publish a large website.

Many people like to make their discipline sound complex because that makes them more valuable to the organization. Web publishing sounds very complex. I have personally seen business cards passed around at industry events that contain the title “Information Architect” to find out they may be the webmaster or the content librarian at their organization.

Web publishing technology is becoming streamlined and standardized. The focus is moving away from the tools and towards the content. The basic rules and concepts are the same as they’ve been for many centuries as they were for publishing, whether you are publishing to print or to the web.
A couple of new terms have come to light in the most recent years that never existed years ago, and here is where the architecture comes in.

Information architecture is the name being misused as many web publishers as the discipline of managing the organization and layout of web content. In print, editors have managed information architecture-type challenges for centuries (table of contents, indexes, etc.)

Why is IA Important? It’s all about the metrics, especially when we talk about public facing content sites. Each company who runs an online storefront, as well as the bricks and mortar variety will know that a good website keeps the buyers coming back, and makes it worth the investment in the first place.

Several metrics are key: Cost of finding information on the site – the time, # of clicks, amount of frustration or precision in finding something. Adversely, there are metrics surrounding not finding the item – success, recall, frustration, and alternatives which are harder to measure.

There are also some metrics that should be tracked in any content management solution, or for the web design. There is the cost of development (time, budget, staff, and frustration as well as the value of learning for the consumer (related products, services, projects, people.)

The latter of which has become known as usability, and there are folks that have now focused their careers on being web usability experts. This is an incredibly fast moving target, as styles, tools and technologies remain fast-paced release wise.

Personalized content is publishing is by definition an act of personalization. Your city newspaper has a specific scope and focus. Vogue is about fashion, and Sports Illustrated is about sports. So, if you edit for a website, you are by definition creating personalized content. Like so much about the Web, personalization has been vastly over-hyped and again, sold as a feature of content management tools.

Now further to metrics, we must design and consider the information environment or the context in which content is stored. In large companies, Enterprise Content Management projects are undertaken because they have increasingly global and distributed enterprises, multiple cultures and languages, and potentially have acquired several different companies. It would be nearly impossible to locate any document, so typically many copies are stored in department file systems before an ECM is included in the landscape.

It is complicated further by numerous intranets and web sites, and the fact that authors and users spread across departments. Often ownership is unclear. Many of the issues revolve around the centralization versus decentralization discussions.

IA consumers needs are both complex and diverse – they have diverse information seeking behaviors, needs and expertise. We are now approaching real information architecture, as we need to include storage, servers, networks, and database and application software to manage the content.

It is a large undertaking to study user behaviors to determine what will be best for an organization. Methods of organization of files and searching content that is not text-based becomes further issues. The method of categorization of the information is crucial. Content dictionaries should contain some or all of the information about the content being stored. Most content management solutions will provide for this type of indexing so that the content may be easily stored.

To provide you with some value for today’s eZine issue, here are some variables you should track in your homegrown dictionary, or data collection points if you are investing in content management software or a metadata store:

architectbootcamp.com » Info/Data Architecture

IA or Web Content?

Data Repositories

Content Management Basics