Information Design

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An evolving art and science

In the early days of web design and application development, you probably focused on the creation of information architectures and database schemas during the information design process. Today, you must do much more. Now beyond the scope single applications, information design must also include methods for both building solid information systems for packaged products and linking disparate systems data together.

Since 1996, we've constantly refined our approach to information design to coincide with the evolution of websites, intranets, web applications, and other business systems. Information design is the art and science of organizing information, creating navigation paths, and optimizing systems to help your end-users accomplish their desired tasks.

Maximize your returns with effective information design

Regardless of what type of information management or retrieval system you build or how simple or complex the underlying technology, effective information design ensures you maximize your investment.

A strong information design with functional and intuitive paths ensures your users can quickly and easily find what they're looking for, accomplish desired tasks, and even receive extra values, such as personalized recommendations, services, or information. It also ensures your solution can deliver business value.

Current information design components commonly include:

  • global information architectures — define page structures and are displayed through menu systems
  • meta-information — describes content and gives structure; connects data between systems; optimizes search; and facilitates document categorization, sorting, and filtering

Working with you through the process

Our process varies depending on the information design components within your system, the specific needs of your organization, and your supporting technology. We start by selecting an appropriate set of activities within three phases: information gathering and analysis; detail design; and validation, testing, and refinement.

Phase 1 — information gathering and analysis

We begin the first phase by developing a clear understanding of your business, project, and user context.

Areas of investigation:

  • your strategic business goals and objectives, and relevant strategies that contribute to your competitive advantage or market position
  • your vision for the system, including project objectives or desired business outcomes
  • opportunities or constraints created by your chosen technology
  • your departmental and end-user requirements
  • existing information design components that relate to your business objectives and feedback relating to their success

Specific activities:

  • stakeholder interviews with senior executives, human resources, information worker groups, or end-users to understand their requirements
  • audits of existing content and systems (as-is structure of file systems, search logs, intranets information architectures, document management system taxonomy, enterprise applications data models)

Phase 2 — detailed design

The information we gather and analyze helps to influence the detailed design phase. We vary the activities in this phase vary, depending on the components that require design, but we generally do the following:

  • Design the information architecture
    For websites and intranets, we recommend an approach that involves a card-sorting technique aimed at discovering your end-users' mental model. We recruit real users of your system, ask for the types of tasks they would expect to accomplish, and then facilitate a grouping exercise to identify the relationships between the tasks or content.
  • Confirm the taxonomy and meta-information
    Based on relationships defined in the audit and grouping activities, we improve findability through enhanced categorization, navigation, and search.
  • Produce sitemap or spreadsheet and define page requirements
    We capture the structure in a sitemap or spreadsheet, which itemizes each page and its location in the site structure. We also define page requirements (layout and functionality) in wireframe diagrams. We then further refine the structure when we compare it against existing traffic trends, legacy file structures, and thorough user-review workshops.

Phase 3 — validation, testing, and refinement

We typically validate your information design through user-simulated tests or review sessions. We strongly recommend that you adopt a process for continuous validation and refinement to ensure your design improves to meet business and user needs. Here are some of the methods we use:

  • Rapid usability testing
    Using our in-house, HTML, wireframe-prototyping tool, we inexpensively test your proposed site structure with a website that contains only navigation (no design).
  • Informal review sessions
    We evaluate the success of your local categorization scheme or taxonomy within a small group of users or document collection.
  • Web analytics
    We monitor and validate the overall success of your information design.
  • Site search improvements
    We allow for taxonomy evolution and better search engine effectiveness.