Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

Chapter 10. Information Architecture in Action

In Chapter 3 through Chapter 6, we covered the basic principles of information architecture and illustrated those principles with examples and practical advice. Chapter 7 through Chapter 9 explained the role of both information architecture and architect in context of a web site’s development and described the architect’s tools and deliverables.

This chapter provides you with a case study that illustrates how an information architecture can solve some of the most common and irritating problems faced by web designers and developers. The architecture described here is not a silver bullet; it certainly doesn’t work for all possible types of sites. Use this chapter instead to get a sense of the decision making that goes into creating an information architecture that fulfills specific needs.

Archipelagoes of Information

As do most of his books, James Michener’s Hawaii starts at the dawn of time. He describes how the lovely Hawaiian archipelago grows over millions of years from humble, organic beginnings, each island birthing and dying in explosions of lava emanating from beneath the Earth’s crust.

Large, complex web sites and intranets have similarly organic beginnings. These sites are loosely connected archipelagoes of information, starting slowly with one island, coming from sources often unseen, exploding with change and growth, out of control. It often goes like this: someone in the MIS department gets a web server, sets it up, builds a ...