Questions tagged [information-architecture]
Semantic structure of information within a website, desktop application etc.
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Is the folder structure dying?
In our digital world we have previously been forced to know the location of digital content. The obvious one being the local hard drive or a shared file server where sometimes extreme structures have ...
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My users keep naming things with special characters to thwart alphabetization
In my application, there's a long list of user-created objects in a master-detail setup. All we show in the master list is the name of the object, and the list is alphabetized. I've noticed that my ...
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How to avoid repetitive actions in table rows?
We have a table with data and actions on each row like so:
Name Email Description Actions
James james@gmail.com Desc 1 Edit Export ...
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Do website visitors return to the homepage once they're inside the site?
I have been (unsuccessfully) looking for some research that supports / rejects (or even discusses) the hypothesis that:
Once a user has entered a website a significant percentage of them do not ...
JonW♦
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Good alternatives for replacing multiple nested modal dialogs?
Having a mature and good-selling Windows desktop application, we are focusing on improving the user experience for the next release.
One thing that I try is to get rid of multiple nested modal dialog ...
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Using color in wireframes...is this a "no no"?
Recently, an internal debate was started at work regarding the use of color in wireframes. A junior designer had finished a nice set of wireframes and was told at the end to turn everything into ...
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Should every page in a site have a totally unique H1?
I agree that every page in a site should have a unique TITLE, and that every page should have one and only one H1 element, but should the text of each H1 be completely unique too?
Instinctively one ...
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How do you create a taxonomy for products?
I have the broader question, which is what is the definition of 'taxonomy'. What does it actually mean to create a taxonomy for something... Then I'd like to apply that to an example. Lets say the ...
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How to visually format questions/answers to easily follow the story?
I'm designing a booklet about science facts and stories for kids. The format is based on questions and answers between a teacher and a student. It's text based; few images/graphics are used. The ...
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Underscores vs. hyphens in URLs
I'm trying to come up with a page-naming convention so that each page in a web application I'm developing has the human-friendliest URL possible. The current URL structure of the web application is:
...
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Designing for the fold
What is your advice for designing for 'the fold'? Is this still a concern? Is the concern that people won't scroll? Can't you use visual cues to help users understand that there's more content below ...
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What is Cross-Channel?
Cross-Channel is described in the following way by Mr Andrea Resmini, President of the Information Architecture Institute:
Cross-channel offers a different stance from both multi-channel and cross-...
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Minimalism, Maximalism(?) or whatever?
Tufte & Nielsen believe that screen real estate is one of the most important asset for a (UX) designer. Utilize available screen space - Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: May 9, 2011 & The Visual ...
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Optimum number of choices for menus/navigation
Anyone know any usability or cognitive psychology research done on the optimum number of choices for menus/navigation?
I need some evidence to argue a case against a top level category menu of ...
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Has there been an implementation of a tag hierarchy with graph edge relations?
When organizing information it is common to use either a hierarchy or tags. An element in a hierarchy is ordered within a predefined category and relates to other elements as above, below or at the ...
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What is the difference between Categories, Keywords, Labels and Tags?
Is there a standard way of using Categories, Keywords and Tags in the context of blogs, websites and web applications? I am not sure if it is a case of these being equivalent of synonyms in some cases,...
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Tabular vs Card-based presentation, which is better for lots of data?
Basically, we have a long list of stuff that has, on its on, a lot of details. We are wondering whether to use a table or put each set in a rectangular card format. See below:
On one hand, the table ...
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Is it better to offer 2-3 links to access the same page or one single link?
I'm currently working on an events website. On the events landing page, there is a list of upcoming events. Here is how each event is presented:
The banner, title and 'more details' button lead to ...
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Does an "Other" category on a Help page have any value?
When designing a Help page or FAQ that is broken down into categories, is a category titled "Other" useful, or does it indicate a poor information architecture?
Sometimes there are truly items that ...
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UX vs IA core competencies
What core competencies differentiate a User Experience Designer from an Information Architect?
rcmulcrone
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Show approximate time to complete on a form?
Today, I'm dealing with forms of all kinds. There are small ones, large ones and then ones capable of making a user cry. It is necessary evil - because it is an application that collects a user's ...
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Where should a "Powered by Some-Company-Name" appear on a webpage?
Where should "Powered by ACompanyName" appear in the website if there is a product webpage of the company and the product (logo) branding is already shown on the top left?
Should I be placing the ...
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Domain strategy from a UX perspective?
Having a domain strategy seem to be the latest thing. The discussion about it circles mostly around legal, seo or branding issues but if you want to look at it from a usability perspective - how ...
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How do you map the flow of a mobile application? Can you provide examples?
I'm currently working on the IA/UX for a mobile application and as I'm mapping it out it doesn't seem like a traditional site map makes sense nor does a flowchart. Can anyone point me to a good set of ...
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Does leaving a field blank - mean "everyone"
I'm beating myself up over this one, since we had just that discussion today. We were arguing why a customer was eager to pay a week of work for something that could be trained. And to me it’s pretty ...
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How do you improve the IA of an existing site without throwing away existing content?
I have a scenario that I'm trying to work through and would appreciate your thoughts...
Imagine you have a corporate intranet with about 50k pages and a really outdated information architecture. You ...
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Website redesign how do you know how to organize the navigation structure?
I know this question is extremely broad but I would like to know the steps a UX'er would take in order to understand what content there is on a site and then how to organize this content in terms of ...
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Best Approach for Responsive Linked Images from Desktop to Mobile?
I am redesigning a website from the early 90's and trying to make it more "responsive". An issue came up that involves two images on the homepage when viewed on mobile devices. These images are linked ...
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How do I make every user's data "the most important"?
I'm working on an internal website for our employees. [Apologies if this background is too vague, but this isn't a public-facing website.] This site tracks a huge amount of data made up of many ...
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How is mobile information architecture different from desktop?
I have been trying to find examples on web for information architecture techniques specifically for mobile devices. I realize the steps in getting a IA for any tool mobile/desktop are card sorting, ...
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"Can you make it more prominent?" stakeholder phenomenon
I'm designing many features for a product, where many of these features are shared across the real estate of a screen. It's common for each stakeholder or product manager to feel that their feature is ...
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What is the formal name for an information block in a webpage?
The upper right of the following page has a block labelled "How to Format". What's the formal name for this element in GUI design?
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How can I differentiate Online products vs "Offline" products?
I'm helping redesign a website that has some products that can be purchased online and some which can only be purchased offline in physical stores.
Both the products you can buy and can't buy need to ...
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Navigation menu with only one drop-down child — intuitive or not?
Here is a website's main navigation:
Having sub-navigation on-click is pretty common and irreplaceable:
But as a user and designer, I have struggled with the case where there is only one child ...
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Is it possible to organize a web site based on roles for anonymous users?
In my development team we're gotten a question from our stakeholders to make a navigation based on user roles (Students, Teachers, Course Administrators). I feel that is quite complicated of a task, ...
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Back Button and Menu Button in Top Navigation for iOS
We want to have users navigate our app using a side menu.
Once a user leaves main app pages, the menu button (in top left corner of nav) would change to a back button.
However, the content of our ...
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How do I indicate that clicking a button will remove their search results?
This is about a complicated application that holds 50 years of archived data. Some things are illogical and we can't change it because it's stuck in 50 years of rusted customs. But slowly I'll try and ...
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Should we use ‘narrow and deep’ or ‘broad and shallow’ navigation pattern on mobile devices?
If we have a large content environment on a mobile device, we need some way to access that content with ease. One could implement a narrow and deep navigation pattern which gives the possibility for ...
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What's the difference between Information Architecture and Interaction Design?
In Jessi James Garrett's book, Elements of User Experience there is this image that shows up that presents various facets of the User Centered Design process...
On the structure line, he separates ...
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UI best practices for FAQ-style presentation
The web application I'm working on has a few pages where a list of questions and their answers will be displayed. All pages have the questions grouped into overall headings (which the users will be ...
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Multiple Navigations - messy or necessary?
I'm looking at UEFA's website and seeing they have 3 navigations menus.
Is there any support for this being a good UX? The organization does alot, and structuring their site this way might make ...
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How to solve overly deep hierarchy navigation on mobile device?
I’m reading Jakobs Nielsens new mobile usability book.
There is an example of a mobile site that suffers from an overly deep hierarchy (5 levels in total)
In the example users need to navigate through ...
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Rapid content audits, can this be done?
Content audits although immensely dull are essential to understanding an existing websites content. Content audits for larger sites where you're capturing each page and analysing the content page by ...
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Should an alphabetized list of colleges have 'University of' schools under 'U'?
See http://www.collegeanswerz.com/colleges.
Right now all the schools that are 'University of' are under 'U'. For example, 'University of Florida' is under 'U' instead of 'F'. Should 'University of ...
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What's the definition of Information Architecture?
According to Morville, Peter & Rosenfeld, Louis in their book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (2006) 3rd edition, its this:
The structural design of shared information ...
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7
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Help with defect issue system
I have a brief where I have to build a system that helps engineers identify defects on a building site.
The engineer specifies where the defect is on a floor plan, what the issue is and invites ...
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How do you arrive at a information architecture from a mental model?
We have created a mental model for a large website redesign project. We are in the process of mapping content and functionality to task towers.
While I understand how it gives an indication of what ...
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Any value to gathering qualitative data from card sorts?
One of the best tools I've found for card sort experiments seems to be websort, mainly because you can just send out a link for participants to go through the exercise at their own convenience.
...
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Do negative words impact UX?
I'm interested to know if using negative words impacts the UX.
Let's say you have a headline for your website. Should you consider "We can help you" instead of "We solve problems" ...
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Convincing client to reduce content
I work as a web developer in an educational institution where bureaucracy is thick. One of our current projects involves redesigning a content-heavy section of the site. It is basically an electronic ...
user11660