This section had a variety of topics including strategy, design and documentation, and content analysis heuristics. Strategy from chapter 11 (it was split between the last two readings), finishes with highlights of the project plan and presentations. The project plan is the formation of a structured schedule for the overall site construction. Both short-term and long-term plans can be created to flesh out the remaining architecture. Presentations should always be geared towards the audience. IA’s need to get the prominent parties on their side and help them understand the recommendations.
Design and documentation was covered in chapter 12. Proper diagram creation helps the viewer grasp the multi-dementions that a site can fill. Multiple views are necessary as sites take on more complexity. Viewers also need audible guidance in addition to diagrams to minimize any misunderstandings. Blueprints are used (often as sitemaps) to show page and content relationships using label and proper organization. Wireframes are where they visual pages start to take shape. They are the templates of how the site’s pages will look and feel. Typically created for the main and other important pages, they also help keep the site’s consistency.
Depending on the size of the site, content can be dealt with multiple ways. Content can be split into chunks that are referenced on multiple pages. That way, it can be modified in one place, and then automatically updated in multiple places. It can be handled from a simple text document to more complex databases. It is a way to reuse data, by separating the content (data) with the container (site objects or pages) to promote consistency and efficiency. When inventorying a site’s content, content models can be developed to allow automatic “extras” to be displayed (such as related items) during a user’s search. Controlled vocabularies add metadata (data about data), definitions, and other information to a site’s content that allow for a thesaurus and other data linkages to further exploit a site’s possibilities.
Some of the next steps are creating a website prototype and documenting everything. An important aspect of documentation is why certain decisions were made and the “How to” of things so future iterations keep to the same guidelines for consistency, manageability, and findability.
Lastly was an online reading pulled from the cross-section of users, content, and business context that provides qualitative results and general trends while organizing the report and helping to identify signification issues that may not be obvious otherwise. The former was a result of the set of 11 heuristics for analyzing website content (below).
Collocation
Differentiation
Completeness
Information scent
Bounded horizons
Accessibility
Multiple access paths
Appropriate structure
Consistency
Audience-relevance
Currency
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