Week 5 -- Information Architecture

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Everyone:
Web ReDesign 2.0: Chapter 4, Develop Site Structure
Blueprints for the Web: Organization for the Masses
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Group 3 also reads:
Cognitive Psychology & IA: From Theory to Practice,
Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus,
Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization

What are the threads that unite these readings? Are there best practices that can be devised from these?
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Cognitive Psychology – helps to better understand and deliver good user experience.
• Categorization – be broad to include the most common approaches while realizing accommodating everyone is impossible.
• Visual Perception – proximity and similarity (i.e. gestalt design theory), how the human eye groups and understands images.
• Transference – learned expectations of behavior (e.g. one expects the scroll bar to be the same), can either be positive if expectations are confirmed or negative if resulting in an error.

Usability vs. Graphic Design – the battle between…
• Simple vs. Flashy
• Left vs. Right brained
• Masculine vs. Feminine
• Mars vs. Venus
-Can these opposites resolve issues and settle for “Peace Love and Understanding?”
-A happy medium between practicality and innovation in design is necessary to result in the desired positive user experience; balance and compromise!

Visual Organization – understanding both sides…
-“Interactive design [is] a seamless blend of graphic arts, technology, and psychology.”—Brad Wieners Wired, 2002
-“We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone.” —Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility, 2002
-“Visual designers working on the web need an understanding of the medium in which they work, so many have taken to code. Many have entered the usability lab. ”
• Visual Communication – personality/look/feel/vibe of an organization
• Principles of Perception – proximity, similarity, continuance, and closure (see gestalt)
• Visual Hierarchy and Weight – text and image layout through color, shape, size, etc.

Common themes/uniting threads from the articles:
1. Goal of a website is to create a positive user experience that also visually reflects the client’s desired image and please the user.
2. Considering, understanding and balancing all sides of usability and design are key to success.