Advanced Information Architecture- Fall The sociotechnical analysis of complex web sites I. Introducing information architecture II. The roots of IA: social informatics • What is SI? • Information ecologies • The sociotechnical contexts of ITC III. Conducting the analysis • How and why do the research? IV. Elements of IA • What IAs do
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Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02 The sociotechnical analysis of complex web sites I. Introducing information architecture II. The roots of IA:
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Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
The sociotechnical analysis of complex web sites
I. Introducing information architecture
II. The roots of IA: social informatics
• What is SI?
• Information ecologies
• The sociotechnical contexts of ITC
III. Conducting the analysis
• How and why do the research?
IV. Elements of IA
• What IAs do
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
The sociotechnical analysis of complex web sites
I. Introducing information architecture
A professional role in web design and the design of digital media collections
IAs are responsible for the overall structure and organization of the site
It involves organizing a site’s content into categories and creating an interface to support those categories
Also designing navigation and searching systems to help people find and manage information
A systematic, question-based process for creating digital products to communicate meaning and improve users’ performance
It is user-centered
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Information science:
Social science
Argus Associates. (1998). Information architecture defined http://argus-inc.com/design/architecture.html
[It] involves the design of organization, labeling, navigation, and indexing systems to support both browsing and searching. It plays a central role in determining whether users can easily find the information they need.
[It] begins with research into mission, vision, content, and audience. This ... provides a foundation for the development of a successful information architecture design that supports long-term growth and management
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
“Proper World Wide Web site design is largely a matter of balancing the structure and relationship of menu or ‘home’ pages and individual content pages or other linked graphics and documents. The goal is to build a hierarchy of menus and pages that feels natural and well-structured to the user, and doesn’t interfere with their use of the Web site or mislead them.”
Lynch, P. J. (1995). Yale University C/AIM WWW Style Guidehttp://info.med.yale.edu/caim/StyleManual_Top
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
A working definition
A digital information space containing organizational labeling, and navigation schemes
The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and allow intuitive access to content
The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information
An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to digital environmentsRosenfeld and Moreville (2002) p. 4
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Other definitions
It is the term used to describe the process of designing, implementing, and evaluating information spaces that are humanly and socially acceptable to their intended stakeholdersDillon (2002) JASIST 53(10) p821
The design and development of a wide array of information products and services, and, as such, involves the use and coordination of numerous technical components
Databases, metadata, dynamic content management, multiple media, information modeling
Latham (2002) JASIST 53(10) p825
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
What does an IA have to know?
Information science: information organization and access
Computer science: programming and databases
Usability engineering: understanding how people use the site
Graphic design: developing imagery that supports the site’s mission
Writing: to explain this to peers and decisionmakers
Marketing: developing the site so that is can be sold to its intended audience
Psychology: understanding the intended audience
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
What else does an IA have to know?
Interaction design
The creation and maintenance of tasks and processes that users will encounter in an information space
Content management
The processes, policies, and procedures that govern how content is moved through the information space
Knowledge management
The processes, policies, and procedures that govern how the organization handles its “intellectual capital”
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
What does an IA have to do?
Thinking
What are the relevant content domains?
Given the constraints what can be done?
Planning
How are these domains related to each other?
What is the structure of these relationships?
Designing
What arrangement best supports the structure and organizational requirements?
Managing
What people, tools, and resources are available?
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
An IA should
Enjoy working with information: gathering, evaluating and organizing it
Like research: interviewing stakeholders and analyzing results
Be curious about tools and processes of site development
Want to improve performance
Be ready to fight battles to help users
Have a good working know edgle of organizations
Be interested in communicating complex ideas clearly
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
A broad view of IA
It involves developing and communicating a holistic view of a web site
It includes the overall social and technical structure of the site and the relationships among its elements
It requires the classification of site goals and objectives
IA places the web site into a larger social context
How will it affect the work flow, communications patterns, and distribution of power in the organization?
How will it appear to its users?
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Basic concepts of IA
Information
Data to which we give meaning
Data: facts and figures
Knowledge: Internalized and interpreted information
Structuring
Levels of granularity for elements in an information space
Organizing
Arranging these elements into meaningful categories and establishing relations among them
Labeling
Naming these categories
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Basic concepts of IA
Finding
Designing the information space to enhance users’ abilities to locate what they want
Involves user-centered design
Information management
The processes, policies, and procedures involved in carrying out the information life cycle in an organization
Art and science
Scientific methods to bring rigor to IA research
Usability, experimentation, ethnography
Dealing with ambiguity and complexity is also intuitive
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
It focuses on digital (web-based) information spaces
A set of items held by an information system and the relations among them
The items may include keyterms, documents, queries, and user representationsNewby (2000) http://www.ils.unc.edu/gbnewby/papers/building4.html
A complex information space (C) stores a total number (N) of information units in a medium (M) of storage
A user (X) has relevant information units (R) in the information space according to the scope of X’ s information foraging goalsAbrams (1997)
Information spaces can be designed using architectural principles
They are constructed to provoke a reaction in you
They can be designed to allow users to carry out tasks
To help you get a job done
To entertain you
To help you learn
Where does this metaphor break down?
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
The sociotechnical analysis of complex web sites
I. Introducing information architecture
II. The roots of IA: social informatics
• What is SI?
• Information ecologies
• The sociotechnical contexts of ITC
III. Conducting the analysis
• How and why do the research?
IV. Elements of IA
• What IAs do
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
II. What is social informatics?
• Technological and social determinisms
There have been two main ways to portray the relationship between Its and society
Technological determinism
Social determinism
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Both of these share a number of weaknesses
A deterministic relationship is always one way (an oversimplification)
Technology use in workplaces demonstrates that there is much more contingency and complexity
The “independent variable” is assumed to have causal powers
Technology does have agency
People are not as passive as they are assumed to be
They minimize the social and institutional context
The effects of the same ICT in a school and in a dotcom will be very different
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Mutual shaping
There is a third alternative
This approach is an advance because is overcomes the main weaknesses of the previous two
There is no one way causality
It accounts for contingency and complexity
But: it does not account well for the context
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Social informatics is a fourth alternative
It is the interdisciplinary study of the design and uses of ICT that takes into account their interactions with institutional and cultural contexts
The focus is on the social aspects of computerization
The roles of ICT in social and organizational change
The uses of ICT in different social and organizational social settings
It is problem-driven
People work in many different disciplines and use different theoretical and methodological approaches
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Social informatics is the study of information and computing, their sciences, technologies, applications, influences and effects
It encompasses the information life cycle
creation discovery
organization manipulation
storage
retrieval
processing
presentation visualizationtransmission
use destruction
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
SI assumes a relationship of mutual shaping among ICT, the people who design and use them, and the settings in which they are designed and used
Mutual shaping
The “setting”
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
SI is a different approach to studying ICT in society because of the explicit focus on the sociotechnical context
This means focusing on
The ways that the social organization of ICT is influenced by social forces and social practices
The impacts of the beliefs and values of the people designing, maintaining, and using ICT
The impacts of organizational beliefs and values where the ICT are designed and used
SI seeks to understand how people and organizations act on these values and beliefs and use their power in relation to ICT
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
SI research involves three main orientations
Normative: to recommend alternatives for practitioners who design, implement, use, or develop policy about ICT
Ex: participatory design
Analytical: to develop theories about ICT in institutional and cultural contexts and conduct empirical work designed to contribute to theorizing
The goal is a deeper understanding of how the evolution of ICT use in a particular setting can be generalized to other Its and other settings
Ex: The web of computing
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Critical: to challenge commonly held assumptions about ICT
It does not uncritically adopt the beliefs and values of the people and organizations that commission, design, implement, or use specific ICT
It examines ICT from multiple perspectives
These include the people who use them in different contexts, as well as people who design, implement or maintain them
It examines ICT failures and service losses, as well as idealized expectations of routine use
Ex: the paperless office, the productivity paradox
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
These are examples of the types of SI research
Impacts of ICT in groups, organizations, and larger scale social settings
Analysis of the use of ICT in specific social contexts
Public uses of the internet
Life with computer-mediated communication (CMC)
The social shaping of information systems
The production, distribution and use of electronic texts
The roles of ICT in changing or reinforcing patterns of work life, community life, and the character of institutions
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
The sociotechnical analysis of complex web sites
I. Introducing information architecture
II. The roots of IA: social informatics
• What is SI?
• Information ecologies
• The sociotechnical contexts of ITC
III. Conducting the analysis
• How and why do the research?
IV. Elements of IA
• What IAs do
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
III. Conducting the analysis
• Why do the research?
Theoretical reasons
Research on organizations can help developers avoid problems that can undermine projects
Practical reasons
It is a necessary step in the project life cycle
It saves time, money, and effort
It allows you to figure out what you have to do
You can get a sense of the existing situation
You can understand what the constraints are and who can impose them
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
What we can learn from organizational informatics?
1. ICT do not exist in social or technological isolation
ICT are embedded in cultural and institutional contexts that influence them in empirically discoverable ways
These include:
The ways in which they are developed
The kinds of workable configurations that are proposed
How these configurations are implemented and used
The range of consequences they have for the people who use them and their organizations
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
2. ICT are “socio-technical systems,” an interrelated and interdependent mix of :
People who design and use ICT
Their beliefs, values and social and work practices
Their institutional positions and power
Financial and technical decision makers
Organizational and professional norms of use
Hardware and software
The support systems that aid users
The maintenance systems keeping ICT up and running
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
3. A “socio-technical system” can also be seen as an “information ecology”
Nardi and O’Day define an information ecology (IE) as
A system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment
In IE, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology
It is a setting where people and technology come together in some type of social relationship, guided by the values of the setting, organization, and/or profession
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
It is a complex system of parts and relationships in continual evolution
“Locality” is important because the IE responds to local environmental changes and local interventions
When one element changes, effects can be felt throughout the system
Local changes disappear if they are incompatible with the rest of the IE
Diversity is essential for change
Different parts of an IE coevolve, changing together according to the relationships in the system
This occurs as new ideas, tools, activities, and forms of expertise arise
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
A “local habitation and a name” captures the essence of an IE
The “habitation” of a technology is its location within a network of relationships.
This refers to its set of family ties in the local IE
The “name” of a technology identifies its meaning for the people who use it
It positions the technology more directly under the control of its users
Only the participants of an IE can establish the identity and place of the technologies that are found there
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
4. There are apparently contradictory outcomes from ICT implementation and use
The same type of ICT may have very different effects in two different organizations
In one case, control over work can be centralized while in another, decentralization results
Adding ICT may be enrich and/or deskill work routines
SI accounts for the varying consequences of ICT use in organizations by emphasizing
The importance of the social and organizational contexts
The effects of the context on ICT implementation and use
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
5. Design continues in use
Many IS are redesigned over their lifetimes (upgrades, bug fixes, customization)
People and groups using ICT reshape them in ways that their original designers did not anticipate because:
Circumstances of the situation of use changes
Needs change
Uses change
People who use the ICT change
The organization changes
Designers should understand the relevant IE
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
6. There are always political and social consequences from the implementation of ICT in organizations
They can enable and constrain social relationships and work practices
They can legitimate and undermine organizational and personal power
ICT can enable or constrain organizational change
There are typically winners and losers from the implementation of ICT
This helps us understand the motivations for different groups supporting and opposing specific forms of ICT developments
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
• How to do the research
There are different ways to set up the problem
Ask an open-ended question
Set up a relationship and test it
There are a variety of ways to study an organization
You can talk to people interviews
You can ask people to fill out forms surveys
You can watch people observation
You can test people experimentation
There are variations within these approaches as well
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
There is a difference between academic research and IA research
There is less need for rigor
You don’t have to worry about generalizability
Peer review is not an issue
There are good reasons to use good research practices
If your methods are reliable, you can reuse them
You can be assured of quality data and reasonable conclusions
You can have consistency within and across projects
Over time this can lead to best practices
You can then train new employees more easily
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
The goal of the research is to understand the “socio- technical context” of the web site
Given the constraints of the project, what is the best way to learn about the organization’s “information ecology”?
What is it that you want to know?
What is the “big picture?”
Vision
What is the role of the web in the organization?
How is the current and/or future site viewed in the organization?
What are the short and long term goals for the site?
How does the organization plan to use the site?
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
What is the “big picture?”
Resources
What can the organization afford?
What types of financial, technical, and human resources can be made available for development?
What is the long term commitment to maintaining and upgrading the site?
Audiences
Why do/should people come to the site?
What do people do when they come to the site?
What are the major tasks that they would like people to do?
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Research strategies
Determine who it is you should be talking to
Study the web site carefully
See what departments or groups in the organization are represented on the site
Note all names and contact information
Use your initial contact
Learn how the organization is structured and try to figure out who has a stake in the web site
Confirm your hunches with your contact
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Settle on your strategy or strategies
Individual email or telephone interviews?
Group email or conference calls?
Individual face-to-face interviews?
Group meetings
Each has its advantages and drawbacks
Face-to-face interviews and group meetings are good ways to gather information
In addition to the research value, these strategies also serve a social function
You learn about stakeholder biases
You learn about political and power relationships
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
The sociotechnical analysis of complex web sites
I. Introducing information architecture
II. The roots of IA: social informatics
• What is SI?
• Information ecologies
• The sociotechnical contexts of ITC
III. Conducting the analysis
• How and why do the research?
IV. Elements of IA
• What IAs do
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
IV. Elements of information architecture
Components
Constituent parts of a digital information space
Web site: pages, navigation scheme, site map functionalities
Dimensions
Web site: multidimensional information space with hypertext navigation
Boundaries
Lines of demarcation around the information space
Web site: not clear because of linking
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Purpose
The functions of the information space
Web site: provide access to information, educate, sell, entertain
Heterogeneity
Characteristics of the content
Web site: many different media types, formats, programming and markup languages
Centralization
How the information space is controlled
Web site: becoming more decentralized in content management and technical maintenance
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Orientations to information architecture
Social: Doing the research
What are the mission, vision, and goals for the site?
What will be the central metaphors for the site?
How will the site grow and change over time?
What will be the impacts on the organization?
Technical: Design and build
How will the site be organized ?
What content and functionality will the site contain?
What types of navigation, labeling, and searching will be used?
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Doing the research
Preparation
Site goals
The audience
User experience
User scenarios
The competition
The design document
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Consider this question:
“What should our team create to give people experiences that are useful, usable, and desirable, that create value for our business and our clients?”
How can we answer it?
Rettig emphasizes the importance of an ethnographic approach
“Go where people work, learn, live and play. Discover unexpressed or masked needs. Let your design be driven by genuine understanding of the people you are trying to serve.”
Rettig, M. (2000). Ethnography and information architecture. http://www.enteract.com/~marc/asis/slide0009.htm
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
In practical terms, this means:
Observation: go into the setting and watch people
Shadowing: follow them around
Examining artifacts and their uses
Interviews: interview people in their workplace
This can be structured or unstructured
Sampling: can involve time or task sampling
They fill out activity diaries on your schedule
Self-reporting: they have the greatest amount of control
Ask them to take pictures or keep journals
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Site design begins well before the first page is ever coded
This early stage requires considerable research
The first step is to understand the goals of the site owners
How well do you understand their business?
What are their main products and services?
What are their business rules?
Then work to understand the audience for the site
Who do they sell to?
Write user profiles and scenarios
Conduct needs requirements
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Determining the goals for the site
Can be done informally with conversations with key stakeholders
Can be done formally at meetings with clear agendas
Questions to consider
Who should you talk to or include in the meeting?
Who has to buy in to the concept?
Goal
To achieve a group consensus
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
The basic set of questions should include:
What is the mission or purpose of the organization?
Check the answers you get against company literature
What are the goals of the site?
As people talk about goals for the site, categorize them into short term and long term goals
Who are the intended audiences?
Check these answers against the company’s market research
Why will people come to the site?
What are the main tasks that people are expected to perform?
Advanced Information Architecture- Fall 02
Gather all of the data and begin analyzing them
This involves sorting and categorizing
Goals, activities/tasks, main content areas
Prepare a preliminary listing of these and use “member checking”
Be prepared for conflict, disagreement, and compromise
There should be a deliverable (a design document)
It summarizes the key points of the site and acts as an initial blueprint
The major stakeholders should all sign off on the document