A potential client and I were recently discussing how she definitely didn't want her women-focused organization's new website to be either "cute" or "pink" since she wanted it to appeal to both sexes. We discussed why some companies alienate the opposite sex (and half your sales) by making a neutral product pink?    

This brought to mind Jessica Ivins' presentation at IA Summit 2011: On “Shrink It and Pink It”: Designing Experiences for Women

Here are links about avoiding the “shrink it and pink it” attitude and using "transparent design" principles that appeal to both men and women like the Flip camera.

• About Femme Den: “Good products balance the needs of men and women to the benefit of both. They’re not male products masquerading as unisex or–-worse–-hiding under a coat of pink paint. They don’t alienate anyone with over claims of being women-focused or women-friendly. They just are.” 
• Femme Den applied “transparent design” principles when they designed the Flip Camera -- see slides 34-36 in On “Shrink It and Pink It”: Designing Experiences for Women 
• Additional Femme Den articles in the Fast Company Masters of Design issue

IA Melissa Weaver recently wrote Counterpoint: RDAP2: Need for IA and LIS Expertise a Noticeable Theme in the June/July 2011 issue of the ASIS&T Bulletin. After attending the RDAP Summit hosted by ASIS&T, Melissa noted the crossovers between data repository managers and content managers who need metada-driven data. Per Melissa, "Now is a great time for library science and information architecture communities to collaborate with those in research data management and to encourage data creators and users to learn from these disciplines."

Melissa Weaver is an IA to small non-profits and a consultant to the IA Institute.

More features that illustrate good IA from Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug (New Riders, 2006)

Steve Krug’s “The Trunk Test”

• Site ID
• Page name
• Sections and subsections
• Local navigation
• “You are here” indicators
• Search box

Home Page

• Conveys THE BIG PICTURE and answers these questions:
  
• What is the point of this site?
  
• What does this site have to offer?
  
• What can I do here?
  
• Why should I be here?

Tagline 

• Conveys the main benefit of the site and how it is differentiated from other sites
  
• Conveys the value proposition of the site
  
• Is personable, lively and clever
  
• Is a maximum of 8 words 
  
• Is located next to the site ID
  

Features that illustrate good IA from Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug (New Riders, 2006)

User-centered Design

• The layout, purpose, navigation and search functions of the site are clear and obvious
  
• Easy to use and allows the user to make “mindless” choices
• Easy to use site = confident user = trust in the site

Labeling

• Buttons have clear, unambiguous words; i.e. Jobs, not Job-o-rama
• Buttons are clearly clickable based on conventional shapes, words and colors that stand out

Layout

• Clean with minimal visual noise
• Has a clear visual hierarchy that uses conventional headings for sections and subsections
• Differentiates between importance by use of font size, color and bold

Content

• Easy to scan like billboards that you read going 60 mph
• Uses bullet points or short sentences
• Omits unnecessary words
  

Navigation

• “Navigation isn’t just a feature of a Web site; it is the Web site” (Krug, 2006, pg. 59)
  
• Uses Global or Persistent Navigation
• Uses a site ID like a logo on the top left side that takes the user back to the Home page
• Always lets the user know where they are via “You are here” signs:
• Uses a color change in the tab of the page you are viewing
• Uses breadcrumbs with the last word in bold and in a different color
• Each page has a name in bold on the top left that is consistent with the tab name
  

Search

• Has a search box on every page without scope limits that make the user choose from a selection of filters
• Accommodates both search-dominant and link-dominant users
  

Local Denver company, WAND, Inc. releases IT Department Taxonomy


WAND, Inc announced the release of the latest entry in its enterprise taxonomy library, the new Information Technology Department Taxonomy. Designed specifically for IT departments, this new information technology taxonomy gives a major jump-start to any enterprise content project that is organizing IT related documents. Read more...



About WAND, Inc. 
Since 1995, WAND has developed structured multi-lingual vocabularies with related tools and services to power precision search and classification applications on the internet. WAND’s Taxonomy library contains more than 500 domain specific taxonomies including industry vertical packages, materials, job titles, travel, retail, medical, general business, food science, insurance, and banking and finance - more domains are added on a regular basis. For more information about WAND’s taxonomies, services, and DataFacet automatic tagging software, please visit http://www.wandinc.com and http://www.datafacet.com


Mark Leher of WAND, Inc. came and spoke to our Information Science class in Winter 2011.

At the IA Summit 2011 in Denver, Andrea Resmini, Andrew Hinton and Jorge Arango presented More Than a Metaphor: Making Places with Information. This session discussed the relationship between information and architecture and IA's as designers of information spaces that people spend a significant amount of time in. 

Andrew Hinton discussed architect Julia Morgan who designed the Asilomar Conference Center (birthplace of the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (AIfIA) which then became the Information Architecture Institute).  Julia Morgan noted that "the design of the Asilomar Conference Center doesn't engineer the behavior of its inhabitants. It encourages and accommodates their behavior."  In terms on IA, you don't design the user experience. You make the site accommodate what the user needs. It's not about controlling, it's about enhancing, empowering and enjoying the space. (See Vivienne's picture with Andrew Hinton at the IA Summit on ASIST@DU)

Andrea Resmini described space as not homogeneous. All references happen within a subjective system. It is a space of relationships, built with connections and how we perceive those connections.  See Andrea Resmini's new book, Pervasive Architecture: Designing Cross-Channel User Experiences and Andrew Hinton's reprint of his contribution to the book.

Jorge Arango discussed being a "Digital Placemaker" and doing for the client's online digital properties what architects do for their physical properties.

See photos of Andrea Resmini and Jorge Arango at IA Summit 2011 

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. ~ Archilocus
As quoted in The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953) by Isaiah Berlin

Are you a Fox or a Hedgehog?  Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, keynote speaker at the IA Summit 2011, discusses the differences between Foxes and Hedgehogs in terms of IA. See Conference Reviews on UXMatters.com:

FOXES (good for IA practitioners) 
multidisciplinary
adaptable
admits to errors
tolerates complexity
pragmatic

HEDGEHOGS ( good for business owners)
specialist
goes all-in
doubles odwn
abhors uncertainty
ideological

In my Information Architecture class, we learned about the resources available on Usability.gov. For example, the Questions to Ask at Kick-Off Meetings is an excellent guide for clients to determine the purpose, vision and goals for the site along with the resources and timeline to launching the site. Check out all the Templates available on Usability.gov including for:

• Project Planning
• Information Architecture
• Design
• Usability Testing

I recently created my first heuristic evaluation video for the USGS Photography Library IA Project. My project partner, Angela Waalkes, and I worked on the IA features and improvements for a new USGS Photo Library site over 10 weeks during Spring Quarter for Alex Martinez’s IA class.  The Chief Librarian, Keith Van Cleave, was super helpful and so forthcoming with documentation and assistance. We were very lucky to work with him. The website includes links to our deliverables and the heuristic video.