Happy Friday everyone! I am Claire Harold, the newly hired Graphic Designer for MOVECommunications. Last week I had the pleasure of attending AIGA Detroit’s Information Architecture & Usability Research workshop for the web as a part of their Design+Business series of presentations. I learned a plethora of things about the importance of information architecture and usability.
The first speaker was Chris Farnum, Senior User Experience Designer at ProQuest here in Ann Arbor. Information Architecture is the navigation, organization and labeling of content on a website in order for it to be “user-friendly.” In small companies, like MOVE, the designers do most of the information architecture along with the graphic design, but in larger companies they are separate roles. The IA (info architect) provides a guide for the designer--a blueprint of the content. This is given to the designer as a wire frame, which is similar to a design layout (but isn't), and the graphic designer then uses that blueprint to lay out the design and visuals. In an ideal work situation, this is a fluid process. Chris talked about the fact that there can sometime be tension between the IA and the designer--with the designer feeling that their creative vision is being "stepped on" and the IA feeling that their need for familiar conventions and mass of information is being restricted. This is an internal conflict that I often deal with when managing a lot of content. Where do you draw the line between needing a clean, crisp, original design and, at the same time, needing to maintain the practical conventions to please the client? There is no clear answer to that question other than to say that there has to be a balance.
Chris provided us with some great resources for reference. Two books that he really endorses are Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Rosenfeld and Morville and The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Grant. He also suggested looking at Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Library Science, The Information Architecture Institute, The Information Architecture Summit, ASIST SIG-IA, IUE Conference, boxesandarrows.com, and the IDEA Conference.
Jodi Bollaert, the second speaker and Vice President of Information Architecture & Usability Research at Team Detroit, spoke about website usability research. I never realized how important it is to research the effectiveness of the navigation and design of a website. How do you know if your website is successful if you don’t ask the users? It seems like a no-brainer.
Jodi also talked about various research possibilities and techniques and how to, before you research, define the objectives for your website. What do you hope your users are doing there? What do they want to accomplish while on the site?
The first research tactic is interviews--group or individual. This requires an experienced interviewer to asks non-leading and open-ended questions so as to not form a bias within the question. These interviews can be conducted via phone, online or in person. The second is tactic is have a Focus Group that lasts about two hours and is a forum setting to inspire conversation about the usability. It is important for group members to be the intended audience. The third, Expert Usability Evaluations, involves having highly trained usability judges evaluate the website. The big downfall is that it does not involve actual users.
The fourth, and Jodi’s favorite, is Usability Testing. These tests can be done on the phone, face-to-face, or remotely online. Face-to-face and phone testing is done by the user being prompted to actively find specific things on the website. The web testing is done via survey or screen sharing. This tactic is much more cost effective and provides very specific information. Some samples of online testing services are Ethnio, Webex, and Go To Meeting and they are referred to as "intercept recruiting" because they catch and prompt a user while they are trying to use the site on their own. The user is also usually given an incentive such as a gift card to Amazon.com.
Jodi’s resources included orgaizations like Usability Professionals Association and the Michigan Usability Professionals Association, websites like Useit.com, UIE.com, and Usability.gov. She also recommended these books: Rocket Surgery Made Easy and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug,Designing Interfaces byJennifer Tidwell, About Faces by Alan Cooper, and Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen.
I will absolutely be attending more of these workshops. They are a wonderful community of professional designers and design thinkers, and they're available to bounce your ideas off of and to answer your questions. Please visit Detroit.aiga.org for information about their weekly Design + Business workshops.
