Adaptable Information Architecture
How to say no to your next redesign
Lou Rosenfeld • lou@rosenfeldmedia.com
Rosenfeld Media UX Workshops • Fall 2012

Hello, my name is Lou
www.louisrosenfeld.com | www.rosenfeldmedia.com

Agenda
1. Hello / What is information architecture?
2. Why redesign should die / The alternatives
3. Prioritizing and tuning top-down navigation
4. Break
5. Exercise: content modeling
6. Lunch
7. Prioritizing and tuning contextual navigation
8. Exercise: site search analytics
9. Break
10. Prioritizing and tuning search
11. Changing your work and your organization / Discussion

What is
information architecture?

Definition
The art and science of structuring,
organizing and labeling information
to help people find and manage it.

Three circles

Three tracks
1. Top-down navigation:
Anticipates interests/questions at arrival
2. Bottom-up (contextual) navigation:
Enables answers to emerge
3. Search:
Handles specific information needs

What is redesign
and why should it die?

Why am I so down on
redesign?

Why am I so down on
redesign?

Redesign is
hollow, meaningless,
and a vanity.
It is the true definition
of insanity.

A story in the Ann Arbor
News

UM was going to redesign its
Gateway

UM was going to redesign its
Gateway

UM was going to redesign its
Gateway

UM was going to redesign its
Gateway

$250,0
00

$250,0
work study students!
00

$250,0
work study students!
00 WebObjects!

They even had a ribbon-cutting

This became...

...this

...this

...this

...this

Then they did it
all over again

Then they did it
all over again
and again

Then they did it
all over again
and again
and again

Then they did it
all over again
and again
and again
and again

Where we are today

Where we are today

Where we are today

Where we are today

Where problems are undefined
lies insanity and vanity

Where problems are undefined
lies insanity and vanity
We attempt the impossible: “boil the ocean”
in no time at great cost

Where problems are undefined
lies insanity and vanity
We attempt the impossible: “boil the ocean”
in no time at great cost
We believe the unbelievable: unwarranted
claims from agencies and software vendors

Where problems are undefined
lies insanity and vanity
We attempt the impossible: “boil the ocean”
in no time at great cost
We believe the unbelievable: unwarranted
claims from agencies and software vendors
We become irresponsible: unwarranted
declarations of victory at the expense of
our teams and users

See the problem differently

Your site is a
complex adaptive system
John Holland:
“A Complex Adaptive System
is a dynamic network of
many agents acting in parallel,
constantly acting and reacting
to what the other agents are
doing.”

Examples of CAS

Examples of CAS

Examples of CAS

Your site is a moving target
built on moving targets

Your site is many sites, products,
things out of your control
more John Holland:
“The control of a complex adaptive system
tends to be highly dispersed and
decentralized... “The overall behavior of the
system is the result of a huge number of
decisions made every moment by many
individual agents.”

“The perfect is the
enemy of the good.”
Voltaire might
have added:
“Constant change
means never having
to say you’re sorry.”

You can’t redesign
But you must refine
1. Prioritize: Identify the important problems
regularly
2. Tune: Address those problems regularly
3. Be opportunistic: Look for low-hanging
fruit

Prioritize because
a little goes a long way

A handful of queries/tasks/ways to navigate/features/
A little goes a long way
documents meet the needs of your most important audiences

A handful of queries/tasks/ways to navigate/features/
A little goes a long way
documents meet the needs of your most important audiences

A handful of queries/tasks/ways to navigate/features/
A little goes a long way
documents meet the needs of your most important audiences

A handful of queries/tasks/ways to navigate/features/
A little goes a long way
documents meet the needs of your most important audiences

A handful of queries/tasks/ways to navigate/features/
A little goes a long way
documents meet the needs of your most important audiences

(and the tail is quite long)

(and the tail is quite long)

(and the tail is quite long)

(and the tail is quite long)

(and the tail is quite long)

Zipf in text

A little really does go
a long way
A handful of...
• queries
• tasks
• ways to navigate
• features
• documents
...meet the needs of your
most important audiences

Unverified rumor:
90% of Microsoft.com’s content
has never been accessed

From prioritization...
...to a report card
(repeat regularly)

Treat your site
like an onion Each layer is cumulative
information
layer usability content strategy
architecture
indexed by search
0 engine
leave it alone leave it alone
squeaky wheel issues
1 tagged by users
addressed
refresh annually
tagged by experts (non- test with a service
2 topical tags) (e.g., UserTesting.com)
refresh monthly
tagged by experts “traditional” lab-based titled according to
3 (topical tags) user testing guidelines
deep links to support structured according
4 contextual navigation
A/B testing
to schema

Be an incrementalist:
tune because things change

From projects to processes:
a regular regimen of design
Example: the rolling content inventory

Impact of change on design
(queries)

IRS before 4/15

Before
April 15
IRS before 4/15

IRS after 4/15

After
April 15
IRS after 4/15

Be an opportunist:
look for the low-hanging fruit
1. Top-down navigation:
Anticipates interests/questions at arrival
2. Bottom-up (contextual) navigation:
Enables answers to emerge
3. Search:
Handles specific information needs

Life by a thousand cuts
50% of users are search dominant
x 5% of all queries are typos, fixed by spell checking.
2.5% improvement to the UX
50% of all users are search dominant
x 30% (best bet results for top 100 queries)
15% improvement to the UX
Ditto for improving content, search results design,
navigation design…

Summary
Site redesign is wasteful, expensive, and ineffective
1. You don’t have a single, perfectible site
2. You do have a collection of living, changing pockets of content
and functionality
You can refine
3. Prioritize the problems that are most important to your users
4. Regularly address these problems
5. Identify opportunities to make small improvements that go a
long way

Prioritizing and Tuning
Top-Down Navigation

The data-driven main page:
Who wants what and when?

Who wants what?
US English speakers

Who wants what?
German speakers

When do they want it?

Commerce sites get it

The IRS gets it

But really, who cares
about the main page?

But really, who cares
about the main page?

The risk of main page fixation
From Tony Dunn’s Tales from Redesignland
(http://redesignland.blogspot.com/)

Focusing on main page =
taking Zipf too far
...plus lots of competition (Google, ads/landing pages)

The tail that wags the dog:
site map drives
improved site hierarchy

Site map by tool, unit, and format

Site map by tool, unit, and format

Site map by tool, unit, and format

User-centered site map
User-centered site map...

Asking the possible
from your site index

Specialized site indices

Specialized site indices

Specialized site indices
Cisco’s site indices are
specialized by content
type (products, services)

Best bet-based site indices
MSU’s site index is built on
popular information needs
(based on best bet search results)

Going broad and deep with
guides (AKA microsites)

Kansas main pages loves guides

Kansas main pages loves guides

But the guides need a little
work

Vanguard’s main page loves
guides

Vanguard’s main page loves
guides

The Tax Center is a guide

One more example: IRS

One more example: IRS

...e-filing is presented as
sequential steps

Summary: Top-down navigation
Prioritize main page content and layout
1. Confuse as necessary by diverting attention
2. Counter politics with data; e.g., use seasonality to drive design
Tune and prioritize site-wide navigation
3. Use the site map as a skunkworks for site-wide hierarchy
4. Base site indices on specialized content or popular
information needs (e.g., best bets)
5. Use guides (micro-sites) as narrow/deep complement to
broad/shallow navigation schemes

Break

Agenda
1. Hello / What is information architecture?
2. Why redesign should die / The alternatives
3. Prioritizing and tuning top-down navigation
4. Break
5. Exercise: content modeling
6. Lunch
7. Prioritizing and tuning contextual navigation
8. Exercise: site search analytics
9. Break
10. Prioritizing and tuning search
11. Changing your work and your organization / Discussion

concert calendar
album pages artist descriptions
TV listings
Exercise: Content Modeling
album reviews discography artist bios

Lunch

Agenda
1. Hello / What is information architecture?
2. Why redesign should die / The alternatives
3. Prioritizing and tuning top-down navigation
4. Break
5. Exercise: content modeling
6. Lunch
7. Prioritizing and tuning contextual navigation
8. Exercise: site search analytics
9. Break
10. Prioritizing and tuning search
11. Changing your work and your organization / Discussion

Prioritizing and Tuning
Contextual Navigation

Establishing Desire Lines
Use
Content modeling
• Site search analytics

Where do searches begin?
Not just the main
page, according to a
User Interface
Engineering study
(http://is.gd/j1NHeS)

Using site search analytics
to identify desire lines

Choose a
common content
type (e.g., events)
Where should
users go from here?

Analyze frequent queries generated from each content sample

Develop logic that automatically links an event to:
1. articles that share the event’s topic
2. events that share the topic but have different
geographic locales

What content types
should we be connecting?

Important content types emerge
from content modeling concert calendar
album pages artist descriptions
TV listings
album reviews discography artist bios

Using SSA to prioritize content
types

Getting content types out of
site search analytics
Take an hour to...
• Analyze top 50 queries (20% of all search activity)
• Ask and iterate: “what kind of content would users be looking
for when they searched these terms?”
• Add cumulative percentages
Result: prioritized list of potential content
types
#1) application: 11.77%
#2) reference: 10.5%
#3) instructions: 8.6%
#4) main/navigation pages: 5.91%
#5) contact info: 5.79%

What should we use to
connect content types?

Which metadata attributes will your
content model depend upon?

More on prioritizing metadata attributes

Prioritizing semantic relationships

How do we
prioritize content?

Some content value variables
I

Some content value variables
I
Usability
Popularity
Credibility

Some content value variables
Currency
Freshness
Authority
Follows guidelines
(e.g., titling,
I metadata)
Usability
Popularity
Credibility

Some content value variables
Currency
Freshness
Authority
Follows guidelines
(e.g., titling,
I metadata)
Usability
Popularity
Credibility
Strategic value
Addresses compliance
issues (e.g., Sarbanes/Oxley)
Content owners are good
partners

Subjectively “grade” your content’s value
1.Choose
appropriate value
criteria for each
content area
2.Weight criteria
(total = 100%)
3.Subjectively grade
for each criterion
4.weight x grade
= score
5.Add scores for
overall score

Subjectively “grade” your content’s value
1.Choose Subjective
appropriate value assessment
criteria for each
content area
2.Weight criteria
(total = 100%)
3.Subjectively grade
for each criterion
4.weight x grade
= score
5.Add scores for
overall score

Put the grades together for a more
objective “report card”
Helps prioritize content migrations, refreshes, ...

Put the grades together for a more
objective “report card”
Objectifies subjective
assessments
Helps prioritize content migrations, refreshes, ...