Website development.The recommended activities. Part 5 - Essay Example

Webmonkey 5 Introduction "The goal of this lesson is to take the site's structure and map it onto the visual design. A number of tools are useful in creating the design. The first step is to make layout grids that define the structure and organization of the site as it will show up on the page level. Then design sketches will establish a general look and feel. Layout grids and design sketches together lead to page mock-ups, which in turn lead to the construction of Web-based prototypes" (Shiple, 2008, pg. 5). The purpose of this paper is to read through Lesson 5 in the informational architecture tutorial, and carry out as many of the recommended activities as possible.

Core Lessons The core lessons that the author wants his readers to learn in this portion of the informational architecture tutorial deal with visual design. Included in this concept are layout grids, design sketches and page mock-ups and, of course, addition to the design document. Activities Recommended Whereas the activities that were recommended seem easy enough, none of them were able to be carried out since there was no organization available to practice on. The main lesson learned information architecture as a socio-technical issue from the tutorial format, above and beyond what was learned from other sources was that the simple, easy-to-follow, step-by-step format made it much easier to understand that just reading about the process and its definition alone.

What I Learned from the Tutorial This tutorial teaches one how to progress step-by-step through the information architecture process, which is a positive I have never seen before. Most of the time, the process is grouped together with a lot of other stuff and is difficult to understand. This was more of a hands-on approach that really allowed me to become engaged and wish I had an organization available to try these suggested methods out on so that I could note the actual results. What I Didn't Learn from the Tutorial but Wish I had More examples would have helped.

It was easy to read the steps, but hard to imagine how to actually apply the steps to a real-life organization, especially since I did not have one available to work with. Overall Evaluation of Tutorial Mechanism Overall, this tutorial was great. Once again, it was an easy-to-follow, hands-on approach to learning the real-life application of informational architecture within an organization. The wording was easy to understand and follow along with, and at the end of the tutorial, the main points the author was attempting to convey came through loud and clear.

Conclusion The purpose of this paper has been to read through Lesson 5, and carry out as many of the recommended activities as possible. Although the activities could not be carried out because of the fact that there was no organization to practice them on, they are now recorded in the back of my mind and ready to use on the first available organization that I can come up with. Reference Shiple, J. (2008). Information architecture tutorial. Webmonkey. Retrieved March 19, 2008, from http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/tutorials/tutorial1.html