Website Development.The Recommended Activities. Part 1 - Essay Example

Webmonkey Introduction In the overview, the tells us that, "Information architecture is the science of figuring out what you want your site to do and then constructing a blueprint before you dive in and put the thing together. It's more important than you might think, and John Shiple, aka Squishy, tells you why. Squishy first looks at how to define your site's goals, shedding light on the all-important art of collecting clients' or co-workers' opinions and assembling them in a coherent, weighted order of importance.

He also shares his scheme for documenting everything so that all parties can keep up" (Shiple, 2008, pg. 1). The purpose of this paper is to read through the Overview and Lesson 1, and carry out as many of the recommended activities as possible. Core Lessons The author first and foremost wants his readers to understand why information architecture is so important. He claims that there are several steps to the process, and that they are as follows: define the site's goals, ask questions, filter the answers, and design document-site goals.

The author believes that initiating information architecture is the first step since it is a foundation for great web design, all else is built upon it, it's incredibly effective, saves time and money in the long-run, and only takes basic to intermediate skills (Shiple, 2008). In Step 1 of the information architecture process, one defines the site's goals. In doing this, he or she establishes clear ideas that are well documented; ensures everyone that should be participating is; determine who all should assist in developing goals; and decide if because of time constraints formal or informal goals should be developed (Shiple, 2008).

In Step 2 of the process, questions are asked. The following are included: What is the organizations mission or purpose, what are the short- and long-term goals associated with the site, who is the target audience, and why will people visit the site (Shiple, 2008) Step 3 involves filtering the answers. Answers must be put in order, filtered, turned into goals and the most important goals determined, key people must rank the goals, the goals should be distilled into a master list, and the goals must be approved (Shiple, 2008).

The final step involves designing the document-site goals. This involves documenting the goals of the site, publishing them, and summarizing them (Shiple, 2008). 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.

Conclusion The purpose of this paper has been to read through the Overview and Lesson 1, and carry out as many of the recommended activities as possible. Although the activities could not be carried out because of limited resources, they will be easy to do in the future. Reference Shiple, J. (2008). Information architecture tutorial. Webmonkey. Retrieved March 19, 2008, from http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/tutorials/tutorial1.html