Rachel M. Murray Design | Case Study: Information Architecture Project

Work - introduction
Clients
Products
Resume
Services

Case Studies:
Information Arch.
Information Design
Information Mgt.
Interaction Design
Knowledge Mgt.
Records Mgt.
Usability Evaluation

welcome > work > case study: information architecture

Definition:	"Information Architecture is the science of designing the labeling, navigation, organization and search systems to help people find and manage information more successfully." (from iawiki.net)
Importance:	Information Architecture helps clients create clear, understandable and professionally organized web sites no matter what their size, industry, content or unique features.
Client:	n/a
Project:	case study on Cybergrrl.com web redesign project
Role:	Information Architect
Situation:	A portal Web site for women (Cybergrrl.com) needs a redesign to reconnect with its audience and to make updating the site's contents easier.
Analysis:	The site faces a decline in use due to strong competition that provides the audience with more content, a lack of regular updates to the site to encourage repeat visits and a confusing interface which discouraged repeat visits by users. The site can address the decline in users through the use of better content updated more frequently. A cleaner interface and a consolidated, reorganized site where content can be updated promptly can be achieved through the use of templates. However, before a complete redesign is started, a comprehensive analysis of the web page's elements and site organization must be done to isolate individual page features and understand how these features affect user page views.
Solution:	An analysis of the site was completed using an Interactive Design Specification (IDS) document, which contains the following information architecture tools: Sitemap created in Microsoft Visio that shows the breadth of the site and how to reorganize it through a redesign; Wireframes also also created in Visio that isolate the common elements for redesign of the interface Mock-ups that isolate the common elements in preparation for a redesign Prototypes, both low fidelity (in Visio) or high fidelity (in HTML) that illustrate what the finished product would look like after reorganization and redesign.
Final Deliverable:	Interactive Design Specification (including analysis, sitemap, wireframe, before and after mockups), and Microsoft PowerPoint presentation as a Web page .