genjava / articles / information architecture
Misson/Goals What is the role of the site? This is important to get agreed beforehand so people can accept that the product fufills its role and so that new ideas don`t pull the site away from its original aim.
Consumers Who is going to view your site. This includes everyone who might be interested, including the opposition. It should be fairly apparant where the split between intended consumers and unintended consumers lies.
Content (and functionality) What will the site do for the consumer, and what content will it provide. Be aware of what content and functionality is aimed at which consumer's, but beware assumptions about what people want.
Security issues Now is a good time to think about which consumers should be allowed to use which content/functionality. How strong does the security need to be.
Content Organisation What structure will the content take. The web is based upon a series of linked pages, content organisation is about which pages the content resides on. Navigation will start to sneak in here, but generally the organisation is about classifying contents into groups. Content may be in more than one place.
Navigation The content needs to be linked together somehow. There are four types of navigation, and most pages will use all four. i) Global - ie: a menu bar which is always present ii) Hierarchical - ie: pages have links to their children and back up to their parent iii) Local - ie: a list of links on a page iv) Ad Hoc - ie: a link which is embedded in some text
Labelling The words used by a web page are important. If one page has an 'OK' button, and one has a 'Done' button, or one page uses the term 'Inon Ltd' and one uses 'Internation Ltd' then the site is obviously crap. It should be possible to create a small dictionary of labels used on the site.
Search methods (Needs more. List search methods) There are different ways of searching for things on a web site. One is where someone wants to enter a search strnig and get results, another is where someone knows the page they want to view and can click on each one. Also, there is the difference of someone having domain knowledge versus someone without. Suffice to say, how will people look for things on the site. [WILL UPDATE]
Static vs Dynamic Are parts of the site dynamic. Is it suited to a particular technology. Is persistence needed. A mostly dynamic site or subsite would suggest frames, but an entirely static site would suggest tables.
Site expansion How will the site expand. What areas will only see replacement, what areas are definitely going to see new content (ie a list of staff), which directions will the content go in, ie) will it get smaller? Identify the volatile parts of the web page, and prepare for future expansion. Decide on limits for the websites growth. ie) if a company's number of staff quadruple, chances are they'll be a new website coming.