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A3: Redo Information Architecture
Due Date: Tuesday, 2/24/2004
Assigned On: Thursday, 2/12/2004
Value: 25%
Description: Provide 3 scenarios for 3 different
users and then sketch the National University homepage as well as
the second level pages.
Deliverable:
Sketch of NU homepage and primary second level pages.
The objective of this assignment is to understand the constraints
and freedom involved in choosing an information architecture. Do
this assignment in a group of 2 or 3.
NU has a reasonably nice site. It is large and covers dozens of
topics. Given that you know something about universities from a
student's point of view, you should have some strong feelings about
whether the NU site is delivering what you think students want in
an effective manner.
Sketching the IA
A simple HTML page, or an image derived from a drawing program
and embedded in an html page, of your version of:
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the NU homepage, complete with tabs or headers, labels, and
text.
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the primary second level pages.
Now that you have a basic idea of the goals and the communities
of users of the site from A2, redesign
the basic information structure of the site. At this point, a good
move on your part will be to look at several other university sites.
Almost all designers look for ideas from others who have faced the
same problem. You may steal features from other sites but do not
duplicate them. This is called getting competitive intelligence.
You ought to choose comparable universities, but again your primary
decision should be based on what you think users want to learn from
this site. It will help you to check out the How
To Redesign a Site note I wrote for you.
Obviously in redesigning the IA of the site you must decide what
the primary categories and labels you will use. How much information
will you choose to place on the homepage? Redesign the category
structure of the first two levels of the site (i.e. the home page
and the main pages at the next level). These pages must show the
terms that you would place in the NavBars, or navigation masterlist.
How many such bars or masterlists will you have? Will you use footers?
Don't worry too much about page layout. You may sketch your ideas
in a clean HTML page so we can see approximately how things would
look, or you may use Illustrator or Visio or some other drawing
program to show the main content elements and where they are on
the page.
This is the standard output of an IA -- a gif of the layout, without
visual or real graphical treatment. For instance, if you want to
use a horizontal header (and you want to submit html) then you need
only use a simple table with a background color and text for the
labels. Or you may create a gif for the header. For this assignment,
layout is only of importance insofar as it is relevant to the information
architecture.
Write up a description of your hardest decisions
When writing up your results add a description of the hardest
decisions you had to make and why you chose the options that you
did. Don't forget you are free to be creative: you may choose a
geographical interface, a metaphorical one such as a campus, a task
oriented design, a hybrid of different types, or something completely
different.
Please also bear in mind that the site must not take too long to
load, so overly heavy use of graphics required in the final design
is ill-advised, but we will not count your header's weight, or any
graphic you use for your IA design.
You need not go too deeply into the body of the second level.
It is the navigation we are interested in. So it is your choice
whether to have lots of links in the body or to create some secondary
navigation for these major sections of your site. Whenever possible
copy text and link names from the NU site to avoid effort. You can
also build this entire site in MS Word and then save as html.
Hand in your Assignment 3 by posting it to your website and sending
me an email with a link to your URL.
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