Info Architecture
Overview
Gallery
Topologies
More
Hierarchies
Multi-Trees
Full
Hypertext
Exercises
One
Solution
Navigational
Cues
Classification
Labeling Laws
Search
Site Maps
Additional Resources
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tto·pol·o·gy : topographic study of a
particular place; specifically : the history of a region as indicated
by its topography
There are only a few basic topological structures for a site:
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Hierarchy: Each child has one parent though the same
child may appear in more than one place.
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Hypertext: Links crosscut the site arbitrarily so that
in the limit everything is linked to everything else.
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Sequence: A special case of hierarchy where every parent
has exactly one child -- 1,2,3,4,5,6, -- eg. lecture slides.
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Unconnected but accessible randomly using a database, table
of contents, site map or search engine.
Hierarchy
It´s hard to do better than a well designed category hierarchy.
The big question is whether you will have strict hierarchy in which
every child has a unique parent or whether you will multiply classify
children so that a given page, say this lecture page that you are
on, should appear as a child of the general topic Information Architecture,
or uniquely as a child of Lectures: Information Architecture:
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