| The purpose of Information Design
is to articulate what you are trying to do, for whom and what
you will need to accomplish those goals. Information Design results
in a Project Plan and the Information Structure.
Project Goals
What is this project about? Is it preliminary to selling a full-blown
project to management, or is this the project itself? Will your
Web site be an information reference providing access to information
in depth? Are you trying to create a community of users? If so,
interaction among them is most important. Will the site exist
to create an experience for the visitors? Or are you building
a site in order to generate visitors of a certain demographic
profile which can be used as an advertising venue?
How will your site create value for your organization? Will you
be selling ads? Merchandising products? Will you require membership
fees or entry fees? Or will the site exist for marketing, public
relations or customer support purposes?
How will you know if your site is successful?
Audience Goals
Who is the expected audience? What are their demographic characteristics?
What kind of equipment will they use: high-end computers? low
bandwidth network connections? Most important, what are their
goals? Why would they come to your site? Why would they come back?
Keep in mind that most Web sites serve several audiences. A typical
corporate site, for example, serves customers, prospects, investors,
potential employees, the news media, the local community and possibly
others.
Content Inventory
Once you've articulated what you want to do, examine how you'll
do it. What materials will be required? Of those, what do you
have? What work needs to be done on them and what will it cost?
What materials will be required that you don't have? How will
you get them? What work needs to be done on them? What will it
cost? Beyond dollar costs, how much effort will be required and
how long will it take?
Information Structure
How will you organize all this stuff in the Content Inventory?
What organizing principles will best fit the material and be most
effective for the site visitors? Categorical? Clustered? Sequenced?
Alphabetical? Numerical? Temporal? Spatial? Narrative? Should
the site support multiple views into the information? What implications
do the organizing principles have on use?
Content Analysis
Are you meeting your goals? Content Analysis is the creation
of a matrix of project goals vs. site features. Are all the goals
supported? Do any features exist without supporting important
goals?
Implementation Decisions
How will you make this site work? Is it straightforward Web pages
or does it involve scripts, pages created on demand, Java applets,
special data type viewers, databases or secure transactions? Do
you have the expertise for these technologies or do you know where
to get it?
Project Plan
The result of all this is the Project Plan: a first-pass enumeration
of tasks, a schedule of when they will be performed, by whom and
at what cost. More tasks will be added to the Project Plan during
Interaction Design and Presentation Design. |
