Today, in my research, I came across an interesting article that appends stuff to the Jakob Nielsen structure and its delivery of the concept of an Information Architect. After reading it I have some interesting thoughts about the subject but I will be posting them tomorrow after I use my case-study to bring to light problems that have plagued the project I am working on considering an IA was never involved in the first place.
Information Architecture Concepts Link
Referenced from IBM Developer Works - Thanks to Thomas Myer for giving us this information. He can be reached at tom@myerman.com
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Searching for Information
Every good IA understands the necessity of incorporating a simple-to-complex search engine along with the final product delivered to a customer. Search engines can range from a simple text field to a variety of choices and pull-down menu for power-users. In my experience working on the project at IBM, most users like to avoid going too deep unless their job really requires them to do so.
Being simple, however, does not negate the fact that the back-end needs to support highly complex algorithms for handling even the most ludicrous search strings. Most search engines we encounter today offer error-correction using technologies that can range from word-suggestions(based on the repository), to simply putting a list of items on the screen and allowing you to modify your search from there (Google is the best example here). What you don't want to forget at this point is that the search engine you are developing should cater to the needs to the audience it is being given to and not just the client needs.
While the search functionality in Notes is not one of the best in the industry, it does offer concepts like fuzzy logic and web-syntax searching to let the masses stray away from the age-old Boolean search methods. Sites like Google go the extra distance and even tell users that they do not need to use Boolean operators like AND and NOT to do searching as the client already takes that into account.
Dictionaries are a new concept that have seemed to crop up in projects as many of them are going cross-geography. The choice of American vs British English is something that should not bother users as the choice of words ultimately depends on the end-user and not the search-engine developer.
Content Structuring also plays a very important role in developing a search engine because it helps developers understand how the search engine needs to perform a search when a user has a simple/complex query. More often than most, search-engines should bring up the most relevant result (unless instructed otherwise by the client) in the top ten results on the page.
Lastly, but not least, a help-bot is always useful to guide users in a non-intrusive way to getting their results faster. Examples of this are already covered above when we talked about suggestive words and even correcting spelling mistakes automatically.
For now, these are the few things that I can certainly point out from my experience and there are of course many more things that actually help in the searching process and I will try and catch them as I read about them to bring them to light.
Being simple, however, does not negate the fact that the back-end needs to support highly complex algorithms for handling even the most ludicrous search strings. Most search engines we encounter today offer error-correction using technologies that can range from word-suggestions(based on the repository), to simply putting a list of items on the screen and allowing you to modify your search from there (Google is the best example here). What you don't want to forget at this point is that the search engine you are developing should cater to the needs to the audience it is being given to and not just the client needs.
While the search functionality in Notes is not one of the best in the industry, it does offer concepts like fuzzy logic and web-syntax searching to let the masses stray away from the age-old Boolean search methods. Sites like Google go the extra distance and even tell users that they do not need to use Boolean operators like AND and NOT to do searching as the client already takes that into account.
Dictionaries are a new concept that have seemed to crop up in projects as many of them are going cross-geography. The choice of American vs British English is something that should not bother users as the choice of words ultimately depends on the end-user and not the search-engine developer.
Content Structuring also plays a very important role in developing a search engine because it helps developers understand how the search engine needs to perform a search when a user has a simple/complex query. More often than most, search-engines should bring up the most relevant result (unless instructed otherwise by the client) in the top ten results on the page.
Lastly, but not least, a help-bot is always useful to guide users in a non-intrusive way to getting their results faster. Examples of this are already covered above when we talked about suggestive words and even correcting spelling mistakes automatically.
For now, these are the few things that I can certainly point out from my experience and there are of course many more things that actually help in the searching process and I will try and catch them as I read about them to bring them to light.
An Introduction
When I first started working with IBM, my goals weren't very clear. It took a while before I finally settled down on what I wanted to finally become and that career path decision came about two years later when I attended a seminar on storage services in IBM. The presenter was explaining how the hierarchy works in storage systems when I happened to look into the concept of becoming an IT Architect.
Prior to attending the seminar my goal was to move into Content Management Systems and I figured that IBM was the place that was going to get me where I had to go. After learning about IA, I started doing some more research and to my joy I have now found what I want to finally become once I have settled properly into my new career which deals with content deployment between two geographies (North America and Europe).
This blog will showcase some of the experiences I have come across and will come across in my journey to reach the final goal of Information Architect. The field is relatively new and with Web 2.0 and other Mash-Up technologies this field can only get better.
I hope you find something useful in here and if you've got something useful let me know either by post or sending me the link to your blog. I don't mind promoting good material and even helping you find information if I can.
With that said, on with the posting ...
Prior to attending the seminar my goal was to move into Content Management Systems and I figured that IBM was the place that was going to get me where I had to go. After learning about IA, I started doing some more research and to my joy I have now found what I want to finally become once I have settled properly into my new career which deals with content deployment between two geographies (North America and Europe).
This blog will showcase some of the experiences I have come across and will come across in my journey to reach the final goal of Information Architect. The field is relatively new and with Web 2.0 and other Mash-Up technologies this field can only get better.
I hope you find something useful in here and if you've got something useful let me know either by post or sending me the link to your blog. I don't mind promoting good material and even helping you find information if I can.
With that said, on with the posting ...
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