Personas

“Personas are archetypal users that exist mainly as design targets.”

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p.164

How do users think about the site’s content?

(…)

There are (four) good ways to learn how people think about your content:

1. observe others
2. study the enemy
3. visit your search logs
4. do a card sort

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders

How do users think about the site’s content?

(…)

There are (four) good ways to learn how people think about your content:

1. observe others
2. study the enemy
3. visit your search logs
4. do a card sort

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders

Organize content according to users mental models

“If you want people to be able to find what they are looking for, you must organize the content of your web site based on how people think about those contents.”

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p.102

Memorizing items

1. Familiar items are easier to remember than unfamiliar
2. short words easier than long words
3. and it’s easier to remember in no particular order than in a particular order

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p.49

Navigation bars convention

“Almost all web sites have gone to navigation on the top and/or on the left side of the screen. In user testing, Razorfish discovered that not only did the users not mind the change, but it provided easier access to the scrollbar for faster navigation and made it easier to concentrate on the content.”

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p.42

Stuffing the stuff

1. categorization has consequences
2. categorization provides context
3. categorization is shaped by context

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p.118-9

How to create personas

1. Summarize findings [from reserach!], distribute discovery document [to stakeholders]
1. specific and as precise as possible
2. relevant to your product
3. universal, ie not a singular attitude
2. Hold a work session to brainstorm personas
3. Prioritize and cull personas to develop primary, secondary and
   supporting personas
4. make the personas into real people (use quotes: “The quotes act as mnemonics to keep the team connected to ther persona and the persona’s goals. It should be something that catches the nature
   of the persona’s personality and her attitude towards the
   product.” p. 177
5. apply the personas

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders

Site maps

“The site map documents the web site’s pages. It also includes the relationship of the pages to each other, any interaction between pages, and a number of other facts that change from project to project, including, potentially, what pages have templates, what pages are dynamic, and what pages are user created. It is typically formed of two parts: organization [site] documentation and interaction documentation. When documenting the organization information, concentrate on presenting key hierarchical and sibling relationships and documenting what pages will exist.”

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders

Building a controlled vocabulary

1. gather content
2. gather terms from as many sources as possible
3. define preferred terms
4. link synonyms and near synonyms
5. group preferred terms by subject
6. identify broader and narrower terms
7. perform associative linking
8. document your choices and the rationale behind them

From: Wodtke, Christina (2003), Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Berkeley, CA: New Riders