1 post tagged “ia”

My first breakout session on Monday was around web content, with the pleasant title "Understanding your content".  Here's a classic example of a disconnect avoided if I just read the fine print.  I believed the session was going to be around user experience in content, developing voice, brand, and an identity.  Here's what the session was actually about:

Content analysis is a core component of the information architect's toolkit. Content analysis is the examination of the content and features that make up a website. Through a content audit, or sampling of representative pieces of content, an information architect can understand the relationships, interdependencies and patterns that exist within the current content on the site. This process also allows the information architect to understand requirements and constraints inherent in the content. Content genres, or types, can be identified and used to create a content map of the site and site templates. The content map provides the basic building blocks for gap analysis, which maps user tasks with the content genres.

Reading any of the bold statements in this paragraph would have clued me in.  Unfortunately, this is the first time I read this paragraph.

So, I went to an IA meeting about content analysis.  I don't know much about the subject, so I can get something tangible and actionable out of this.  WRONG!  As it turns out, not only is the presentation not tailored to what I need, it's not detailed enough to enable action or doesn't cover any real-world examples deep enough to extrapolate anything meaningful.  Oops.

I know ASD really needs a content audit badly.  We have content sitting in probably 5 unique systems with unique tools to edit each one and unique quirks in the UX of these tools.  It would be great to get all content under one big umbrella and sorted, organized, and processed into a taxonomy.  I would need a lot more than this breakout session to start doing that.

I can only imagine those with IA backgrounds felt about this presentation.  This must have told them exactly what they already knew.  Do a content inventory first, move to the content audit, then build a content map, and finally do some content analysis.  Each step, use either OmniGraffle or Excel to track everything and done.

Not much else to write.  Nothing actionable, nothing immediately applicable.  Just a general overview of how IA's do their job.