Information architecture: Theory and practice

Workshop description

This full day workshop provides a thorough overview and understanding of information architecture theory & practice. It covers a wide range of information architecture issues, including an understanding of how it fits into a project, fundamental skills & knowledge required for information architecture work and current information architecture issues. It is theoretical and practical and allow you to immediately apply ideas to your projects.

This workshop covers:

• What information architecture is and how it relates to other user experience disciplines
• Core IA techniques - analysing content, conducting user research, card sorting and more
• Core IA theories - classification, categorisation, metadata & labeling
• IA structures - hierarchies, database and other structures
• Designing navigation & page layouts
• Putting it together in an IA project
• Current issues in IA

The workshop is presented at the level of an ‘advanced intro’, covering the basics and also allowing exploration of key challenges and issues. The format is a combination of short lectures, group discussion and hands-on activities. Extensive notes and resources will be provided for further personal exploration.

After the workshop, the participants will have:

• An understanding of fundamental IA concepts and issues
• An understanding of processes and techniques often used in an IA project
• Hands-on experience with key techniques
• Shared skills with other practitioners

Workshop length

This workshop is best suited to a full day, but can be taught as a half day if needed.

Schedule

This workshop will next be taught at the User Interface 13 Conference (Cambridge, MA, October 2008).

This (and all) workshops can be taught in-house. Contact me for details.

Testimonials

Feedback from participants from the 2008 IA Summit:

• “Great review of the practical activities involved in effective IA”
• “I don’t think I realized how much I knew about this topic. Donna made it accessible and interesting.”
• “I loved Donna’s confidence with the subject & presentatuion. The information she presented seemed trustworthy & accurate.”
• “The activities were helpful and the presentation was good.”
• “Great activities; structure of course, instructor were all excellent. Well laid out & taught course.”
• “Very informative – good overview of a very large topic.”
• “As a newbie to IA this class was very helpful in simply understanding ia and what an IA does. Great knowledge of the subject. Great real-world examples.”
• “Very comfortable fielding questions of all kinds, with thoughtful answers.”