Content Management Strategy - Information Architecture

Information Architecture (IA) encompasses the process and knowledge of shaping the structure of digital information environments with the principles of anthropology, architecture, and structural cognition. The ultimate goal of IA is to support the user/ consumer of information by providing an environment where information is easy to locate and use.

• The cost of finding information vs. the cost of not finding information
• The cost of using information
• The cost of building and managing information systems
• The value of collective expertise vs. individual expertise
• The value of using and creating networks
• The value of consistent brand
• The value of collaborative innovation

The approach
When asked to begin an IA project, I go about creating a conceptual framework of subject matter, either for applications or for organizations as a whole, and blueprint it in a manner that makes sense, not only to clients, but to every single person who has to use it, which creates a dynamic challenge: how to abastract from the organization's perspective, or the perspectives of a few users, plans that represent many users?

Participant observation
Using techniques from my training in anthropology, I establish a participant observer position within organizations to learn the processes, IA schemes, and thinking currently utilized that are documented and undocumented. From the role of participant observer, IA schemes can develop free of "organizational think," generally those processes and naming conventions used internally that rarely matter to information seekers without the same sense of how organizations operate and think. A good IA plan accounts for these differences from insider and outsider points of view. Participant observed planning often leads to some terrific intranet building that is leveraged and made synonymous for external presentation.

Focus groups
Focus groups, facilitated objectively and without bias, can help create user profiles that can be personified through the life of an IA project. Personifying imaginary users based on the reactions and claims of real groups of people gives valuable representations of how information is sought out and used. Representative thought processes can be determined by doing information-sorting as part of focus group activities. Because IA (as a process) is exactly about sorting and classifying, it works well to have a number of people sort through information and arrange it according to how they see the relationships between content types and subjects. The process provides valuable insight into the ways that potential users react to what is being provided to them.

Content Inventories
Creating a content inventory is on one level a simple process of listing of all of the content on an existing (or proposed) web site/application, but on another level, it can be a complex description of the key elements of all information within an organization. If you are completing a full content inventory, TechTrench recommends using well-established element sets. I use the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set to create inventories and sort and store content based on: Title, Creator, Subject, Description, Publisher, Contributor, Date, Type, Format, Identifier, Source, Language, Relation, Coverage, Rights. You can store any information you like against an entry, normally a single topic page or database record describing an item of content. It's a good idea to have widespread agreement about the data element set to use for describing your content. That set can become the standard for manipulating content across your organization.

Taxonomies
The most difficult task in designing digital information environments is to define and use a taxonomy that forms the basis for the conceptual descriptions of information. If your organizaton's subject matter is fortunate to have an already existing taxonomy used in other settings such as libraries and professional associations, then the task becomes an evaluative one to determine the appropriateness of the terminologies from your users' perspectives. Generally, static library cataloging systems are not dynamic enough for digital information environments where users are conditioned for searching for information according to keywords and full-text results delivery (Google). Web based taxonomies have to be much more vernacular in nature and provide a means of encompasing keywords users search for when they visit your content. Building a taxonomy either from established systems or from the ground up should involve the creation of synonymous keywording that maps to the terminologies within the thesaurus. These keywords can be identified from focus groups as users are studied and personified. I also recommend establishing a means to store your visitors' search queries so the terms they look for can be dynamically added to your thesaurus. This allows the thesaurus to evolve with how your users are interacting with your information.