week5_Develop Site Structure

The author cited a phase of words from Peter Morville which I think is the main spirit of information design, “creating consistent and functional systems for navigation, graphics, page layout, and the title languages so that the user knows where to go, what to do, and it encourages them to return.”

Viewing things in different point of view in also important, the author emphasizes fours perspectives: Content-view, Site-View, Page-View and User-view. In deed, as a channel to communicate site visitors, site developers and site holders, a website should embrace multiple functions of different aspects. In the office, we always said that “One will always change his/her entire brain after changing his/her position.” Maybe the meaning of these words is kind of sarcastic, but it really shows that we have to have flexibilities when we try to develop a website.

Content is king. The word is the principle of every medium. We often have too many contents but have no idea how to remove the information we don’t need. How many information you want to display on your website is the scope of content. A specific website and a general website will definitely have different depth and width. The word “chunk” is a good idea to organize contents. By categories of color, style, size, pattern and most important of all, the relationships among the contents, we could have a clear view to classify our information.

The next step is to build a clear sitemap of our website. In order to classify all the information, we should have the concepts of “layers”, like a tree diagram or end-means. The team of website developers has to group up all the contents and name them with a good category. (Also remember, try to use users’ point of view to check if your category is easy to be understood or not.) Nobody is supposed to have the same mind map or thinking process with you. But if they couldn’t understand your category and find the information they need, they will not stay longer. You always have to be considerate to the entry-level users.

The last step is to arrange the wireframe—what do you wish your layout to look like? As we learned from the class, too many meaningless pictures and auto-play flash are annoyed. This part has close relation with the user interface which we can find in next chapter.

The author also emphasizes the path and navigation of the web site. It will be helpful to focus on target users from creating user scenarios and persona. Finding their life styles will help web designers know their tastes and needs, which is an excellent way to communicate designers and users.