Throughout this chapter, we've referred to a variety of work products and deliverables (e.g., sample architectures, organizational schemas, and labeling systems) that may prove useful in communicating an information architecture strategy. Let's explore the advantages, disadvantages, and proper uses of a few.
Metaphor is a powerful tool for communicating complex ideas and generating enthusiasm. By suggesting creative relationships or mapping the familiar onto the new, metaphor can be used to explain, excite, and persuade.[
] In 1992, vice-presidential candidate Al Gore popularized the term "information superhighway."] This term mapped the familiar metaphor of the physical highway infrastructure of the United States onto the new and unfamiliar concept of a national information infrastructure. Gore used this metaphor to excite the voters about his vision for the future. Although the term is oversimplified and has since been horribly overused, it did inspire people to learn about and discuss the importance and direction of the global Internet.
[] For more about the use of metaphor, read the book [
] "The information superhighway metaphor goes back to at least 1988, when Robert Kahn proposed building a high-speed national computer network he often likened to the interstate highway system." Many types of metaphors can be applied in the design of web sites. Let's look at three of the most important ones.
Organizational metaphors
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These leverage familiarity with one system's organization to convey quick understanding of a new system's organization. For example, when you visit an automobile dealership, you must choose to enter new car sales, used car sales, repairs and services, or parts and supplies. People have a mental model of how dealerships are organized. If you're creating a web site for an automobile dealership, it may make sense to employ an organizational metaphor that draws from this model.
Functional metaphors
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These make a connection between the tasks you can perform in a traditional environment and those you can perform in the new environment. For example, when you enter a traditional library, you can browse the shelves, search the catalog, or ask a librarian for help. Many library web sites present these tasks as options for users, thereby employing a functional metaphor.
Visual metaphors
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These leverage familiar graphic elements such as images, icons, and colors to create a connection to the new elements. For example, an online directory of business addresses and phone numbers might use a yellow background and telephone icons to invoke a connection with the more familiar print-based yellow pages.
The process of metaphor exploration can really get the creative juices flowing. Working with your clients or colleagues, begin to brainstorm ideas for metaphors that might apply to your project. Think about how those metaphors might apply in organizational, functional, and visual ways. How would you organize a virtual bookstore, library, or museum? Is your site more like one of these things? What are the differences? What tasks should users be able to perform? What should the site look like? You and your colleagues should really cut loose and have fun with this exercise. You'll be surprised by the brilliant ideas you come up with.
After this brainstorming session, you'll want to subject everyone's ideas to a more critical review. Start populating the rough metaphor-based architecture with random items from the expected content to see if they fit. Try one or two user scenarios to see if the metaphor holds up. While metaphor exploration is a useful process, you should not feel obligated to carry all or any of the ideas forward into the information architecture. The reality is that metaphors are great for getting ideas flowing during the conceptual design process, but can be problematic when carried forward to the site itself.
For example, the metaphor of a virtual community is one that has been taken too far in many cases. Some of these online communities have post offices, town halls, shopping centers, libraries, schools, and police stations. It becomes a real challenge for the user to figure out what types of activities take place in which "buildings." In such cases, the metaphor gets in the way of usability. As an architect, you should try to ensure that any use of metaphor is empowering, not limiting.
When first launched, the Internet Public Library (Figure 11-4) used visual and organizational metaphors to provide access to the reference area. Users could browse the shelves or ask a question. However, the traditional library metaphor did not support integration of such things as a multiuser object-oriented environment ("MOO"), and eventually the entire site was redesigned. Applied in such a strong way, metaphors can quickly become limiting factors in site architecture and design.
Figure 11-4. Metaphor use in the main page of the Internet Public Library
Also realize that people tend to fall in love with their own metaphors. Make sure everyone knows that this is just an exercise, and that it will rarely make sense to carry the metaphor into the information architecture design. For a lively discussion of the dangers of metaphor, see the section entitled "The Myth of Metaphor" in Alan Cooper's book, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design (Wiley).
11.5.2. Scenarios
While architecture blueprints are excellent tools for capturing an approach to information organization in a detailed and structured way, they do not tend to excite people. As an architect who wants to convince your colleagues of the wisdom of your approach, you need to help them "envision" the site as you see it in your mind's eye. Scenarios are great tools for helping people to understand how the user will navigate and experience the site you design,[§] and may also help you generate new ideas for the architecture and navigation system.
[§] For a more formal methodology, you may want to learn about use cases and use case scenarios (http://www.usecases.org/).
To provide a multidimensional experience that shows the true potential for the site, it is best to write a few scenarios that show how people with different needs and behaviors might navigate your site. Your user research is obviously an invaluable source of input for this process. Make sure you really take the time to wallow in the data before beginning to ask and answer these questions.
Who are the people using your site? Why and how will they want to use it? Will they be in a rush or will they want to explore? Try to select three or four major user "types" who will use the site in very different ways. Create a character who represents each type, giving him a name, a profession, and a reason for visiting your site. Then begin to flesh out a sample session in which that person uses your site, highlighting the best features of the site through your scenario. If you've designed for a new customization feature, show how someone would use it.
This is a great opportunity to be creative. You'll probably find these scenarios to be easy and fun to write. And hopefully, they'll help convince your colleagues to invest in your ideas.
11.5.2.1. Sample scenario
Let's now look at a brief sample scenario. Rosalind, a 10th grader in San Francisco, regularly visits the LiveFun web site because she enjoys the interactive learning experience. She uses the site in both "investigative mode" and "serendipity mode."
For example, when her anatomy class was studying skeletal structure, she used the investigative mode to search for resources about the skeleton. She found the "interactive human skeleton" that let her test her knowledge of the correct names and functions of each bone. She bookmarked this page so she could return for a refresher the night before final exams.
When she's done with homework, Rosalind sometimes "surfs" through the site in serendipity mode. Her interest in poisonous snakes leads her to articles about how certain types of venom affect the human nervous system. One of these articles leads her into an interactive game that teaches her about other chemicals (such as alcohol) that are able to cross the blood-brain barrier. This game piques her interest in chemistry, and she switches into investigative mode to learn more.
 | This simple scenario shows why and how users may employ both searching and browsing within the web site. More complex scenarios can be used to flesh out the possible needs of users from multiple audiences. |
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11.5.3. Case Studies and Stories
It's not easy to take a complex, abstract subject like information architecture and make it accessible to a diverse audience. When you're communicating with other information architects, you can cut right to the chase, using a technical vocabulary that assumes familiarity and understanding. But when you're talking with a broader audience of clients and colleagues, you may need to be more creative in your communication approach in order to engage their interest and facilitate their understanding.
Case studies and stories (such as the ones featured in Chapters 20 and 21) can be a wonderful way to bring the concepts of information architecture to life. When trying to explain a recommended information architecture strategy, we find it very helpful to compare and contrast this case with past experiences, discussing what did and didn't work on past projects.
11.5.4. Conceptual Diagrams
Pictures are another way to bring abstract concepts to life. As an information architect, you often have to explain high-level concepts and systems that go beyond organization and labeling schemes.
For example, we often find ourselves needing to paint a picture of the broader information ecology within a business. When we work with an intranet team, it's not uncommon to find that they've succumbed over time to tunnel vision, seeing the intranet as the sole source of information for employees. You can tell them that this isn't true, but this really is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words.
The conceptual diagram in Figure 11-5 places the employee, rather than the intranet, at the center of the universe. The sizes of the "information clouds" roughly correspond to the importance of each resource as explained by employees during a series of user interviews. This diagram shows that people view personal networks and colleagues as the most important information resources, and see the current intranet as having relatively little value in their work lives. The diagram also presents a fragmented information environment, in which artificial boundaries of technology (media and format) or geography exist between pools of information. While it's possible to explain all of this verbally, we've found this type of visual to have a significant and lasting impact. It really gets the point across.
Figure 11-5. A conceptual diagram of how employees view the company's information ecology
11.5.5. Blueprints and Wireframes
The collaborative brainstorming process is exciting, chaotic, and fun. However, sooner or later, you must hole up away from the crowd and begin to transform this chaos into order. Blueprints (which show the relationships between pages and other content components) and wireframes (quick-and-dirty visuals that show the content and links of major pages on the web site) are the architect's tools of choice for performing this transformation. We discuss blueprints and wireframes in much greater detail in Chapter 12.
