This presentation discusses information architecture in a broad context, connecting technological, business, and user experience perspectives. It provides an overview of information architecture as a practice and defines the presenter's concept of a "RuleSpace," describing the web as a continuum with consistent rules or idioms for user experience. The presentation argues that considering a website's place within this RuleSpace continuum is important for design and for maintaining the interconnected nature of the web.

1. 27/05/09 RuleSpace: Information architecture in a grand context Matt Jones : 12 November 2001

3. A lot to get through, quickly…

4. But, please ask awkward questions

6. The practice of ‘information architecture’ a lightning tour…!

7. A new and nascent discipline…

8. So, there are a lot of definitions… "Information Architecture (IA) is the process of organizing and presenting data to the user in a meaningful, clear and intuitive manner. IA is the foundation of all great websites. All other design aspects - form, function, metaphor, navigation, interface, interaction, visual, and information systems - build upon the groundwork of information architecture. Initiating the IA process is the first thing you should do when designing a website." “ Creating consistent and functional systems for navigation, graphics, page layout and title languages so that the user knows where to go, what to do, and encourages them to return” "Information architecture involves the design of organization and navigation systems to help people find and manage information more successfully."

9. Richard Saul Wurman coined the term “ The individual who organizes the patterns inherent in data, making the complex clear ; a person who creates the structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal paths to knowledge ; the emerging 21st century professional occupation addressing the needs of the age focused upon clarity, human understanding and the science of the organization of information”

12. Clarke’s 3 rd Law “ Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

14. Information architecture: part of a process Diagram by Jesse James Garrett

15. The sorts of things I make

16. User flows

17. Low-fidelity prototype example:

18. 27/05/09 But mostly, I make Connections

19. Powers of Ten

21. 27/05/09 Powers of 10 Images © Eames Office. The following images are used without explicit permission, but with respect. Don’t be cheap – go buy the book, the DVD, the video, the poster (or all of them like I have over the years)

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45. Internet powers of ten?

47. A scale, a journey…

48. Information physics

50. Information engineering

52. Information architecture

54. Information urbanism

56. Information ecosystem

58. Information cosmos Information Cosmos: The topography of the internet – totally emergent from the information physics… and round and round we go…

59. 27/05/09 The cosmologists always have the prettiest pictures. Internet Cosmologists are no exception… (images from http://www.cybergeography.com)

60. Information cosmos: internet topographies: geographical

61. Information cosmos: internet topographies: geographical

62. Information cosmos: internet topographies: abstract

63. Information cosmos: internet topographies: abstract

64. 27/05/09 So, anyway

65. What do I mean by ‘RuleSpace’

66. What’s a RuleSpace? My definition of a “RuleSpace” is a continuum that is a continuum because it follows the same self-consistent rules. This page pictures Space-time continuum and the standard model of quantum physics- two RuleSpaces of our physical universe . Einstein, Newton, Maxwell and Feynman figured out a lot of them but we don’t know all the rules yet…

67. 27/05/09 Okay… What follows is designed to provoke discussion, and is not totally water-tight… But, stick with it and see where it takes you.

68. RuleSpace: web user experience Imagine the web as a continuum - not just of protocols that make up the web as we looked at earlier, but also in terms of the idioms of user-experience. e.g. Blue underlined links, crumb trails, tabs, left-hand navigations, naming-conventions

69. RuleSpace: web user experience Those site that follow the consensus - the shared RuleSpace of UI idioms - can be traversed between quickly… Learn the model once and you can flip between all points on the RuleSpace plain without re-learning anything… As Steve Krug says: “Don’t make me think!”… sites that sit on the mainstream plain of web-experience RuleSpace don’t! Yahoo Google Amazon BBC News

70. RuleSpace: web user experience Yahoo Google Amazon BBC News What about sites that are more brand-oriented, and less goal-oriented… for instance: MTV.com. These may start to have subtle inflections to their physics to express their brand offering and as such we see them positioned away from the plain and starting to move towards a place where the continuums laws start to bend… But if they want to attract a mass audience, their designers have to make sure the excesses are checked and mitigated by the consensus of the RuleSpace so they can become regularly revisited destinations within a person's daily journey through this “metaverse”. MTV

71. RuleSpace: web user experience MTV Yahoo Google Amazon BBC News A personal site, like Matt Owens “volume one” has designed his stuff to be a bubble, an immersion, a consciously entered experience. But it’s not a bubble. It still follows some web conventions, but in doing so creates a difficult tension with the consensus RuleSpace… Sometimes unsuccessfully. It’s away from the mainstream – consciously. It experiments and tries to create what might become new idioms. Informing and evolving the consensus RuleSpace – through the medium of ‘cutting-edge’ conscious sites like MTV.com VolumeOne

72. RuleSpace: STARGATES! Danny Brown’s NOODLEBOX Josh On’s “ THEY RULE” Yahoo Google Amazon “ STARGATES” Some sites are true bubbles of their own RuleSpace. They are self-consistent bubble-universes with well worked out, satisfying imerssive, interactive experiences interfaces and idioms of their own. If they reside on the web – then their creators have to give us well-mannered and easy to use entrances (and more importantly - exits ) to their universes… These ante-rooms have idioms of their own… Plug-in checks, browser sniffs and navigational primers are all features of these wormholes, these stargates into and out of these alternative, parallel RuleSpaces.

73. 27/05/09 Why is this important?

75. “ the Web represents a small world, i.e. the typical number of clicks between any two Web pages is about 19”

78. 27/05/09 Both the powers of ten and RuleSpace models aim to help designers and content creators relate usability good practice to design experimentation, helping the web become a web again.

79. 27/05/09 Don’t just design a website, design a beautiful part of the web.

80. And remember… we’ve only just begun…

81. 27/05/09 Thanks!

83. Questions? [email_address]