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This series explores several elements that go into the creation of a successful information architecture design. Throughout the series, you discover how to manage and organize data and content, learn about distributed data mining, and find tips for analyzing and presenting information to users. The series also explores the use of business intelligence in information architecture and how to apply content to multiple audiences.
This article launches the series by looking at the difference between data and content and discussing how to find and integrate information that comes from multiple, disparate sources. If you need to create a flexible design, start here and continue reading each month to learn tips and tricks for a successful information architecture design.
To understand the difference between data and content, take a minute to consider each separately before comparing them. Data is essentially specific pieces of information formatted in a particular way -- it can exist as numbers, text, bits, bytes, facts, and so on. From a technology viewpoint, the term data typically refers to binary (machine-readable) information such as numbers or characters. It can, however, also be information that is simply factual -- a collection of facts from which conclusions are drawn, for instance, or a group of numbers. Content, on the other hand, is typically more human-oriented -- content is what the users on a Web site find helpful, such as graphics, video, sound, and text.
Data and content work together seamlessly in any successful information architecture design. Here's an example: unorganized data, such as a group of measurements, is usually processed in some manner to make it easily readable for users, such as a graph or a chart. This graph or chart is the point where the data becomes actual content that a reader can identify and understand. What trips up most people is that the two terms are often used interchangeably. From my perspective, data is boring mumbo jumbo and content is the flashy or graphically-appealing item I see on the screen. Toss a bunch of numbers at me, and I won't grasp a bit of it. But show me a pretty graph where all the numbers are laid out in a simple design to show their relationship to one another, and I understand instantly. In information architecture, your goal is to organize and present data in a clear, meaningful manner to your audience, so it's critical that you understand this difference between data and content. Now that you see how the two differ, take a look at finding and integrating both into a flexible design.
When you're searching for the right data to use as content in your information architecture design, it's important to develop skills and competencies that help you gather the right information from multiple -- often disparate -- sources. Specifically, creative, research, analytical, and integration skills are what you need to accomplish this daunting task.
When you're working with data, it's critical that you think imaginatively about how you present that data as content. How will your audience understand the information that you're providing? Are you using lots of charts and graphs? Do you need to balance those charts and graphs with simple text or graphics? If you don't consider yourself to be a creative person, then you either need to get out of information architecture or look to others in your organization who can help you think creatively. Go to the publications department at your company, for instance, and get tips from the graphic designers. Designers think from a visual perspective, and they'll be able to help you visualize how the information can best be presented. The entire concept of information architecture is built on an essentially visual medium -- people go to Web sites to see, experience, and absorb information. If your site's data and content is presented in a boring, listless manner, you'll lose your audience and maybe even be out of a job.
Don't limit your creativity to visual concepts, however. Get creative in your site organization, for instance, by thinking about what annoys you when you use someone else's information architecture design. This approach places you in your customer's shoes. Here's an example: Does it make you nuts to continually drill down to find what you need on a site? If so, in your own design, place frequently used or product links where customers can quickly find them. Keep the business in mind, too, as you think creatively. Are you matching user needs to business goals? For instance, does your company need to sell a specific number of widgets every year to make a profit? If so, get that widget to the top of your design list and place it in highly visible areas of the site.
A little creative thought can strongly support business goals and customers at the same time.
When you're an information architect, you're part designer, part analyst, part researcher, and part engineer. You have a lot of roles to fill, and the abilities to research and analyze are critical to completing all of them successfully. People throw a lot of data and content at you and expect you to put it all together perfectly. It can be a bit bewildering, I know. It's as if you're supposed to know every single nook and cranny of the business, right? Guess what? You are supposed to know it all! You're supposed to know how manufacturing connects with sales, how sales relates to marketing, and how accounting is involved with all three. Your skills in research and analysis help you determine where content overlaps and where it's lacking, too. Limited research and analytic skills are all too obvious to others in your site design, by the way. It shows up in your design as unclear information, unwieldy navigation, and other easily identifiable pieces of your design.
If you're not sure where to start your research, start by taking a look at the goals, scope, and constraints of the project. The goals and scope, in particular, show you the direction to move. Any constraints help you determine where your research should be limited. Perhaps budget limitations, for instance, dictate that accounting is not involved in the design initially. While you should still attempt to understand how accounting integrates with other areas of the company so that you can plan for its inclusion at a later date, it's not critical that you understand all accounting functions at this point.
Next, research your specific audiences: What's the blend of users? What kind of content do they require? What context do they use it in? What context will they want to use it in five years from now? As you perform this research, look at your competitors and how they reach the same kinds of audiences. Don't be afraid to steal best practices, but be sure you recognize where a competitor isn't hitting the mark. If you experience trouble with a competitor's site, don't make the same mistake with your own design.
Other research might not be performed until much later in the design process. Usability testing, for instance, can't be done until the design is close to completion. Ultimately, research skills rely heavily on common sense. Know what your design is supposed to accomplish, and then do the research to meet that goal. Don't dismiss research you've already done, by the way. Your experiences in the past count as research, as do the experiences of others in the form of published research.
After you've done your research, it's time to move on to using those analytical skills that have come in so handy in the past. Executives and others rely on you to tell them what the best search strategies are for the site, for instance. They don't care that much about how you do it; they just want to know that it will be done. Among other things, you're also expected to determine the path visitors should take through the entire site, which types of onscreen forms work best for the audience, and how back-end and front-end data should flow to provide an effortless user experience.
It can be overwhelming to process all the research, so start by determining which requirements are the most important and which can be left until later in the process. From there, consider how you can link data to the audience's information needs and the broader strategies of the business. As part of the analytical process, think about how your design can adapt to ever-changing user actions and requirements. Face it: What works for users now will not satisfy them in a few years. Users are a fickle bunch, and changing technologies will offer them new options in the future. So part of your analysis must be to determine not just how the design can support users now, but how it can be modified to support newer technologies as they arise.
It might seem strange to mention integration as a skill or competency, but, in my mind, it's a highly critical one for information architects. Maybe you're terrific at research, perhaps you're pretty creative, and your analytical skills are second to none. But those are all close to worthless if you can't combine everything you know into a holistic design of processes, workflow, data, and content that flow smoothly for the user. Ultimately, your role as an information architect is to integrate data and content from multiple sources to create a flexible design.
Your question now is probably, "How do I improve my integration skills?" It's not a skill that's typically taught at most companies. One decent definition of integration skills that I've seen talks about the content-management skills needed to assess, apply, and adapt technology to Web site design and development. That still seems a bit vague, although the notion of content-management skills as opposed to integration skills gives you a better idea of where the skills are actually required: in managing the data and content involved in your design.
The best advice I have for improving your integration skills is to tell you to follow these basic steps:
- Compile all the data and content that you have located through your discovery processes.
- Create a chart that shows both the overlaps and gaps in the gathered data and content.
- Work out a range of strategies to remove each overlap and address each gap.
Each time you complete these steps, your ability to gather and use information from multiple sources improves.
There are also some training options that might be worth investigating, such as integration developer training for IBM® WebSphere® Process Server V6 or WebSphere Application Integration and Enterprise Content Management Designer courses available through the developerWorks training catalog. Also, check out the Resources section for information about WebSphere Information Integrator, which can really help you integrate diverse information from across your organization.
Here are a few tools and techniques that can help you. Don't limit yourself to these, of course, but consider them a good place to start.
Get a working knowledge of XML
If you don't know Extensible Markup Language (XML) by now, you need to learn it. XML can bring your data to the Web quickly and easily and is a basic standard in information architecture these days. When you combine it with products such as IBM's DB2®, you can store XML documents for fast searches, compose or decompose XML documents from or into relational tables, and even build business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) applications on top of DB2. You can learn more about DB2 and its XML capabilities and functions in the Resources section.
Explore DB2 and WebSphere products
DB2 products are smart tools that can help you build and deploy applications in your design. If you dig around on developerWorks, you'll even find free versions you can test and use. DB2 Express-C, for example, is a free download that offers the same core data server features as the DB2 Universal Database™ Express Edition and provides a solid base to build and deploy applications developed using C/C++, Java™ language, Microsoft® .NET, PHP, and other programming languages.
WebSphere products are designed for the information architect in many ways. There are hundreds of products available to help you design and implement your architecture. For example, WebSphere Information Integrator lets you access diverse and distributed data as if it were from a single data source.
Take a look at the Resources section for details on downloading both tools.
When working with data and content, there are primarily two key milestones to meet: identification of data sources and development of an integration strategy. This article reviewed both, so just take a deep breath as you work through all the data and content swimming around in your organization. It might seem ridiculously difficult at first, but as you begin to pull everything together and sort it out based on customer needs and business goals, you start to see the patterns you need to create an outstanding design.
This article covered a lot of ground, but there is plenty more to say about data and content, as well as how to pull it all together. Tune in to this series to learn more each month.
Learn
- Check out "Firing Up The
Hybrid Engine" (DB2 Magazine, July 2005) to learn more about DB2's XML capabilities.
- Explore Getting started
with WebSphere Information Integrator to learn about IBM's information integration products and how they can help you integrate the diverse information across your enterprise.
- Stay current with developerWorks Technical events and webcasts.
- Browse the technology
bookstore for books on these and other technical topics.
Get products and technologies
- Download IBM
product evaluation versions and get your hands on a variety of tools and products from
DB2, Lotus®, Rational®, Tivoli®, and WebSphere.
Discuss
- Participate in the discussion forum.
- Check out developerWorks blogs and get involved
in the developerWorks community.
S. E. Slack is a freelance writer and author with more than 17 years of experience in business writing. She has also been an executive and business transformation communications consultant to IBM, Lenovo International, and State Farm Insurance Companies. She is the author of Windows Vista: Home Entertainment with Windows Media Center and Xbox 360, as well as numerous other books. Contact S.E. Slack at sally@sslack.com
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