you are here: cit
home > how to >
resources > web
building > information
design
Information Design / Information Architecture
The emerging arena of information design has been described variously as sense-making and way-finding, strategies for communicating information, the structuring of information, and as the development of a new visual language. Below are links to a range of good resources exploring its various aspects as it relates to the Web.
Ten Questions
About Information Architecture
Information design, and information architecture in Web-building,
is a discipline-in-progress. CNET's Builder.com site provides an insightful
look at what information architects do, how they fit into a Web team,
and how it relates to usability.
Seven
Deadly Sins of Information Design
An easy introduction to the major elements of good information design.
Information
Interaction Design
Written by Nathan Shedroff, a leading figure in information architecture,
this seminal article has been included as a chapter in the book Information
Design, edited by Robert Jacobson. He analyzes the intersection of
three disciplines: information design, interaction design, and sensorial
design, and discusses the elements that turn data into information, the
continuum of understanding, organizing schemes, metaphors, and continuums
of interactivity, and the experience cube.
ACIA:
Information Architecture Resources
The Argus Center for Information Architecture offers its own annotated
list of links on the subject, with resources including books, discussion
lists, Web columns, white papers, and conferences. Since Argus is going
out of business, unfortunately, the list is also offered here in PDF
form as it existed on 15 March, 2001.
WebReference:
Information Design
A collection of articles, as WebReference says, "on the structuring
of information to make the complex clear," including information
architecture.
Usable
Web: Information Architecture
Respected information architect Keith Instone's collection of links
on information architecture as it relates to the Web.
Nathan
Shedroff
Nathan Shedroff's personal and professional Web site, with links to
his projects, articles and speeches, his own set of resources.
Yale
C/AIM Web style guide
The preeminent guide for Web site design; the authors, Patrick Lynch
from Yale and Sarah Horton from Dartmouth College
Books
Jacobson, Robert, ed. Information Design. MIT Press, 1999
Rosenfeld, Louis, and Peter Morville. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. O'Reilly, 1998
Shedroff, Nathan. Experience Design. New Riders Publishing, to be published April 2001
Tufte, Edward. Visual Explanantions. Graphics Press, 1997
Tufte, Edward. Envisioning Information. Graphics Press, 1990
Wurman, Richard Saul. Information Architects. Graphis, 1997