Mission Control: Come in, Houston....
NASA doesn't just send random people in the space shuttle. Expeditions are planned years in advance. Astronauts are carefully selected and undergo rigorous training. It is important to those planning an expedition to communicate its mission and the context of the expedition to each other, to the astronauts, to the media, and to the public at large.
Defining the mission and metaphor of a web site is similarly important. Stars.com seems to have many of them. Nominally it is a virtual library for Web developers. But it is also a magazine, an encyclopedia, an annotated bibliography, a gallery of images, a software repository, a job bulletin board, and a way to search the entire Internet. Some of these functions are only marginally related to the mission of the site.
Also, users are left without an explanation of the Stars.com domain name and the space theme. There is no apparent reason--in the minds of users--to link this metaphor to a library on Web development.
Recommendations
- Focus on the most important content. It is unlikely that Stars.com can compete with the other job bulletin boards out there. Why not carve out a specific niche in the marketplace rather than trying to be all things to all people?
- Delete extraneous content--or relegate it to a different site. Some features such as the gallery, or the search engine that searches the entire Internet are not directly related to the mission of this site.
- Reevaluate the space metaphor. Make a direct connection in users' minds between the space theme and the content of the site. Or, focus future marketing efforts on the WDVL domain name, rather than Stars.com.
Conclusion
We've provided you with a brief, useful introduction to information architecture. To learn more about the topic, there are two regular columns that cover the topic regularly. We write the Web Architect column which runs in Web Review magazine. Jakob Nielsen also regularly covers information architecture and Web usability topics in his Alertbox column.
For a book-length, systematic introduction to the topic, we recommend the following volumes,
both of which are scheduled for release this fall:
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites,
by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville, and
Designing Websites with Authority: Secrets of an Information Architect,
by Jakob Nielsen. You may also wish to see Chapter Four in Clement Mok's
Designing Business: Multiple Media, Multiple Disciplines.
We also hope we've proven the value of information architecture: with a few modest improvements to the Stars.com architecture, the site should support greatly enhanced usability and navigation, unlocking even more of Stars.com's valuable content. If you found this critique of the Stars.com site useful, consider a critique for your own site. In any case, we would love to hear your feedback on this critique or on information architecture in general.
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