Brief discussion on information-type granulation in information architecture

When we enter an office building, find the room you want to go to, you will be based on what to guide the room? When you go to the supermarket to buy things, what guide you can quickly find you want to go to the locker? When you reach a website, what do you rely on to find the information you want? What are the ways that you can quickly find the target information you are focusing on? At this time, an office floor room distribution map, a supermarket goods classification, a website information architecture shows its role.

When we find that target room specific information, the location of the room, facing south or north, room size, distance from the elevator and so on, the supermarket looking for things in the locker, looking for wine or liquor, what brand, price, whether there is a promotion, is their own taste or send people? When we have a restaurant and entertainment website to find your target information, is catering or KTV. Is Chinese food or western food, Hui or Sichuan food? This time the information architecture will help me find the information we want, one of which is to help us find our information quickly. Ease our sense of oppression in finding the target information.

The information architecture is explained in Wikipedia as the combination structure that affects system organization, navigation, and classification tags in an information environment. A good information architecture can be a better activity for users to enjoy the sense of happiness, the user quickly find the sense of accomplishment of information. This is also the constant reduction of information levels in most websites.

A website contains too much information, when I found LeBron James today in the data performance of the Mavericks, perhaps after: home-sports-nba– today's hot news-today's results-the calf against the heat such a process, of course, can also be found in the sports section on the bottom of the home page. The premise is hot news, because hot spots will be recommended to show the destination, not every piece of information or articles have such a good life, the rapid display, when faced with a large number of users, a lot of information, information architecture is indispensable. At this point the label system is functioning, but the label set to what level appropriate? Is it the NBA or the basketball superstar or the LeBron James level?

Sina's top navigation:

Brief discussion on information architecture and information granulation

Users can enter the NBA directly on the home page, no need to go through: home-sports NBA, shorten the access level.

NBA News Channel Navigation:

Brief discussion on information architecture and information granulation

Home News navigation set: Social, Military, sports settings: Premier League, NBA

The information of the NBA page is granular, the star, the team, the team schedule, the topic ...

We can give a similar example in life, we assume that the same cost of the case from A to B, train and car two ways, but no direct train trains, need to change to C and then transfer to B, the car can direct to B, you will choose the car or train? If not, I would choose B, especially for people with a certain purpose. Generally choose Direct.

But in the face of the Internet such a large amount of information, or do vertical, information divided to that level, how to divide, is the scope of information granulation.

What is the specific concept of information granularity I can not accurately describe, when we classify some kind of information (sports Class), the level divides to the smallest unit, this smallest unit, we first called the granularity, in fact the information granularity is the stratification, the people in the processing complex to question, generally is according to the concrete situation, With the experience of the past or professional background knowledge, the problem is decomposed, from different levels, different angles to analyze the problem. In describing the problem to be solved, it is generally not to use accurate numbers, but to use formal language, rules, etc. to describe.

We are doing a website information architecture, it is best to integrate the problem into the actual life, reduce the user's learning costs, information granulation to users do not have to think, do not have to look for information level, to assist the user's thinking and activities.

At the same time, in the process of information granulation to provide a user's information needs to meet the essence of the insight, to avoid too much detail affecting the user, interfering with the user's thinking. In fact, to highlight the UCD design ideas, the life of some phenomena, organized, abstract to the information structure of the website. Letting users look for information on a website is like living in a situation. Don't feel depressed, nervous. Even if there is repression, tension can also provide a step to allow users to ease user pressure.

Let's look at the design of the information architecture under the navigation Web site:

This is a navigation site of the game Channel classification, divided into online games, web games, ... Associated with the game's "perimeter", the top of the alphabet index, good use of popular user loyalty to the game, most users play a game will play for a long time, remember the name of the game is very simple, through the index of the game name into the corresponding game site. For example, to find the three kill, this game is very popular, directly can be found in the leisure competition in the three killed.

Red box inside the link is for the content of the game to set, for the following user guidelines laid the foundation for the next time, directly through the theme of the red box to find the target game, reduce user burden.

Information granular to games – game classification – topic categories-game names, or directly find game names and links in the alphabetical index.

If the classification directly according to the topic classification, no alphabetical index, in now thousands of games inside to find their favorite game, will undoubtedly increase the cost of user retrieval.

Also speaking of information-type Web site's information granulation problem, look at the following navigation settings:

News channels under the classification of domestic, foreign, pictures and other news channels, "social" sub channel has: Social commentary, social Vientiane ... This is the bottom level of the information.

The information in the Web site according to user needs, according to the similarity of clustering, the satisfaction value of similar information gathered into the same category, in the classification of information sorting selection for information organization. In other words, it is the information architecture problem from the user needs to retrieve the underlying information into the classification of the reverse summary.

To be continued ....

Source: http://www.webiwen.com/archives/67