E330 Information Architecture: Project 1
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Project 1
Project 1 is a collaborative project which involves an imaginative redesign of a section of an existing informational web site. Very often, information architects are asked to redesign an information system which already exists. The system may be clumsy, confusing, hard to navigate, aesthetically unappealing, or simply outdated and in need of restructuring. It may lack enough content to interest readers, or provide a great deal of content that is hard for readers to navigate. For this project, students will work in teams to redesign one section of a large corporate web site. In order to make this project succeed, teams will need to break the work into stages. You may work on several stages at the same time (in fact you will probably need to), perhaps by dividing tasks among the team members. There are multiple tasks associated with each stage.
1. You'll need to become very familiar with the web site as it is currently posted and do a site inventory to find out what information is available at the site:
IBM Web Design Guidelines at http://stage.www.ibm.com/ibm/easy/frames.htm. Once you access the main site, click on "Design" in the right-hand column, and then click on "Web Design Guidelines" at the top of the page. Our focus is this section of the main web site.
You will need to be strategic in reviewing what is there in order to develop a fairly complete inventory.
2. You'll need to do some comparison research reviewing and making notes about other sites with a similar purpose or audience. What kind of content is provided? How is it organized? How well is it presented?
3. You need to analyze the potential audiences for the web site and their needs. This involves fieldwork research. You might conduct an email survey of users, do face to face interviews, and/or observe users who are accessing the site to get a sense of how they use the site and their opinions about its content, organization, and design.
4. You need to think through the categories of information, organization, and navigation structure for a proposed redesign of the sites.
5. You need to prepare a final design proposal with a prototype (about 10 web pages) and a two-page rationale for the design.
The Project 1 site inventory and audience analysis is due February 3. The prototype draft with main categories is due February 12, and the final revision is due February 24. To accomplish this large-scale project, teams will need to be very efficient with their time, dividing tasks and making deadlines to make sure the project keeps on track. The idea is not to simply divide up the work and have each team member complete a piece of it, but to coordinate your activities and to learn from each other the skills you need to develop.
All assigned work, including any informal writing, proposals, rough drafts, finished projects, peer critiques, the midterm OLR and final OLR must be completed and submitted on time to receive a passing grade in this course.
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Computer Writing and Research Lab
Division of Rhetoric and Composition
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712