organizing content

Goals: After this session, the web developer should begin to think critically about the needs of the site's audience, the type of site the developer wishes to produce and how best to organize the content of the site. The goal of this session is to define the site's intended audience and begin to organize the content of the site.

  1. Mission Statement
  2. Audience
  3. Site Purpose & Organization
  4. Information Chunking
  5. File Naming
  6. Exercise

mission statements

Before thinking about design, layout, or content, the goals of the site shouhld be defined. What should the site accomplish?

The Yale Style Manual provides a good list of questions to help define these goals:

  1. What is the mission of the organization?
  2. How will creating a web site support the mission?
  3. What are the immediate goals for the site?
  4. What are the long-term goals for the site?
  5. What web-related strategies will be used to achieve those goals?
  6. How will the success of the site be measured?

(Web Style Guide, Yale University. http://www.webstyleguide.com)

audience

To design an effective web site, it is important to know who the audience is and what their needs are. The needs of the audience should be the determining factor for all design decisions, i.e., the site structure, page layout, colors, graphic design, style and navigation. Without a firm grasp of the audience, making informed decisions will be impossible. A designer should never follow the "because I like it" rationale.

site purpose and organization

The purpose of the site should be tied to the site goals and audience. This purpose draws together what the developer wants to accomplish and what the user needs. Site purpose defines the best way to connect and present the information of the site.

The Web Style Guide defines four themes or purposes for a site. Keep in mind that all sites do not fit into only one category. However, well-organized sites usually fit into one or more of the following categories:

  1. Training
  2. Teaching
  3. Self-Education
  4. Reference

venn diagram showing relationship betwen user contact time and site purpose
Site Purpose and Organization Structure
Copyright Lynch & Horton, 1997. Yale University
http://www.webstyleguide.com

training

Training sites are meant to guide a user through some sort of process. The user experience is carefully controlled through a series of linear links. Due to the linear organization, which requires a user to digest information in a steady stream, information is brief on each page. Links to other pages and sites are limited and only used to supplement the material being presented. Training sites follow a: step1 - step 2 - step 3, structure.

training structure - linear narrative
Training Structure

Examples:

Both of these sites are very linear. Information is presented in a clear and concise manner. There are few, if any, external links.

teaching

Unlike a training site, where users are lead down a predefined path, the teaching site is more diverse with regard to user needs. A teaching site usually has a basic introductory page, followed by links to relevant information. Information on a teaching site is more detailed than a training site. This is due to the fact that the user is free to navigate through this content freely at any time. Internal and external links are provided in the context of the secondary pages. Avoid embedding links within the content, particularly if it is an external link. These links make reading and learning fragmented. Pages should be formatted keeping in mind that users will want to print out content. Avoid breaking content into too many pages.

teaching structure - organized in discrete groups
Teaching Structure

Examples:

self-education

Self-education sites are designed to enable individuals to learn one or more topics in a flexible and independent manner. Since people learn in different ways and come to the site with many different levels of skills, these site are designed to flow from point to point. At each point, relevant links and connections are provided. If users need them, they are there. If they don't, they can be ignored. Good site navigation is needed, as is a site map of the resources a user can expect to find. People may spend good amounts of time reading the screen on these sites. Page layout which is clear and clean is essential. Pages should also be designed for printing.

Examples:

  • Web Monkey
    (http://www.webmonkey.com/)
  • Learn2
    (http://www.learn2.com/learn2_everyday.asp)

reference

Reference sites don't really define a user path as much as they present vast amounts of information in an organized manner. Here, the structure is more of a wheel, sending users to different areas of the web. There is little relationship between content sections, so navigation within the site is not as important. A navigation structure that leads users to major content areas is more than adequate. Pages should be formatted keeping in mind the purpose of the page. If pages have series of links, keep text to a minimum, providing only a brief explanation of what the user may find. If pages contain content which will be printed and/or downloaded, format pages to be easily read with adequate paragraph breaks.

Examples:

 

information chunking

Web sites, no matter what the purpose, have information. The manner in which information is organized and presented is critical to the success of the site. Before any major design or site layout is started, a designer should list all of information to be presented on the site. The next task is to chunk that information into reasonable units. To do this, there are four structural issues to take into account:

  1. Hierarchy
  2. Relationship
  3. Function
  4. Growth

hierarchy

All sites require a hierarchy of importance, if only to determine basic navigation structures for the user. Most "chunks" of information can and should be ranked in order of importance, and organized by the degree of interrelationship among units. Once a logical set of priorities has been determined, it is possible to build a hierarchy from the most important or most general concepts, down to the most specific or optional topics. Regardless of the site structure, hierarchical sites move the user from the most general overview, through sub-menus and content pages that become increasingly more specific.

hierarhical sturcture - homepage, submenus, and content
Hierarchical Site Structure

relationship

When confronted with a new and complex information system, users begin to build mental models, and then use these models to assess relationships between topics. This helps users to make guesses as to where to find items they haven't encountered before. The success of a web site as an organization of information will largely be determined by how well the actual organization system matches the user's expectations. An appropriate site organization allows users to make successful predictions about where to find things. Consistent methods of grouping, ordering, labeling, and graphically arranging information allow users to extend their knowledge from pages they have visited to pages they have not yet encountered. If users are mislead with a structure that is not logical (or has no comprehensible structure at all), users will be constantly frustrated by the difficulties of finding their way around.

function

Function relates to how well a site actually works. Good information chunking should present a balanced set of options to the user. Sites with bad chunking become longs lists of links and are usually too shallow. The information in these sites needs to be broken apart into additional categories and levels.

Too Shallow

shallow function - too many options presented

Too Deep

deep structure - too many clicks to get to content

Some sites present only a few options and require the user to click away through several levels to get to the desired information. These sites need to broaden their categories and reduce levels. Good sites provide a reasonable number of choices (around 5 -7) and have few levels (around 3 - 5). Note that these numbers are guidelines. Very large sites may have a need for more.

growth

Growth deals with future expansion of a web site. Information chunks should be designed to predict future needs. For example, the list below can be broken up in the following way:

  • chicken
  • banana
  • steak
  • milk
  • yogurt
  • pork
  • oranges
  • asparagus
  • muffins
  • biscuits
  • cheese
  • carrots

Categories: Vegetables, Fruits, Meat, Dairy, Grain

These categories work pretty well, but what happens when we want to add chocolate cake? Bad chunking would create a category called cake. Good chunking would create a category called Misc., or desserts. Folders should have balance, with similar numbers of pages in each folder. Even the best chunking cannot predict all possible needs, but giving these issues some serious thought will help.

file naming

Prior to the creation of any content, it is best to develop a naming policy for all files. Such a policy will ensure all creators use consistent naming conventions, files are located in the appropriate directories, and files are easily identified by content creators. Use the following criteria for developing file naming policy.

  1. Site Purpose - If the site is designed for a basic level user, avoid creating file names like hrs1299.html. Create user-friendly names like hours.htm Users may have to type file and folder names. Be kind. Avoid using very complex and ambiguous file/folder names.
  2. Site Organization - If the site is very deep, with many folders and sub-folders, it may be important to have folder and file naming which provides the user context. Example: Library/Services/Reserves/renewal.htm More shallow sites may only require folders called images and content.
  3. Server - Each web server has different naming requirements. Different servers use different extensions to tag HTML files. Some use .htm and others use .html. UNIX-based web servers, for example, have case sensitive file naming. Avoid using spaces and special symbols in file names. Some servers will not be able to handle them.

advance to exercise