Week 1

February 7, 2002

Topics Covered: Brief Introduction to the course; class policies & expectations; late policy for homework; required books overview; hand out syllabus (PFD - version 2- 1/9/02).

Homework: Find three definitions of Information Architecture (hint: they're probably not in the required texts). They should be different than the ones I refer to in class; one can be your own, but the other two must be referenced (name/author, date, URL or book title).

Reading: Webmonkey Information Architecure Tutorial (all lessons)

Week 2

February 14, 2002

Topics Covered: Students to introduce themselves; course overview; discussion of Webmonkey article; What is IA? Who does it?; the family tree of IA; professional & academic pathways (HCI, LIS, Cognitive Psych); the dance of form and function (uncle Jakob's waltz).

Homework: Build a site map of your project web site or personal web site (you have built or want to build). This does not need to be terribly complicated, a site map representing ten or so pages would be a good number.

Reading: Nielsen Chapter 1; Krug Chapter 1

Week 3

February 21, 2002

Topics Covered:Development Team Roles & Responsibilities; Typical Web Development process—a broad overview. Timeline of a development process. Competitive Analysis & Best in Class of chosen Web site. Introduction of Mock Project.

Mock Project Description: You have been hired by a small (2-10 person) Web development company to be the Information Architect for the development of their Web site. The company is looking for clients with projects that span anywhere from $5,000 to $75,000. You can choose the focus of the business, and thus the audience, for this company: be it Silicon Valley tech companies, local non-profits, educational organizations, biotech, etc. Many of the homework assignments for this class will be based around typical IA deliverables for a project of this size.

Samples for this evening's class:

• sample project schedule(PDF 24K)
• sample competitive analysis guidelines(PDF 15K)
• sample competitive analysis - rough(PDF 7K)
• sample competitive analysis - formal (PDF 19K)
• sample competitive analysis - Dell(PDF 9K)
• JJG.net's elements of user experience(PDF 18K)

Homework: Competitive Analysis for mock project—find other companies that provide similar services and see what they do on their web sites. You can begin with the list of companies on the SC-IA web site, which has a link to a much larger list of California Web Development companies. Analyze at least three of these competitors. Some of the samples above will be good starting points for the types of questions you should be asking yourself while doing the homework, as well as structure and style of the deliverable. Please write at least 1/2 page per site , but no more than one page, double-spaced, per competitor.

• Figure out what kind of audience they are targeting.
• Are they accomplishing the task of reaching them?
• What kind of messaging are they using?
• How does the design, layout, graphics, and copy fail or accomplish the site's communication goals?

Reading: Nielsen Chapter 2

Week 4

February 28, 2002

Topics Covered: Designer guest lecture; Jacki Sterner, a contract designer, will join us to discuss the relationship between IA and Design roles on many web development projects.

Homework: None

Reading: Nielsen Chapter 4

Week 5

March 7, 2002

Topics Covered: Target Audience Development; Ethnographic research; samples of Personas.

Samples for this evening's class:

• sample personas - web app (PDF 121K)
• sample personas - software (PDF 86K)

Homework: Build at least two Personas/User Profiles for your chosen project. These should be built upon the audiences you identified in your Competitive Analysis work. If you only have one audience identified, remember that the sites you chose might not just be looking for clients, but also for new employees, contractors, or business partners.

Reading: Nielsen Chapter 3; Cooper: Perfecting Your Personas

Week 6

March 14, 2002

Topics Covered: In-class survey; site mapping & tools (ref. guest lecture notes); Inspiration demo.

Samples for this evening's class:

• Sample Sitemap (PDF 16K)
• HP PDI Sitemap (PDF 19K)
• Q Site Flow (PDF 21K)

Homework: Build a site map/architecture of an existing site (be it a site for the Mock project or for any other project). It's best if you do it on a project you have spent some time on, and especially one with some of the other homework applied to it).

Reading: Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics; How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

Week 7

March 21, 2002

Topics Covered: Heuristics & Usability 'standards'; Usability audit and what to look for; in-class walk-through of a site audit.

Samples for this evening's class:

• Sample Audit (PDF 179K)
• Q Site Audit (PDF 329K)
• Q Excel Working File (XLS 31K - you may have to download the link, instead of simply clicking on it)

Homework: Usability Audit of an existing site or ecommerce experience. You can, of course, use a site you have already done the competitive analysis on. When doing the work, you may want to start with the spreadsheet—walking through the site and noting violations/comments you find. They all don't have to have Nielsen's Heuristics referenced to each one of your comments. You do not have to rank your violations.

Your homework should be about two pages of violations, and about two pages single-spaced of recommendations. Please see the samples above.

Shopping experiences you could use:

• amazon.com
• half.com
• ebay.com

Reading: Nielsen Chapter 5

Week 8

March 28, 2002

Topics Covered: Intranet Development Guest Lecture; Michael Barnes of The Barnes Group will join us for a lecture on intranet development and will discuss some projects he has worked on.

Homework: None

Reading: Nielsen Chapter 6

Week 9

April 4, 2002

Mid Term written and due by midnight Saturday, April 7

Scott will be in rm 518 (our classroom) 7:15pm – 8:00pm.

Homework: None

Reading: None

Week 10

April 11, 2002

Topics Covered: Wire framing; intro to paper prototyping; project samples; content map sample

• Ingredients List sample(PDF 7K)
• EN wireframes (PDF 66K)
• Newco wireframe(PDF 41K)
• Insurance wireframes(PDF 112K)
• IS wireframes(PDF 27K)

Homework: Build a wire frame of a page of your chosen site or Web app (please read my note on choosing a page to wire frame). This can be a site you are working on for any class, as long as you tell me, in a written paragraph, what the site's purpose is.

Reading: Krug Chapters 6, 7

Week 11

April 18, 2002

Topics Covered: Prototyping; review of student's wire frame homework.

Homework: Build a paper or HTML prototype for your chosen site. Build at least ten to fifteen pages of the site, include elements that will be in the final site, include internal links, FPO images (i.e. For Placement Only—they're not the finals, only place-holders), text (mostly greek, but instructions, if needed, may be needed for testing).

Remember: when building your prototype, think about what you're going to test. Are you testing navigational links and their ease of use? Is instructional copy understandable? Can users accomlish a specific task or set of tasks? You don't have to choose all of these, but focusing your testing goals (from the goals of the overall project) will help you focus how much to build out for your prototype.

Reading: Krug Chapters 8, 9

Week 12

April 25, 2002

Topics Covered: Dynamic Content Possibilities Guest Lecture; Geoff Caras, President of The Igneous Group will present and discuss some projects he has worked on. He will show us many possibilities for the use of dynamic content and dynamic web pages.

Homework: None

Reading: Krug Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5

Week 13

May 2, 2002

Topics Covered: User testing—preparation; review of student paper prototypes

Samples for this evening's class:

• User Testing - Profiles(PDF 11K)
• User Testing - Scenarios(PDF 11K)
• User Testing - Script, Exit, Survey(PDF 15K)

Homework: Put together a user testing process/protocol for your prototype—including testing goals, user profiles, scenarios, and testing script. Document the questions you want to ask your users, what order you want them in, etc.

Reading: Krug Chapters 10, 11

Week 14

May 9, 2002

Topics Covered: In-class round(s) of user testing, with most people taking notes, then discuss; We will be splitting up and testing each other's prototypes, using the protocol you wrote up last week

Samples for this evening's class:

• User Testing - Formal Report(PDF 15K)

Homework: Produce a user testing report based on your observations after conducting three to five user tests with your prototype and testing protocol.

Reading: None

Week 15

May 16, 2002

Topics Covered: User Testing Report presentation and discussion by students

Homework: None

Reading: None

Week 16

May 23, 2002

Final Exam (take home)

No class today. Final is due by Noon, May 29^th, no exceptions.

Scott will be in rm 518 (our classroom) 7:15pm – 8:00pm