Case Studies
-
Adventures in Low Fidelity: Designing Search for Egreetings
by Chris Farnum | [7 comments]
One of the dirty little secrets about being an information architect is that most of us only bat .500 at best. We labor and agonize over making recommendations and designing information architectures that are supposed to change the world, but many of our designs never see the light of day. Rather than moan about why my designs were not implemented, I want to share my story. more...
-
Are We There Yet?
by Christina Wodtke | [18 comments]
It's true: even simple projects get messy. Christina Wodtke comes clean on Swiss Army knives, the writing on the wall, and the untidy glory of the Boxes and Arrows redesign contest. more...
-
Blasting the Myth of the Fold
by Milissa Tarquini | [50 comments]
The need to cram as much into the top few inches of any interface has become nearly branded on the design psyche over the years. Milissa Tarquini considers how the myth of the fold does everyone involved a great disservice. more...
-
Challenging the Status Quo: Audi Redesigned
by James Kalbach | [19 comments]
In September 2000, Razorfish, Germany was tasked to redesign the main websites for Audi. In the process they explored workgroup software, utilized technology to support the brand ideals and challenged the status quo of current web navigation thinking by proposing a right handed navigation system. more...
-
Comics for Consumer Communication
by Rahel Anne Bailie | [3 comments]
Though popular in the development process, designers can use comics for communication to consumers as well. Rahel Anne Bailie digs into her past to show us how she has used comics in the past in the hope that we can utilize them with a wider audience. more...
-
Enterprise IA Methodologies:
by James Robertson | [12 comments]
Information architects working within enterprises are confronted by unique challenges, relating to organisational culture, business processes, and internal politics. James Robertson pulls the strands of situational spaghetti to get to the root of the project. more...
-
Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study
by Erin Malone and Matt Leacock and Chanel Wheeler | [17 comments]
The Yahoo! platform design team shares their process for defining and designing a pattern and standards library, the process for defining the requirements of the repository and the process for defining the lifecycle of a pattern. more...
-
It Seemed Like The Thing To Do At The Time
by Joe Lamantia | [19 comments]
Joe Lamantia shares three stories of failure and how changing your self-definition can open the way to continued success. (Part 1 in the Lessons From Failure series.) more...
-
Journeys, Needs, and Trust: A Volkswagen Case Study
by Jason Hobbs | [2 comments]
How do you establish trust and meaning for a dedicated and passionate audience, and do it across all media? Jason Hobbs gives a tour of creating a website for Volkswagen. more...
-
Lessons From Failure (Series Introduction)
by Christian Crumlish | [1 comment]
Christian Crumlish introduces a series on the messy realities and the honest lessons of failure. Read on to see how you can participate. more...
-
Modeling the Creative Organization
by Erin Malone | [5 comments]
A few months ago, on the cusp of another reorganization, my boss challenged me to present ideas about how my group should be organized. The challenge: “If you could organize the group in whatever way you wanted, what would you recommend doing?” Everyone who has ever been a manager longs to hear those words. more...
-
MSWeb: An Enterprise Intranet #1
by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld | [16 comments]
We’re please to bring you the first of two excerpts from upcoming second editon of “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.” The excerpts look at MSWeb, which the authors say provides a glimpse of what most intranets will be doing in three to five years. more...
-
MSWeb: An Enterprise Intranet #2
by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld | [1 comment]
In our second excerpt from the newly-released second editon of “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.” the authors look at how the MSWeb team succeeded at spreading its gospel through a huge organization like Microsoft when similar efforts at smaller companies often fail. more...
-
Re-Architecting PeopleSoft from the Top Down
by Janice Fraser | [3 comments]
This follow-up to Chiara Fox’s case study on bottom-up efforts to unify PeopleSoft’s various sites looks at how to create a system that not only reflects content patterns, but also supports user needs and delivers on important business objectives. more...
-
Re-architecting PeopleSoft.com from the bottom-up
by Chiara Fox | [8 comments]
When PeopleSoft decided to unify its websites, the information architects involved used bottom-up techniques to make sense of the enormous number of different pieces of content. more...
-
SchwabLearning.org: A Case Study
by Jeanene Landers Steinberg | [8 comments]
One nonprofit + two web agencies + nine months = SchwabLearning.org. Yes, that was the formula to launch our Web site, and I am one of the sole survivors to tell you about it. In 1999, after eleven years of serving San Francisco Bay Area parents and educators through direct services and outreach, we realized that we could effect greater change if we expanded our web presence. This is the story of our redesign process. more...
-
Straight from the Horse's Mouth with Livia Labate and Austin Govella
by Christina Wodtke and Bill Wetherell | [4 comments]
Christina talks with Livia Labate and Austin Govella about the UX practice in Comcast and how they have created an environment where they are treated as colleagues rather than a service organization. (Part 1 of a series) more...
-
Taking the "You" Out of User: My Experience Using Personas
by Meg Hourihan | [15 comments]
Meg Hourihan, co-founder of Pyra - the company behind Blogger, shares her team's experience in the discovery of Alan Cooper and the use of personas. Through their practical application, she tells the tale of how a product cycle was turned on its ear as the team discovered they weren't anything like their users. more...
-
The ABCs of the BBC: A Case Study and Checklist
by Helen Lippell | [3 comments]
Can A-Z indexes hold their own against other popular navigational elements like search and sitemaps? Helen Lippell guides us through how the BBC online, a site with over two million pages, handled their own A-Z index. more...
-
The Designers' Outpost: Capturing and Interacting with Design History
by Scott Klemmer | [1 comment]
In a high-tech field like web design, we might expect to find computer-savvy practitioners accomplishing all their work with the click of the mouse and a stroke of the keyboard. However, in our studies of the early stages of web design, we found that good ol' pens, paper, walls, and tables were the primary creative tools. more...