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Friday, March 02, 2007

Information Structure, Organization, Storage and Retrieval: Information Architecture II

Totally relieved from the hoarse experience the previous week, Ms. Jem came in unexpectedly early on our third meeting. In fact, she was so early that most of the class came in late.

We started with some lectures relating business strategy with information architecture. These two complement each other in a way that a carefully planned business strategy drives in-depth design of information architecture which in turn exposes gaps and infuses innovation in the strategy. Operational effectiveness is necessary for businesses or organization to satisfy the needs of its clients but it is not much to measure the success of its strategy. As stated operational effectiveness is just performing same activities better than rivals perform them. E.g. In a circus parade, a stunt actor jumped into two rings of fire outperforming his rival who could only jumped on a single ring. One of the key lessons learned in BI class is for a business to have a competitive advantage it has to position itself strategically among others- either it performs a totally different set of activities or perform the same activities but in a different way. That is making the elephant jump into the rings of fire J

In continuation of our discussion in Information Architecture, we had this activity critiquing webpages in terms of its informational organization. Although I am somehow accustomed with webpages, this kind of activity caught me off-track because I am not really into critiquing a page particularly focusing on several of its structure. I started making my own webpage when I was in college. I learned my HTML stuff just out of curiosity (webpage design and development was not part of our curriculum). Of course, tools were kind of primitive back then so I contented myself with Notepad and the most ever reliable method of copy-and-paste. Also, there wasn’t much talk about web programming. Internet transactions were basically done through emails. It was only when I graduated that I heard much about ASP, PHP, etc. Unluckily for me, I kinda lost my motivation in learning these web technologies as I was so absorbed with my first job in network administration. But still I am able to come up with a webpage every now and then- the HTML way (with some acquired familiarity in javascripts and animations). The thing is with my limited knowledge in web programming and the likes, but with years of experience in browsing webpages, I’m still able to tell the good ones from the bad ones. My key indicators are its contents and functionalities. When a page even if it’s poorly supported with complexities, as long as it amuses me, or gives me the right information I need, I’d say that it is good. Functionality is secondary as I myself couldn’t come up with a webpage with too much functionality.

Webpages are critical in delivering information. It has to be designed in such a way that it will be relatively uncomplicated for an information provider to give out information and for the information seeker to get information. But it will not be that easy in the near future. The Internet, as we have known it, is a portal of vast information. Information, which in my opinion, will become more of a privilege than of a right- that is, it will be given in a need-to-pay basis. Information will become profitable- those who can pay for it will have access to it, and those who can’t will be sidelined (so much for the right to information). To better blend in with the prepaid culture, I am thinking of a prepaid card where it can get you certain amount of information over the Net depending on the cost denomination of the card. Well, that is just my own way of looking things ahead. In line with its vision to make every possible source of information available online, Google is spending much in acquiring databases, maps, videos/audios, contents, etc. The thing is- will it offer all these information for free?

Anyway, I hope this course will help me further my capabilities and understanding in critiquing a webpage, more especially on the criteria of information structure and organization.