Pre-conference workshop

Information Architecture: Theory and practice

Donna Maurer

This full day workshop will provide you with a thorough overview and understanding of information architecture theory & practice. It will cover a wide range of IA issues, including an understanding of how it fits into a project, fundamental skills & knowledge required for IA work and current IA issues. It will be theoretical and practical and allow you to immediately apply ideas to your projects.

This workshop will cover:

• What information architecture is and how it relates to other user experience disciplines
• Core IA techniques - analysing content, conducting user research, card sorting and more
• Core IA theories - classification, categorization, metadata & labeling
• IA structures - hierarchies, database and other structures
• Designing navigation & page layouts
• Putting it together in an IA project
• Current issues in IA

The workshop will be at the level of an ‘advanced intro’, covering the basics and also allowing exploration of key challenges and issues. The format is a combination of short lectures, group discussion and hands-on activities. Extensive notes and resources will be provided for further personal exploration.

After the workshop, the participants will have:

• An understanding of fundamental IA concepts and issues
• An understanding of processes and techniques often used in an IA project
• Hands-on experience with key techniques
• Shared skills with other practitioners

Target audience:

• Beginners to IA
• People working in related roles who need to know about IA
• Intermediate IAs who have never had formal introduction to the fundamentals.