Information Architecture
The goal of information architecture is to make it easy for users to find information on your website. Users may represent multiple audiences, and each audience may perceive the presented content in a different way. Through user research, stakeholder interviews and content auditing, HyperArts identifies how the content on your site should be labeled, organized, navigated and searched.
The information architect is not responsible for the graphic design of your website; an IA develops the information design. You wouldn't consider building a house without a set of architectural plans, so you shouldn't develop a website without information architecture.
Your website's architecture is most clearly reflected in the site's navigation. After the above steps have been taken to determine site architecture, HyperArts tests this architecture by building a wire-frame "click-through," a "design-free" site which consists of simply the navigation — primary, secondary, tertiary, etc. Consider this the "virtual walk-through. Useability testing is done and a final site architecture is determined based on this testing and analysis.
Sean Thomas: HyperArts' Information Architect
Sean Thomas has worked as HyperArts' information architect since 2000. In addition to his day-to-day roles of web production and project management, Sean has specialized in information architecture and usability for clients as varied as wine.com, Bank of America, Concentric Networks and NOCPulse (now part of Red Hat Networks). At Enfos, Sean helped design both the process flow for their web application as well as the actual pages in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
More recently, Sean provided project management, usability direction and presentation layer coding for the ThinkEquity Reserach Library. At Economic & Planning Systems, Sean oversaw the development of an administrative interface for staff to track and update projects on their public site; with the Stupski Foundation, he works with staff to develop and maintain their private intranet through an integration of static pages, Movable Type message categories, bulletin board software and CGI search functionality.
Recent Clients
Consortium on Reading Excellence
When the Consortium on Reading Excellence (CORE) approached HyperArts to redesign their website, our first challenge was recategorizing and simplifying their voluminous content archive. To address this challenge and keep it separate from graphic design development, we first assessed their existing content and then created a wireframe site with our suggestions for simplified categories. By creating a bare-bones, "design-free" site which still retained the clicking and navigation behavior of a normal website, we helped the client focus on reworking their content — which in turn helped us create a design tailored to that content.
ThinkEquity Partners, LLP
The ThinkEquity Research Library is a customer-facing secure application for hosting ThinkEquity's archival research reports. During development, HyperArts identified a need to integrate reports from multiple sources, some with metadata and some without; our UI solution incorporates both standard web navigation for general report categories, as well as search functionality at both the metadata and full-text levels. While keeping the look and feel of the public ThinkEquity site, the resulting web application offers quick overviews of recent reports as well as the ability to easily delve into ThinkEquity's vast analyst library.
