Syllabus // SI 658 Information Architecture

Winter Semester 2008

Course Overview

Librarians have been pioneering the practices and developing the core tools of information architecture (IA) for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. And while it's true that there is no one official certification process or academic program for IA, an ALA- accredited library and/or information science degree continues to be one of the key credentials for IA practitioners.

The textbook for the course was written by two librarians who emerged from SI (then known as SILS) during the advent of the Web, and like them we'll proceed into a world of online information and design and strategy from an unabashedly L/IS perspective.

Course Goals

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Locate today's IA within the broader context of librarianship.
• Employ heuristics and apply core principles of IA in critiques and redesigns of websites.
• Understand issues and disciplines adjacent to or intertwingled with IA such as usability, user experience (UX), interaction design (IxD), search engine/web site optimization (SEO/WSO)
• Discuss and apply research from the Stanford Web Credibility project.
• Create a report describing IA strategy and recommendations for web site design, accompanied by standard IA deliverables such as of wireframes, blueprints and analytics findings.

Course Content

• History of information architecture
• Core "Polar Bear IA" stuff: content, context, and users
• Web Credibility, and how to design for it
• Contextual inquiry, discovery, research
• Organization structures, labeling and taxonomies
• Interaction and Interface design
• Deliverables (blueprints, wireframes, task-flows)
• Careers in IA

Assignments

• Presentation 1: Students will team-up (teams of 2 or 3) to present either a research report or a book report (30 mins duration - pass/fail). 20% of course grade. See the additional details for completing this assignment.


• Presentation 2: Students will team-up with a final project partner (teams of 2) to present a credibility critique of their project/client (15 mins duration - pass/fail). 20% of course grade. Detailed requirements coming soon.


• Final Project: Students will co-author a Website Strategy Report deliverable (10-20 pages), and will co-present a high level overview of their team's/report's findings during the last class session (10 mins duration). 60% percent of course grade. Detailed requirements coming soon.

Course Policies

Presentations

Final Project

Grading

• 101% and higher = A+
• 95%-100% = A
• 90% - 94% = A-
• 85% - 89% = B+
• 80% - 84% = B
• 75% - 79% = B-
• 70% - 74% = C+
• 65% - 69% = C
• 0% - 64% = F

Policy on Late Work

Extensions for research report or book report presentation assignments will only be granted in cases where the team needing an extension negotiates a "trade" with another group for their timeslot. If your partner bails on you, you become responsible for presenting their content on their behalf(!).

Extensions for the final project deliverable may be granted in extreme cases. The more notice you provide of the reason for and duration of the extension, the better.

Accommodations

Please contact the instructor if you require special accommodations due to learning disabilities, religious practices, physical requirements, medical needs, or any other reasons.

Academic Integrity

Please note that all work for this class is assumed to be your own. Submitting any final work that is not your own or failure to document the words or ideas of others is a violation of academic integrity. Failure to document sources-including distinctive language, phrases, or ideas-is plagiarism, and can result in serious consequences including failure on the assignment, failure in the course, or disciplinary action by the University. For additional information about plagiarism, see the "Academic and Professional Integrity Policy Statement" in the SI Master's Student Handbook and Appendix B of the Rackham Graduate Student Handbook.