Mockup Website

 

Here you can read about my evaluation in a social web environment and IA feature description

IA Feature Description

The basis of the mockup site is to create it with elements taken from Youtube (www.youtube.com) as we consistently use Youtube all the time with over 1 billion users visit the site per month and 72 hours of footage upload onto Youtube every minute. With this information and using it to my advantage, the site would give people who access it the opportunity to watch videos that other people put up and review the tool evaluation that’s been linked to the home page of the site. Before designing my mockup, I wanted to do some research in creating a website with a good Information Architecture structure and I came across a website that gave me the information that I used to design my mockup website. On the website (http://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-10-ia-mistakes/) which the page is written by Jakob Nielsen Nielsen, he writes about ten mistakes to avoid when creating a website.

Jakob Nielsen talks about how one of the most common mistakes that designers do is “treat a site like one big swamp with no organizing principle for individual items.

We all head to Google or a different search engine when we are trying to find something. Jakob Nielsen describes it as “arriving on a page from a search is like parachuting into a city. Hopefully, if you want to go to Paris, you’ll land there rather than in Amsterdam”. What Jakob Nielsen means by this is that if your trying to find something via search engines, you will find it instantly. He writes on another webpage that we start at a search engine 88% of the time (http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-engines-become-answer-engines/) (for me, when I open my internet program I have my home page as Google).

Jakob Nielsen writes that it is recommended that websites have a series of categories that each link to their own “landing page” that gives peoples a section overview. Sometimes a website leaves out the overview page and simply offers links to lead directly to individual pages within a section. Now as my webpage is only a one page site, I don’t have to think about putting an overview page as my first webpage of my site.

One of the best things about shopping online is that an item that you are looking for is in multiple locations at the same time which is different for items in the real world when we don’t know if a shop has a particular item you are looking for.

A key element for a website is to design it and as you are designing it, think about it in 5 years’ time with the questions:

As my webpage is only a one page website, I don’t have to think about the future but if I was designing a website, I would be thinking of the future.

The worst mistake to commit when designing at website is to have invisible navigation options. If someone accessing the site and can’t see any navigation, then it might as well not exist as Jakob Nielsen says that’s its “nearly as bad as no navigation”. This mistake is a rare mistake to make but can be committed without thinking. My site has a navigation link to takes the user to a document that I have linked to the homepage

There is one thing that people who access websites despise and those uncontrollable navigation elements such as anything that moves and bounces and distracts as from accessing its webpage. As much as it may look cool to have elements of your website to move, simple is always better as it gives people the chance to read any information you have on your site when it’s not moving

Jakob Nielsen writes on the webpage that navigation on a website is there to help users and not be a puzzle to those who access the website. People who access it should be able to understand it really quickly. For my site, I like to keep it simple so if anyone would go onto the page, they can move around smoothly.

Jakob Nielsen went to a seminar on navigation design which covers 25 different website navigation techniques. Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages but one thing Jakob Nielsen makes clear is that each navigation technique has its place on certain types of websites. But if a website has all 25 navigation techniques, the website will be a big mess. For my site, I keep my navigations simple as I am only got a link that goes to two documents.

Another mistake that website designers have to avoid committing is creating a site that has made up their own terminology for labels and other navigation choices. When designers do this, they don’t just ruin the website they designed but also hurts when people are trying to search for something but can’t find anything thanks to the website they are on has labels and other navigation choices with their own terminology. Jakob Nielsen writes that it is better to use old words than use new words in the English language. This gives people who access the site a better chance in finding what they are looking for.

 

IA Tools

An IA Tool that we constantly use every day is search engines. This tool has changed how we find information, do research, shopping online, entertaining ourselves with sites like Youtube and connecting with others via social media. To make it easier for us as internet users to find these sites easier is to find them through a search engine. They have become a connecting force and guide to our everyday life. Today, the number one search engine we use consistently is Google which was created as a search engine in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, back then the search engine was called BackRub and was operated on the Stanford servers for the students to use which used up too much bandwidth. They then created a new name for their search engine and called it “Google” which is a play on word from “googol” which is a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name they chose their search engine from was the base of their mission to organise an infinite amount of information on the web. Google wasn’t the first search engine to be created by Stanford students. In 1994, Jerry Wang and David Filo created Yahoo which was originally an internet bookmark list and directory of interesting sites (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/search-engine-history/13152/) . In 2000, Yahoo and Google partner up and they agreed on using Google to power their search engine. From this Yahoo becomes Google’s competitor and Google becomes a brand that everyone knows worldwide. Google then split away from Yahoo and in 2006; Google acquires Youtube which is now the 2nd most used search property in the world. Today, Google has a grip of 70% of the search engine market. As for Yahoo, they have joined up with Microsoft until 2016 to challenge Google (http://www.google.com.au/about/company/history/) . Today, they are not the only search engines on the World Wide Web; they are many search engines to be used depending on what information you are looking for. There is a site called TeachThought and in 2012, they wrote on their website 100 search engines for academic research (http://www.teachthought.com/technology/100-search-engines-for-academic-research/).
Using this IA tool on a website is really handy as it can save you time in having to type back to Google’s search engine (http://www.google.com). This tool will be essential as we all use Google and having a shortcut on a website could work well. The idea is similar to how online shopping website using a search tool to find items that they sell on their website a little easier. The idea in using Google as a search tool on a website is new as its difficult to find websites that has used this idea before. If they haven’t used it before, they should give it a try as it could possibly work. What all sites need to improve on is the information we give to those accessing our website and make it easier for them to navigate to the information they are looking for (http://www.usefulusability.com/8-free-tools-for-good-information-architecture-and-usability/).

References
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/search-engine-history/13152/
http://www.google.com.au/about/company/history/
http://www.teachthought.com/technology/100-search-engines-for-academic-research/
http://www.google.com
http://www.usefulusability.com/8-free-tools-for-good-information-architecture-and-usability/