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Title: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville ISBN: 1565922824 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: January, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.87
Rating: 3
Summary: hors d'oeuvre
Comment: In an e-world crowded by a cobweb of sites, one could surely do with some information architecture. This book is the first step toward understanding the importance of IA in the success of a site.
The most endearing part about the book is the fact that the authors have not overlooked the practical difficulties. It's easy to preach theory, it's darned difficult to put it in practice. Thanks to their many years of experience, the authors hand out quite a few useful tips to iron out those real-world wrinkles. In Chapter 3 (Organizing Information), for instance, the authors deal with tackling internal politics of the organization so that the site doesn't reflect "the strong undercurrent of politics."
The authors have kept a very wide spectrum of readers in mind. In their words, "...we wrote this book to be accessible to anyone who has used the World Wide Web more than once or twice." That's the reason why anybody who has anything to do with the Web will find this book helpful. And that's also the reason why those who dream in pixels and drop-down boxes may not get satiated. But then, a good starter is as important as the main course. I'm sure Rosenfeld and Morville are putting together a delectable fare for the main course. I'm waiting. And drooling...
Rating: 5
Summary: A must read for large and small site design
Comment: This book should be essential reading for any person involved in not only large scale site design, but small as well. The concepts they discuss are geared towards companies with 80,000+ pages, but I found myself taking notes on what to improve next time I design a 10+ page site. Don't get this book if you're looking for ideas for the "look" of the site. It doesn't offer any. Instead if gives you ideas on how to increase its functionality, efficiency, and ease of usage -- concepts many of us ignore in our excitement for spinning logos and flaming navbars. Some concepts they discussed were "common sense", but many of them were not, especially when discussing how to organize everyone from the marketing dept. to the artists of a company web site and pre-launch discussion of a site before the designing begins. You'll want this one on the shelf for that next major project.
Rating: 1
Summary: The worst O'Reilly Book I've ever read
Comment: I usually love O'Reilly - I've never bought a book of theirs that I didn't find occasion to go back to for some reason at some point before this book. Most O'Reilly books have info that you can reference when your actually working on a project - this book doesn't even prepare you for discussing the task intellegently. Granted, if this were not an O'Reilly book I would have given it 2 stars, but I have higher expectations from O'Reilly.
An example of what I found incredibly frustrating about the book follows. I expected the section called "Designing Elegant Navigation Systems" (the last section in the chapter "Designing Navigation Systems") to contain advice about what to include in the navigation system and suggestions for designing navigation systems. I got one page of babeling that included sentances like "Based on the hierarchy, you will be able to select key pages (or types of pages) that shoudl be accessible from every other page on the web site." At no point to they suggest what sorts of pages should be accessible. They don't mention the ones that should be obvious: feedback, home, and search; nor do they discuss if or when it's desirable to have one link from each major subsection in the global navigation.
The whole book was disapointing to me, I don't really feel that I learned much of anything on the subject. I knew nothing of the field to start with, so I feel I should have come away from any well written book on the subject with some comprehension of the field.
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Title: Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug ISBN: 0789723107 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 13 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience by Jennifer Fleming, Richard Koman ISBN: 1565923510 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $51.95 |
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Title: Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web by Christina Wodtke ISBN: 0735712506 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 16 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed by Jakob Nielsen, Marie Tahir ISBN: 073571102X Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 05 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: Practical Information Architecture: A Hands-On Approach to Structuring Successful Websites by Eric L. Reiss ISBN: 0201725908 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 09 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.99 |
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