Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Book Review

“The metaphors we use constantly in our everyday language profoundly influence what we do, because they shape our understanding. [It is said] that metaphors are pervasive because they reflect how we think, perhaps embodying deeply unconscious archetypes of personality and vision. When we change metaphors, therefore, we change how we think about things. Because metaphors can guide our imagination about new invention [or profession] they influence what it can be even before it exists.”
– Mark Stefik

The first edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville, was regarded by many as a groundbreaking book on the relatively new field of information architecture. Also known as the polar bear book (for the animal that O'Reilly Publishing featured on the cover), it has been the go-to resource for students, teachers, and professionals looking for an education in website design and construction. The original 226-page tome has grown into the more-than-500-page behemoth that is this newly released third edition.

What will I learn?

While this book caters to people working on larger websites and large groupings of data, it can also be useful to professionals working on small and mid-size websites, as much of the emphasis is on real world use and implementation of information architecture for websites.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web gives an overview of an information architecture (IA) system before quickly getting down and dirty with organization, labeling, navigation, searching, and browsing (including advanced browsing). It will help you make websites that are easy to use, and do not frustrate users who attempt to navigate and interact with the site.

The authors, both considered the founders of the field, guide us through an introduction to IA, why it is necessary, and how it is practiced in the real world. The end of the first section of the book contains lessons on the effects of good IA on user behavior, and on the usability of a website.

“People have been developing information architecture ever since a stylus was first applied to a clay tablet. All information systems have an architecture, planned or otherwise. Books for example, have sequential numbered pagination, move top-to-bottom and left-to-right, use title pages, table of contents, and back-of-the-book indices. Theses are all architectural conventions that we take for granted. But, their acceptance took decades after Gutenberg’s revolution.”
– Louis Rosenfeld
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

Part Two of the book covers the principles of IA, and includes organization systems, labeling systems (and how to design them), navigation systems, search systems, thesauri, controlled vocabularies, and metadata.

For those interested in the real world application of information architecture, the case studies, report excerpts, and other examples of deliverables will provide groundwork for your own reports. These sorts of real world examples and stories make up the second half of the book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed that many of them were not updated for this edition, and I was sometimes left wondering if the knowledge gleaned from the travails of the information architects on those projects is still applicable given all the changes that have happened over the past 5 years. 

What's new?

With this new edition, Rosenfeld and Morville have improved and updated a wonderful resource. Despite a buzzword-laden pitch: "In this post-Ajaxian Web 2.0 world of wikis, folksonomies, and mash-ups, well-planned information architecture has never been more essential," (is it me, or did someone just drop a steaming marketing turd?) this book comprehensively covers the fundamentals and attempts to touch on every nook and cranny of the information architecture world as it relates to the web.

The selling points of the publisher's description feel rather overstated when the tagging (which, as a Gather member, you have been using) mentioned is tacked on the end of Chapter 7, paultry at best—and takes up little more than two pages—but Chapter 8 comes as quite a nice payoff. It's devoted to searching, it's the longest chapter in the book, and it comprises an amazing discussion on methods and types of searching, which can help with the project or content you are working on right now.

Throughout the book, updated examples and screenshots prevent the content from feeling dated, and the authors updated the book by incorporating information on new navigational and information systems that have appeared recently, such as tag clouds and folksonomies. Unfortunately, they shy away from making any judgments or teaching proper or improper use of these new methods and techniques.

Should I get it?

Though this volume is an excellent primer on information architecture and its practice, it can also serve as a reference. As the lines between information architecture, interaction design, usability, and other practices blur, this is also an excellent book for allowing experts in usability, design, development, and other specialties to jump the fence and peer around.

If you work on a company website, even strictly as a content contributor, you need this book (although if you already have the second edition, you could easily get by without it). While this book caters to people working on larger websites and large groupings of data, it can also be useful to professionals working on small and mid-size websites, as much of the emphasis is on real world use and implementation of information architecture for websites.

If you're looking to sell information architecture to the decision-makers in a company, Part One of the book will offer you compelling arguments and some nicely convincing stories. If you need to gain some knowledge of information architecture yourself, Part Two will provide a launching pad. It introduces principles that can help you recognize when a project you are currently working on might benefit from the eye of someone acting as an information architect.

Summary

This new edition brings a valuable resource up to date and offers helpful thoughts and lessons along the way. It also emphatically proves that information architecture, both as a profession and as a field, is far from mature and still has much to achieve.

As the critical mass of information produced by humans grows by exabytes each year, so does the need to be able to find things within that information, making this book an essential addition to your tech bookshelf.

More Resources on Information Architecture

But the best way to learn about IA (other than just diving in) is to hang around with other information architects.  Here are two generally painless ways to do that:

1)  Join the Information Architecture Institute.  It's the professional association for IAs, with about 1,000 members in about 60 countries.  It's not expensive to join, and among its various benefits is a high signal-to-noise moderated discussion list.

2)  Attend the annual Information Architecture Summit.  Sponsored by ASIS&T, the Summit is the field's annual conference.  It takes place in February or March; this year, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA March 22-26.  Typically drawing 400-500 attendees, it's large enough to support an excellent varied program, yet small enough to be an excellent place to network and socialize.

3)    I have created a list of articles I have written about Information Architecture and the design of complex information systems, which can be found here on Gather.

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Note: Will Evans is a software information architect for a risk modeling software company in Boston. Previously he was the information architect responsible for designing the Gather user experience. He has published articles about Information Architecture, User Experience, and Interaction Design. He has taught User Centered Design and Building Usable Enterprise Architectures to both small and large corporate audiences.

He enjoys publishing his musings, ideas, poetry and pre-Simulationist and post-modern critiques of modern culture and aesthetics. He drinks way to much coffee and needs more sleep but is really trying to change that.