Podcast 36: Developing your site structure
Posted in Podcast on: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 by Paul Boag
In this week’s show, Paul gets depressed about the state of online accessibility, we debate the virtues of user testing design and discuss the basics of creating a good structure for your site.
Check out Paul’s book recommendations
Developing your site structure
Organising the content of your site into a logical, user friendly structure is fundamental to its success. In this week’s show Paul and Marcus look at how to go about this process and some of the pitfalls you should avoid.
There is nothing particularly high tech about creating a good information architecture. The best place to start is by making a list of all of the content your site needs to cover. Print out each item on a separate piece of paper and start organising them together into logical groupings. It really is as simple as that.
Of course, even better than you organising the content into logical sections, is getting your users to do it for you. That is where card sorting comes in. In the podcast we discuss card sorting in more depth but most of what is cover can be found in the boagworld article on card sorting.
The conversation moves on to discuss the common mistakes made by those creating a site structure. Most of the points discussed are covered by Louis Rosenfeld’s excellent article: "Seven Pitfalls to Avoid in Information Architecture" so we recommend you take the time to read it.
Question time: Can you user test design?
In last week’s show Andy Budd and Paul took slightly different positions over whether it is possible to user test design work. In this week’s show Paul explains how he believes user testing can be beneficial to the design process, allowing for the resolution of design differences and enabling the testing of emotional responses to design.
Techno-buster: Different server side languages
The vast majority of the clever functionality we see on websites today is created through the use of "sever side languages". These programming languages allow a variety of functionality from content management systems to ecommerce sites. However with so many different languages out there it can all seem incredibly confusing. In this podcast Paul and Marcus explains how the average website owner shouldn’t have to make decisions about programming languages, but rather this is the responsibility of the developer. Different languages have different pros and cons, however in most cases it is down to personal preference. However, make sure that your website server supports your chosen language before development begins.
The state of web accessibility
Following Joe Clark’s hard sitting article about the WCAG 2.0 on the List Apart website, there has been much debate about the state of web accessibility. Paul and Marcus share some of their concerns and comment on the Web Standards Project response to Joe’s article.
28 Comments
Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email
I hope someone or some form of private group can get us a good form of standardization set up – this industry has been close in kin to a loose cannon for too long. I am all for the free spirit of the internet, but sometimes that can work against us, this being one case in point.
.stm is short for .SHTML i think from http://www.filext.com
Re the converstion on Wcag2 – have you come across the presentation below:
http://webstandardsgroup.org/audio/mp3/sydney-060407-1.mp3
This gives a second opinion but basically seems to come to the same sort of conclusions as the article on list appart and acts as a call to arms to the web design community to make their feelings known to W3C.
I still disagree with Paul about the right of clients to question the design of a site. I agree that there is a line to be drawn but I think you are going too far to be realistic. I had a meeting with a client and their web designer last week to discuss a site in progress and Im afraid we had to say: “That font is too small, that line shouldn’t be there, that section needs images and that colour simply doesn’t work.” We tried other methods but now its either that or accept a site that the client doesn’t like the look of and at the end of the day they are paying the bill.
Quick story re designers: in a previous job I worked in a team on a website for a large governement organisation in a foreign country. When our designer presented his draft designs to the internal team we all agreed that overall the design was good but pointed out that the colours on the national flag of the country were wrong. “I Know, ” said the designer, “but their colours didn’t look right in the design so I changed them.”
Hi David,
what did you think I was saying in the podcast? I wasnt suggesting that a client didnt have the right to comment on the design, I said a balance had to be struck and that the best way to resolve differences is through testing against real users. Take your example, the font might be too small on your monitor and with your website but that doesnt mean it is neccessarily the same for the end user. Also colour in particular is a HUGELY subjective issue. What makes the client anymore capable of deciding on what colours work than the designer? If anything they are less qualified to comment. If they have concerns they should test it.
Hi Paul,
I agree a balance has to be struck and that design is somewhat subjective but there are also things that are good and things that are bad and deisgners get it wrong sometimes and clients arent all imbeciles and they are, at the end of the day, paying for a site they have to live with.
I agree that user testing is important and very useful – but you seem to be saying that if the client has an opinion on design they should keep it to themselves unless the user testing backs it up. In the real world that isnt the way it works.
Your approach seem to be that a client appoints a designer to do the design work and the client should trust that designer’s judgement, backed up by user testing and not criticise or try to make changes to the design unless it comes up in user testing.
I cant go that far – Sorry but I trust my judgement and if I think that 6point dark grey font on a light grey background is hard to read then Im not going to wait for user testing to point it out.
Simmilarly if I think that the design of a page looks flat and dull and Im paying for the site then Im going to say so, not wait for the user testing and hope that they point it out.
You are still misunderstanding me. Of course you are within your rights to comment on design. As you say you are paying for the site. However if you find that the designer and yourself cannot agree on a design element then you are better off testing it than forcing the designer to change it. There are many occasions when a client has said to me “that is hard to read” and I have looked at it and gone “yep he is right, I missed that”. However there are other occasions when the client has asked for a change and I have thought “that is really going to damage the effectiveness of the site”. That client has paid me to create them a great site and sometimes that means challenging them over a change they have requested. I will therefore tell them if I disagree with what they have asked for. They then have a choice:
1. They tell me to change it anyway
2. They take on board my expert opinion and reconsider.
If they choose the former I will suggest user testing. If they insist on me making the change anyway, then of course I will, but in that kind of situation they are better off testing.
Now I agree with you!
(or maybe you agree with me…. but who’s counting)
Should have made myself clearer on the show
Thanks for the candid discussion about this subject. I’m in the middle of a site realign and have had a few disagreements with my client and what has resolved most of them is having them look at the site on a couple of different monitors of course I’m talking about colors here. The point being I think it is good to challenge opinions when it matters. Thanks for a great site by the way.
Hey Paul,
I’m wondering how the americans actually managed to downloaded your podcast if they didn’t know how to spell “boagworld”. I mean the name’s right on the mp3 file is it not? Of course we are talking about american intelligence, so I guess it couldn’t hurt to spell it out for them!
All I have to say is: Information Acidtecture, the new drug induced design craze sweeping the web ;)
Thank you again for your show! BTW, WERE you guys going to get ONE will placed ad in the show. I liked that idea, I think it was part of podvine. I like the idea because it would be of interest to us techie listeners.
Also, .stm is a form of Secure HTML page.
Lastly,
You mentioned in your techno-buster issues clients may face with “Choosing the server-side language/architechture”. I would like to add there is one very important thing or point that clients MUST consider. And that is the availability, which could be measured by percentile of the total available work-force, of workers who know the given server-side language both anywhere, but more specificaly in the clients immediate local area.
This is a huge area to consider.
It would not make much sense for example to design your server pages in say “classic ASP” if there was not an immediate pool of ASP coders to come back up the project 1 year down the road after the clients developer is gone. I know that is using worst-case scenario with the developer leaving or being to busy later but it happens everyday.
ASP is my weaker example.
Now the client absolutely must be informed that if for example they choose a “server-side language” such as COLD-FUSION or ASP.NET using C#, their cost just went up exponentioally over the long haul!
Best bet for the client IS actually a well-known server-side language and clients must consider carefully. PHP for example as your show mentioned is open-source, but also has a lot of intermediate developers. ASP is farily easy so again the client could use this knowing future development costs would be fairly low. Again though JSP, .NET, etc costs would be HIGHER over the long haul.
Something to ponder.
Sincerley,
Dan
Hehe btw. Anyone have a video link of the cool designs spiders on acid may make?
Dan
P.S.
When clicking the poster name in the comments section for your PodCast.
1. Thank you for the link it makes to my home page.
2. More importantly. It breaks my back-button to get BACK to YOUR site. Ow!
Cheers!~
That is a REALLY good point Dan. Next time we record I show I will definately mention that.
I found the podcast through the iTunes Podcast directoy. I thought Paul’s pronunciation of Boag was very clear. Then again… I’m originally from the UK.
Hi Paul and Marcus,
I’m one of your many American fans and find both your Boagworld site and the podcast to be an extremely important part of my continuing education and a a source of daily inspiration.
One thing I would add to your discussion of Information Architecture has to do with “standards” but not accessibility standards but rather conventions used by most sites to organize their content. For instance, most sites have an “About the Company” “Products” “Services” and “Contact Us” option at the uppermost level. Should a designer instead name them something silly like “Enterprise Bio” “What We Do” or “Reaching Us Via Multiple Methodologies” the typical site visitor would be quickly confused.
I had the experience of looking for company news releases and found that sites that placed them in the “About the Company” section or perhaps a “News” section made the material easy to find. However some sites elected to hide their press information in other areas of the site, forcing me to use search which I really shouldn’t have had to do. A minor example to be sure, but you get the point.
Keep up the good work.
Steve
PS: I am really inspired by your enhanced “tool tips” – please don’t be angry with me if my admiration slips into outright copying of your CSS in the near future…I will at least change the colors, ha ha!
Excellent podcast, a lot of what you discussed about the designer/client relationship hit home with me. I seem to have two types of clients,
#1 – Those willing to work with me, but ultimately trust my design/knowledge and don’t micromanage my work.
These clients are great, we always make revisions on designs but that is part of the process and the result turns out better because of it.
#2 – Those who simply have to say something about everything. Oddly enough they seem to know/care the least about design.
I am designing a hand bill for a building development, and now they insist on switching the rendering of a building from a computer generated image (which fits the branding we have been doing all along) to a high detail poster sized drawing that absolutely will not print well when shrunk to the size needed for the handbill.
Makes me want to cry =)
BTW Marcus,
MySpace uses CFM…. ya damn fool.
As Pete implies, CFML is in good health and has an active developer community. MySpace runs on BlueDragon on .NET servers. BlueDragon is an alternative server engine to Adobe’s ColdFusion server, which is free for the basic version.
I tried to warn Marcus he was being an arse but some people dont take the hint. Marcus lives in a world where he is the center of the universe. If he isnt seeing cold fusion developed on a daily basis then as far as he is concerned it doesnt exist! lol
Hey Marcus Vanstone,
Perhaps you should make your feelings on “american intelligence” known on your own web site’s home page so you won’t run the risk of attracting any american clients unworthy of your services…if any of us can find your page, that is.
Perhaps there’s some confusion because the PWD magazine podcast, also hosted by Paul Boag and distributed on the PWD CDs, is credited to “artist” Dan Oliver.
Well howdy Brett,
Not sure exactly why you’re trying to imply I’m an American Hater but I suspect you are simply flame baiting, so I’ll just say chill man – it was joke.
I still don’t particularly understand how the PWD podcast would get you the boagworld podcast without knowing how to spell boag. They are still different podcasts are they not?
I’m not flame-baiting whatsoever; you’re apparently a smart guy, Marcus, so reread your own post and figure out for yourself why an American might be offended. I was.
Then I imagine you were just as deeply offended when Paul felt he needed to spell out B-O-A-G just for you and your countrymen in the podcast. That is what I was refering to. But I’m sure you knew that right?
I’m Canadian, feel free to make a joke or sarcastic remark, apparently I’m just not as insecure about my country, eh?
Paul, I would like to apoligize to you and teh rest of the readers here for this taking over your comments and I would not be offended in the least if you removed any or all comments pertaining to this extremely childish conversation.
Brett, if you’d like to continue to argue this any further with me, I suggest you contact me via email: marcusv [ a t ] gmail.com rather than continuing to annoy Paul and the rest of the readers here with this nonsense.
Jeremy,
I hope I didn’t imply that ColdFusion is in good health… it’s a piece of crap that I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, and the good lord only knows why MySpace use it!
I use MySpace a fare bit, and it is always under strain… could be the server, architecture, but CFML aint helpin’.
Respect me now,
Pete
Hi Brett,
You need to take a chill pill… and then some Omega oils!
You see, according to the big brain in the sky, Wikipedia, you lot are a bit slower than us lot, HA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_IQ
I’m Canadian, feel free to make a joke or sarcastic remark, apparently I’m just not as insecure about my country, eh?
Um, no. Sweeping generalizations about nations or ethnic groups aren’t my style, thanks.
I imagine you were just as deeply offended when Paul felt he needed to spell out B-O-A-G.
Again, no. Believe it or not, the name Boag has not yet reached such celebrity status that its spelling is common knowledge worldwide.
I too wouldn’t mind if Paul deleted all of this. But I don’t see why I should have my opinion relegated to your in box while you’ve taken several opportunities to post your opinion here publicly.
I’m all for free speech. Say whatever you feel you must about whatever country you like. But the fact remains that I don’t find your comment funny but offensive.
Okay guys, I am going to put a stop to this now. Any further comments of this nature should be made somewhere else.
Thanks