My first UX Information Architecture workshop

This was my first UX workshop which took place on 15 November at WebCredible, and was an insightful evening. “Information Architecture is the art and science of organising and labelling websites to support task completion and intuitive access to content” says Chris How from WebCredible. I also learnt a new concept called “Latch” by Saul Wurman.  This involved five ways of organising information by location, alphabet, time, category and hierarchy.

Our first exercise was to (I was in a team of four) come up with silly/awful concepts to organise the record shop in 5 minutes using Latch theory.

Location

  • Where they played the song for the first time.
  • The proximity to Abbey Road.

Alphabet

  • The lyrics of the song.
  • Wife’s name/ Husband’s name / Mother’s maiden name.
  • The groupie names.
  • The last letter of the artist’s name.

Time

  • The length of the song.
  • The length of the first tour.

Category

  • Eye Colours.
  • The Colour of the covers.

Hierarchy

  • The attractiveness of the lead singer based on the owner’s opinion.
  • The average shoe size of the group.
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Exercise 2: Card Sorting

 

We were doing a card sorting technique (using Latch theory) and it was a great way to organise information because you were able to move items around quickly.

Our team decided to organise the spice drawer alphabetically and by the main ingredients; if you were cooking and needed to get everything out of the drawer, it would be easier to put it back from A-Z, from the top left of the drawer to the bottom left. The second reason for us was that if we were reading from the recipe, it would be best to know the name of the spice and search for it by name. We also decided to separate salt and pepper into different groups. We decided to avoid using the colour and the length of time used because if we were to eat Chinese foods using Chinese spices everyday for a couple of weeks, this would only work for some types of spices. Therefore, we agreed to go for the alphabet and the main ingredient.

Thank you to WebCredible and the cool people in my team.

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