Comments for DonnaM

Comment on Stories and examples for my IA book by maadonna

maadonna — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:36:22 +0000

Great, thanks Mallory.

Comment on Stories and examples for my IA book by Mallory O'Connor

Mallory O'Connor — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:25:47 +0000

I’m sure I can dig up a gem or two from our project experiences!

Comment on Stories and examples for my IA book by maadonna

maadonna — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:18:32 +0000

I bet you do Fabio. Let’s talk via email

Comment on Stories and examples for my IA book by Fábio Silva

Fábio Silva — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:04:41 +0000

“How not having clear project goals caused all sorts of project crap”

I can help with that.
I work for a small company. So you get involved in a project even if you are not involved.

Comment on Stories and examples for my IA book by maadonna

maadonna — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:50:34 +0000

Well I want to be totally finished by the end of the month. We could chat about your idea and then see if it is do-able in time

Comment on Stories and examples for my IA book by Wendy

Wendy — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:59:03 +0000

What’s the approximate date you’d need these stories by? I’ve had varied experiences working on IA for museum/news websites, but it would be a while before I found time to write down something coherent and useful for you.

Comment on Card sorting tools – a short summary by maadonna

maadonna — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:57:10 +0000

Hi Laura – that’s easy. None of them

Comment on Card sorting tools – a short summary by Laura

Laura — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:03:30 +0000

Hey Donna
I’m looking for a card sorting tool that allows participants to place the same card in more than one category…can you help me out?

Comment on Being professional: appearing organised by E

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:28:04 +0000

Is this the Domino? Then it would not be leather. Do you still use it, does it age okay?

Comment on Visio and IA Tip – hide and show annotations by maadonna

maadonna — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:52:54 +0000

Barb – here’s one for creating a TOC: http://stephenturbek.com/2007/04/automatically-create-table-of-contents.html

Comment on Visio and IA Tip – hide and show annotations by Barb

Barb — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:14:21 +0000

Donna – First, i’m wanting to use the TOC macro for visio documents that have multiple tabs…so a line item and/or link for each tab. Will this do that?

And I’m not a programmer and have no idea how to get this macro into visio. is there some way that I just cut and paste it?

Thanks so much!

Comment on I’m writing an information architecture book! by maadonna

maadonna — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:14:58 +0000

Thanks Rachel – that will be great!

Comment on I’m writing an information architecture book! by Rachel

Rachel — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:11:30 +0000

I’m looking forward to this book already! I’m up for reviewing some of it if you need. I’m a technical communicator so I’d probably have a different take on it than some. I have experience with IA though and have read the polar bear book, so I’m not totally green to the subject.

Good luck and can’t wait to read it!

Comment on How I draft an information architecture by maadonna

maadonna — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:32:05 +0000

Good point Ricardo.

In this situation I had plenty of other user research – I wasn’t going to be assuming I knew enough about them.

Something I did know was that individual users were very focused only on their topic of interest – a very small proportion of the whole information set. In a card sort they wouldn’t care enough (or know enough) about the rest of the content to do a decent sort.

So sure, I may have learned something. I always learn something. But I didn’t think I would learn enough.

And it isn’t a matter of a 20 minute card sort – I would have had to spend at least half a day contacting people, arranging for them to do the sort, then another half analysing the results. I still don’t think I would have got enough good information from a card sort to justify the planning & analysis. Especially as I had other good user research already.

Comment on How I draft an information architecture by Ricardo

Ricardo — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:43:39 +0000

I’m not entirely comfortable with this approach. You can’t possibly “know” you won’t learn anything useful. You’re *assuming* you know enough of the users to put yourself in their place – I thought that was one of the basic mistakes designers make.

A simple card sorting session with a small group can take less than 20 minutes, I don’t see how that would be overkill. At the very least it will confirm your assumptions. I haven’t read your book yet though, so I don’t know what’s your exact POV here.

happy new year!