Information Architecture And User Experience

Application Design And Usability Are Important To Application Success

Information Architecture

• Definition: Information architecture involves the design of organization, labeling, navigation, and searching systems to help people find and manage information more successfully.
  (From the American Society for Information Science and Technology, www.asis.org.)

The User Interface / User Experience

All computer applications, including web-based applications, are successful or unsuccessful due primarily to whether or not the users for which they are intended can and, perhaps more importantly, will use them. The whole time in which a user is engaged with one's application defines the user experience. Users interact with programs through the User Interface, or UI.

• Definition: An interface is a set of commands or menus through which a user communicates with a program. A command-driven interface is one in which you enter commands. A menu-driven interface is one in which you select command choices from various menus displayed on the screen.
  
  The user interface is one of the most important parts of any program because it determines how easily you can make the program do what you want. A powerful program with a poorly designed user interface has little value. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that use windows, icons, and pop-up menus have become standard on personal computers.
  
  (Derived from webopedia.com)

Usability

Another key aspect to successful application design is usability. One test of this is to sit a non-technical user in front of an application and, with no prior instruction, see how well they can use it. If they cannot even figure our how to get started you may need to go back to the drawing board!

This concept is so important that there is even an internationally adopted standard definition describing usability:

• The ease with which a user can learn to operate, prepare inputs for, and interpret outputs of a system or component.
  (IEEE 90, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. IEEE Standard Computer Dictionary: A Compilation of IEEE Standard Computer Glossaries. New York, NY: 1990)

Due to our years of custom application development Webworld has extensive experience with user interface design and usability issues--particularly for web-based applications.