Overview: Online Architecture
Probably the most common reason organisations contact me is to get help with their internal and external information architecture.
I usually find, however, that they first need to find a clear consensus on their communication strategy, content strategy and online strategy. Once that's done, I deliver a document which both you and your developers can understand, including some or all of the following:
- highly detailed sitemaps: internal intranets, external websites, knowledgebases, and the information flows between them
- mission statements for principal site chapters, features and content types
- business requirements for any revised or new features
- wireframes, allowing both you and your developers to envision how the result will look.
The aim is to deliver something detailed enough for professional developers and designers to give you a concrete quote, but not so technical that noone else understands what they're building.
I can then work with them to deliver it, or assemble a team and manage the site build for you.
Check out some of my firsts and best practices, or just get in touch.
More services: start with Communication strategy.
Relevant resources
www.thejournalismbiz.com
Good overview of Circa's approach: "A new model for online journalism is emerging, focusing on the atomization of news stories into “bite-sized chunks” of information aimed at mobile audiences."
www.bbc.co.uk
With a very nice longform, multimedia html5 presentation to boot. "In this bustling environment, there is less news and more noise. ..." More news but even more noise, rather.
gigaom.com
A useful look at how user-centricity has leapt out of the web department and into the business strategy: "... Quartz ... Gawker, BuzzFeed and Tumblr... are increasingly thinking about what they do as providing a service, not just as a business that generates content and then delivers it to people.... you have to experiment, and iterate rapidly, …
www.nytimes.com
And not just journalists. New generation news sites are redefining news and, by consequence, rethinking information architecture, content strategy and CMS. I only hope the results filter through to everyone else, and sooner rather than later. "... a moment when young talent began demanding superior technology as the key to producing superior jour…
www.poynter.org
A new generation of companies, like CIRCA, are redefining the structure of how information is treated, and building new CMS to support it. Their approach will inevitably feed into a new generation of CMS for whom the 'article' and 'page' are, if not meaningless, at least optional. And I for one can't wait. "what we’re really doing at Circa is a…
adage.com
Surprise surprise... "Circa is developing two types of ads: magazine-style full-screen banners, like Flipboard, and sponsored posts... which look and feel like editorial, created by a separate staff.... One future revenue possibility would be licensing access to Circa's article data to other publishers," - News App Circa Looks to Na…
www.niemanlab.org
#Context emerging as 2014 theme: "...newsrooms are going to reframe our understanding of “responsive design.” We’re going to see content move beyond simply responding to screen size and instead respond to reader context, adapting to behavior." - Nieman Journalism Lab