[Sighfis-l] ASIS&T Webinar - Intro to Information Architecture

[Richard Hill]

[Apologies for multiple postings.]

Date:  Friday, January 14, 2011, 1:30-2:30pm (EST)

Registration: $20 ASIS&T Members / $49 Non-Members

Description:  In this virtual seminar, you'll learn all about information architecture - 
what it is, why it's so important to do well and the major things to do and not to do.

We'll discuss:

- how people look for information and what they need to do with it when they find it  
- different ways you can organize information and when they are suitable  
- exactly how (processes) you can figure out the best ways to organize your content   
- the tricky issue of what to call things  
- other key IA tips 
It's all based on Donna's experience designing information architecture, navigation and 
content for a wide range of information systems (usually big ones) such as government and 
corporate websites, intranets and document management systems.   
 
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Presenter
  

Donna Spencer
Donna’s a freelance information architect, interaction designer and writer. That’s a fancy 
way of saying she plans how to present the things you see on your computer screen, so that 
they’re easy to understand, engaging and compelling. Things like the navigation, forms, 
categories and words on intranets, websites, web applications and business systems. 

Most of the projects Donna works on are large, messy monsters, like government websites and 
intranets, internal business applications and web applications. But she still gets to work 
on something small and cool too. So she’s completely aware of the challenges of long-term, 
ongoing projects and short-burst, agile projects. She’s also an old hand at sketching screens, 
drawing wireframes and building prototypes. 

But whatever sort of job Donna’s working on, there’s one common requirement. She has to 
comprehensively understand the needs of the people who will use it. Only then can she make 
the system as usable as possible. Luckily, she’s also quite fond of people, so doing user 
research and running usability tests is a pleasure, not a pain. 

Not surprisingly, given Donna’s obsession with usability and fondness of people, she’s also 
quite the teacher. She’s a very experienced speaker and regularly holds workshops and speaks 
at local and international conferences, on the topics of information architecture, interaction 
design, the web, writing and more. She even runs a user experience conference (UX Australia). 

Donna’s been doing this since 2002. She’s worked on the boards of the Information Architecture 
Institute (international), Web Industry Professionals Association (WIPA) and has judged many web 
awards. She’s also written three books – on card sorting, web writing and now information architecture
 


Dick Hill

Richard Hill
Executive Director
American Society for Information Science and Technology
1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510
Silver Spring, MD  20910
FAX: (301) 495-0810
(301) 495-0900