[Sigia-l] FW: digest: controlled vocabulary for information archicture and web development?

[Ferguson, Natalie]

SIG-IA folks:
 
Here's what I learned about thesauri for IA and Web development: a number of
people have already considered the issue and there are indices and thesauri
already out there.  No need to reinvent the wheel. Thanks everyone, for
writing in! The responses are collected below:
 
1) Usability First, at   <http://www.usabilityfirst.com>
http://www.usabilityfirst.com, offers a Glossary currently numbered at 1032
items. The items include definitions and can be sorted in several different
ways. Many of the terms are useful for IA.
 
2) A synthesis of some other vocabs can be found on the IAwiki...
http://IAwiki.net/IAGlossary <http://IAwiki.net/IAGlossary> 

e. 
______________________________________________________________________

eric at ironclad.net.au i r o n c l a d n e t w o r k s  
information architect http://www.ironclad.net.au/

3) I would love to hear what all you recieve from others and come up with. I
put together a thesaurus on IA for a course  project- it is a basic overview
of the terminology in IA .  A group at the University of Pittsburgh is also
in the process of developing a portal site on IA-my thesaurus will be on
there. I basically did this to "introduce" myself to the field. Most of the
scope notes reference the Polar Bear Book by Rosenfield. I really enjoyed
this project-hope it will help!

Kristiana Burk 
Library and Information Specialist 
kris.burk at mail.state.ky.us <mailto:kris.burk at mail.state.ky.us>  

 
4) i put together a glossary of IA terms a while back. also, kristiana burk
has put together a thesaurus on IA terms that you may find useful. her
contact is: kris.burk at mail.state.ky.us <mailto:kris.burk at mail.state.ky.us> 
 
jon
................................... 
Jon Snydal 
Information Architect 
Red Sky . San Francisco 
415 . 430 . 3254 
jsnydal at redsky.com 
www.redsky.com 
 
 3) I've done some preliminary investigation of recurrent word sequences in
SIGIA-L list material. It could be used to identify candidate terms for
inclusion in a thesaurus for Information Architecture. 

Andrew McNaughton

4) The taxonomy used at   <http://usableweb.com/> http://usableweb.com/
might be useful. As far as I can remember, Keith Instone has been using this
structure for a while so I suppose it has been successful. You might want to
contact him to see what sorts of feedback he has received from users. He may
have also run card sorting tests to develop it. Hope this helps,
 
Chris Martin
 
5) The original post: 
Does anyone know of a vocabulary for information architecture and design-
and testing-intensive aspects of Web site development, such as layout, user
research, and usability testing? (Most topics except technical issues such
as coding/programming and databases.)
 
I maintain an informally vetted resource library of several hundred academic
and popular online articles on these subjects for health communicators at
our agency. 2-3 years ago, assigning articles to topics seemed
straightforward. I'd assign an academic paper about breadth vs. depth to
"Architecture" and perhaps crosslist it under "Navigation" if the article
also discussed visual scanning of lists/menus. I'd post links to it on two
painfully long HTML pages on an intranet site, sorted by primary topic and
author. Paper copies I'd label with the primary topic and plonk into
topically organized folders.
 
It's no longer so easy. A colleague says I've resorted to the "heap"
methodology of information organization and I can no longer pull out
articles with aplomb when asked. For someone who's supposed to be able to
organize information, this is sad.
 
I am revising the Intranet pages so that the resources are searchable by
keyword, but also displayed in scannable lists sorted by criteria such as
primary topic, title, author, and individual keyword. To help, am
transferring the lot to a commercial citation program (Reference Manager),
and am using their automated keyword tool to help locate keywords. As for
the paper copies, the best solution seems to be straight ID number, keyed to
the online system.
 
A better vocabulary would help. Have considered also using the terms from
Kat Hagedorn's "The Information Architecture Glossary" as well as those from
Ben Shneiderman's index in his book "Designing the User Interface". Yet that
sill leaves topic gaps. Surely there's a known vocabulary out there
(ACM/STC/ASIS must have such, for example). Help?
 
I'll collect replies and post a summary to the list.  Many thanks!

Natalie Ferguson, MA, MPH 
Health Communications Specialist 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
National Center for Infectious Diseases 
Office of Health Communication 
nbd2 at cdc.gov 
404-371-5230 

 
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