[Sigia-l] designing an international contact directory

[Peter Cook]

Hi everyone

I am doing the IA (and assisting with the database design) for a contact
directory for a large international non-profit organization.  The directory
will consist of a public version available on the web, and a restricted
access version that contains additional personal contact details.

I would be most grateful for any tips about resources, or other advice,
particularly in regard to the following issues.  If anyone knows of any good
examples that have been implemented, I would love to see them.  If you want
to reply to me off-list, I will summarize all replies and post to this list.

Some issues that I am encountering:

1. We have identified about 6 levels within the organization:
- Global region (Europe, Asia-Pacific etc)
- Country
- Region within a country (optional)
- State/Province
- Branch
- Sub-branch

One issue I am grappling with is how to design an elegant way to quickly
drill down to the appropriate level? (a search option will also be
included).  I have been thinking in terms of drilling down level-by-level
(page-by-page).  In some instances, two (or possibly 3) levels may be able
to be displayed on one page by using sub-heads - for example: Country >
Region > State/Province.

2. We have decided that address details will be displayed in the language of
the particular country (eg, addresses for Germany will be in German).  But
the 'descriptive' labels in the directory (eg, 'Telephone', 'Email' 'Postal
Address' etc) will be in English, because the at the moment the rest of the
site is English-only.  It is planned to have multilingual versions of the
public web site in the future. So do we also change the language of the
descriptive labels for the other language versions? (I think yes).

3. I have already found some useful resources on the design of input forms
for international use.  See:
http://www.evolt.org/article/Usable_Forms_for_an_international_audience/4090
/15118/index.html

4. An ancilliary issue, as far as the multiple language versions goes, is
how to have a clear entry menu to the various languages from an entry page
for the whole site.  I think this may have been discussed before, but if
anyone can refresh my memory I would appreciate it.

Regards
Peter Cook
Brisbane, Australia