[Sigia-l] RE: Web Standards and I.A.s

[Thomas Vander Wal]

On 4/6/04 11:24 PM, "Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com"
<Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com> wrote:

> This was my first reaction to the question as well.  On further
> reflection, I think that Web Standards have about as much (or less) to
> do with Information Architecture *for Web sites* as electrical building
> codes have to do with building a home - they may have some impact on
> small aspects of a design (e.g. location of navigation or interaction
> design of nav bars).

Uh, no.  IAs should be embracing Web Standards as they provide a means for
Web Designers and IAs to speak the same language.  Most environments I have
been in have the designers and IAs on a different set of pages.  Their work
is not integrated.  Standards provide the ability to get *peanut butter in
the chocolate* (intermix different disciplines as one).  This goes for
interaction designers and any other group building with a web browser
interface (including handhelds and mobile devices).

The impact is far more than small.  Lets say in a wireframe we know that
there are two separate navigation areas and the wireframe provides names
(globalnav and localnav).  The ID attribute for these elements in the
developers structuring uses the same names.  Extend this for the branding,
headers, sub-headers, various content chunks, etc. and you have a simple
wireframe that is actually used.  As the structure of the site changes
(through user testing or whatever) the named elements remain and are
presented in different manners.  The wireframe can be modified to take this
into account, or if you are building your simple wireframe with Standards
you can turn on the boarders for the elements and turn off the content and
you have a simple wireframe that echoes the site build.  This also has given
us a wireframe (saved as a PDF) that can be passed to other groups
developing applications or site elements and they have a usable blueprint.

This is building a blueprint that is usable across functional teams.  For
many IAs that is a huge change.

> I think most aspects of an information system's
> (or application's) IA aren't affected by Web Standards though.

Web standards are for the top level presentation structure and presentation.
IAs, at least most I know work on information structures, which are the
foundation for web sites, applications, enterprise information systems, etc.
Failing to have the IA elements rolled out into the information structural
elements on the presentation components leads to miss-communication and
confusion.  

The converse of your statement is more true.  Web Standards are affected by
IAs. As stated above IA work involves information structure.  Taking the
taxonomy we developed for the structural elements in our evaluation of the
information and having that taxonomy for the structure used by the
developers and having that vocabulary used by developers is actually
practicing what we IAs preach.

> Things like taxonomy, labeling systems, metadata and search systems general
> aren't addressed or impacted by Web Standards - in my experience.

The converse again.  Developing with Web Standards can use everything you
just mentioned and more.  Our IA is now usable and can be directly
implemented.  It should be this way.  It must be this way for clearer
communication from beginning to end of projects and through the project's
life cycle.  

How do standards impact the IA? The IA must learn what Standards are and how
they can be used to provide consistency across projects and even the
enterprise.  The IA does not need to change their work (actually they should
change their sites and get their hands dirty with mark-up to better
understand how our work is more relevant in an environment that embraces
standards).

A good place to start is CSS Zen Garden (http://www.csszengarden.com/).
This site uses the exact same mark-up as a base and allows designers to
submit CSS and images to modify the presentation layer.  Everything in the
mark-up is named and named consistently so the presentation layer can hang
off this foundation.  Think of the mark-up as a simple functional wireframe
with named elements and attributes.  Well this is exactly what it is.

> Also keep in mind Web Standards are only for Web...

You mean only for Web browsers.  I have helped application teams implement
standards on their browser-based applications and it has greatly improved
their thinking about their information structures.  It also has greatly sped
up their application's perceived speed.  It has greatly shortened their
development time as their is less confusion on that components are called in
the application and the presentation layers.  Their documentation is tighter
too.

Not only do the applications now work across the enterprise intranet (the
browser's used are known and all standards compliant).  Not only do they
work consistently, they are almost fully accessible and are made fully
accessible with very little work.  The applications also now render properly
on handhelds without having to build a separate interface.

Browser companies build their products to better embrace standards, which
holds true for handhelds, accessibility readers, and scraping/spidering
engines.

Thanks for the fodder.

All the best,
Thomas