[Sigia-l] IA deliverables defined

[Davezilla]

IA deliverables defined. By me.

Stakeholder interviews and requirement analysis:
Finding out who will fire me when the project goes sour

Content Inventory, also known as content survey or audit:
Determines how much perfectly usable content the client has so I know
how much to ignore, throw away and recreate from scratch

Heuristic analysis:
A sacred industry term that means your navigation sucks and the type
is hard to read

Competitive analysis:
Determines why your competition sucks as much as you do

Cognitive mental models:
Determines how out of touch with reality your users are

Personas and audience definition:
Developing an artificial user to ignore rather than a real one

Card Sorts:
Legalized form of IA gambling

Usability sessions:
Proof that for $100 an hour, under-qualified people will agree to
pretty much anything you put in front of them

Process flows and flow charts:
Diagrams that prove on paper what no one can create in reality

Site Maps:
Diagrams of a website that show precisely *where* on a site a user is lost

Wireframes:
Unstyled, structural views of websites that are frequently mistaken
for final comps

Prototypes:
Working models of features that will later prove to be impossible to build

Design Reviews:
Formalized reviews of IA research that will subsequently be forgotten
by everyone

Final Report:
A thick compendium of knowledge that proves scientifically why
Information Architects are justified in adding another zero to the
budget.


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