Content Organization

Content organization concerns approaches for helping users find content, commands, articles, etc. Information architecture is an alternative term for content organization. Content organization is one aspect of conceptual design.

The McCracken and Wolfe text covers content organization in chapter 4.

Organizational schemes

• Exact
• Geographical. Example.
• Alphabetical. Example.
• Chronological. Example.
• Ambigiuous
• Topical. Example.
• Task Oriented. Example.
• Audience specific. Example.
• Metaphor driven Example.
• Hybrid Example.

DL students: can you provide me with additional examples of any of the organizational schemes? Email me your examples. I will present a sample of your examples to the class.

Organizational structures

• Hierarchical. Example.
• Hypertext. Example.
• Database driven. Example.

Research methods

• Card sorting. For open card sorting, participants cluster content items and then label them. For closed card sorting, participants are given category labels. They then place items in the categories where they think they belong. Here is an excellent guide to card sorting. I have a recent draft of a card sorting study.
• Storyboarding. Participants sketch out process and pages.
• Organizing with sticky notes. Participants write out topics (e.g. items, actions, events, facts) on sticky notes and then group them. Notes can be placed in a sequence.