Next topic on the agenda was Information Architecutre. For the two next weeks we were supposed to work and get familiar with the “phenomena” Information Architecture. What was it and how could it be used. The lecture started with an introduction by Are Halland from Netliferesearch Netliferesearch works with usability in all kind of way.

After getting a brief introduction in IA, we got presented a task that we were supposed to work with for the two next weeks. This was the task description:

The Task
“A norwegian distributor of broadband, tv and telephone, is about to develop an online TV guide, hoping to seize customers in a saturated marked. Your task is to design and document a concept for such a TV guide. The final concept will show how to navigate and get an overview of 50 channels in an intuitive and accessible way”

The Definition
Looking at the wikipedia‘s definition of IA: Information architecture (IA) is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. Among these activities are library systems, Content Management Systems, web development, user interactions, database development, programming, technical writing, enterprise architecture, and critical system software design. Information architecture has somewhat different meanings in these different branches of IS or IT architecture. Most definitions have common qualities: a structural design of shared environments, methods of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, and online communities, and ways of bringing the principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

Reading the definition we can shorten this further and say that IA is structuring and organizing web based information. Some of the methods below can be used to achieve an uniform manner of awebsite :

• Personas and scenarios
• Top-down / bottom up approach
• Content inventory / sitemap
• Flow diagram
• Paper prototype
• Digital wireframes
• Competitive analysis

The Work
Starting with the task I decided to work together with Ane Strømsæther and we started with some background research on current websites in the same category, as well as other that could work as inspiration.

Randomly we chose this set of websites that we examined further in detail:

• http://www.vg.no/tv-guide/
• http://www.aladin.info/tv/
• http://www.tv2.no/tvguide/
• http://no.dagenstv.com/chart/colview.asp?fp=1
• http://pub.tv2.no/nettavisen/do/tvguide/search?category=alle&day=0&timeslot=0&sort=time&textquery=&channel=tv2&channel=nrktv1&channel=nrktv2&channel=tv3
• http://www.bt.no/kultur/tvguide/
• http://www.tvguide.co.uk/
• http://www.nrk.no/tv/
• http://tv.msn.com/tv/guide/
• http://tv.yahoo.com/listings
• http://www.tvguide.com/listings/default.aspx
• http://www.onthebox.com/
• http://www.tv.com/listings/index.html?start_date=2009-08-26&start_time=00:00:00&later=1&tag=listings_grid;later
• http://tvlistings.aol.com/listings/ca/los-angeles/time-warner-cable-standard?zipcode=90001
• http://www.tvzap.com/
• http://yourtv.com.au/guide/index.cfm
• http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/

We did quickly agree that most of the sites did use the same  pattern either with listing the channels or using a time line, and most of them were quiet static, except one. The Dagbladet.no’s new and fresh tv guide stood out with new and more user oriented design. We did like this new and improved solution and decided to use it to do some further analysis to see what is good and what could be done better, in our point of view: We both agreed that their was to much content presented at once for the user, which gave an overall messy first impression. We also did not like the scrolling functionality (which by the way were removed in the final release). We did also miss the social aspect on the site. Why could a tv-guide not be be a social network like facebook? Talking about the different series and movies, commenting, rating and  making suggestions to your friends?

When we started to work on “our” tv guide we wanted to make it “less is more” and make the first startpage minimal as possible where the user only gets the most essential information at glance, but has the possibilities to make custom adjustments. This is how it got:

First some sketches: