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 enlarge | Authors: Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $22.89
You Save: $17.10 (43%)
New (30) from $22.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 6892
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 526
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7 x 1
ISBN: 0596527349
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.7
EAN: 9780596527341
ASIN: 0596527349
Publication Date: November 27, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: I20081010021123S
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| Customer Reviews:
 Very biased book June 2, 2007
2 out of 26 found this review helpful
In general, this book contains some useful yet common sense information. This book is more about how to become a talker than a worker. I read through and found the first half confirmed my experience and the second half is a bust. If you want to become an office politician, this is a must have.
 An ok overview of the topic, with very little useful info May 23, 2007
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
Although this book does provide a nice overview of the field of IA, it provided me with very little useful information in regards to advanced IA techniques and practices. The few bits of useful information that I found we're sandwiched between pages upon pages of common sense, no-brainer techniques.
If your a beginner in the fields, or an outsider hoping to learn about IA, perhaps you might benefit from this book. If you've been in the industry for awhile, I'd suggest getting your IA info from a better source. Information Architecture: Blueprints For The Web is a good one. So are Defensive Design for The Web, and Getting Real, by 37 Signals.
 Great Book - covering all the nuts and bolts of IA May 13, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Very good book that has some really good sections on IA documentation, planning navigation, and good tools for putting things to gether. All chapters have plenty examples of web sites so you can visualize what is being taught. This book was used in an IA class I took recently.
Somewhat heavy on theory March 10, 2007
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
What this book does is show you how librarians fit into 21st century. The book does very good promotion of IA itself, and shows why it's important.
The first half of the book is somewhat theoretical and hard to read. However, it's really worth reading. It will explain some concepts (thesaurus, categorization,...) librarians have used for a very long time, and how to easily used them while designing web sites.
The second part is where the book gets more practical and actually shows how to use IA in practice, which was, at least for me, the more interesting part. If you are in any way connected to web development, you should read this book.
The entire book is exactly what it says it is - "Designing large-scale web sites". Although some concepts can be applied to smaller sites, you will hardly find resources to make use of some of the things authors talk about.
There are many books on usability out there, but this one is dedicated to findability. If these terms are new to you, I recommend you read Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" and Jakob Nielsen's "Prioritizing Web Usability" before reading this book. It might make it easier to read, and the book will definitely make more sense to you.
Eye opening February 11, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book really opened my eyes, as I haven't really thought about Information Architecture as a discipline, which is probably a natural thing for me, as I am a programmer. What I found intriguing about this book is the "take a step back" approach by the authors to analyze a business's overall strategy for user experience. This forces the product owner to ask: how should users find things on this site? What kind of things would I want to find as a user? How can the site's navigation be improved to promote easier searching? The answers to these types of questions and help your Information Architect begin to formulate on overall architecture strategy.
After a good introduction to what IA is, the authors take the reader through the basic principles of this discipline. In this section, the authors discuss organization and labeling of systems, navigation, and searching. In the third section of the book, the authors go into the practice of actually implementing the principles in the previous section. Finally, the authors examine case studies from two different sites, where they examine how IA fit into the overall goal of the application.
I felt this book gave me a basic understanding of what Information Architecture is, and what types of things to look out for in developing an IA strategy. I would recommend this book if you have large amounts of data you want web users to have access to.
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