Information Architecture Design Of Mobile Applications Program

The data from market research orgnization shows that the sales volumn of global mobile phones reaches 1.35-1.45 billion in 2010,one fifth of which is smartphone,about 270-280 million. The Smartphone sales volumn of 2011 is predicted to reach 400 million,sharing a quarter of the total mobile phones market.Such a large market of smartphone creates an immense development environment for the app. The number of App increases rapidly in the last two years. The latest figures of March 2011 reveals that the number of Apple iOS reaches 350 thousand. The reason why so many users are crazy for iPhone, except for the excellent performance itself, is iPhone platform has integrated many excellent apps.Information architecture is the foundation of mobile application design, which not only defines the organizational structure of the apps information, but also defines how people should interact with it. Without good information architecture,beautiful App is difficult to put into use. However, the phone’s features, such as smaller screens, changing scenarios, determines its information architecture is different with user commonly used in the PC software or Web site. Designers need to explore new forms to adapt to such characteristics.In this paper, Author research and summarizing the design procedures of mobile App information architecture, based on the analisis of Tencent microblog iPhone Edition made by Tencent User Research and Experience Design Center (CDC). Firstly, through researching of characteristics of the mobile devices and the information model, plus analysing of users’information requirement and searching activities, Author summarizings a set of design procedures that are common used in mobile App information architecture now. In the navigation design of mobile applications, the author refines three element of navigation design, that is Title, Menu and Return Path, on the basis of researching of the characteristics of mobile platforms. Additionally, based on the previous study, Author proposes the Extension-navigation design, providing a new direction for the information architecture design of touch-screen phone. Furthermore, Author improves the existing evaluation theory and analysis method, and proposes a more suitable evaluation criteria and methods for handheld devices.