Evaluating Website Information Architecture

Information architecture is the blueprint for designing large-scale websites, and the basis on which we can manage and find information successfully in the information environment of World Wide Web. Although most people have touched orgnization systems, navigation systems, labeling systems and searching systems - the main elements of information architecture - when they are interacting with the websites, few of them really realize the existence of these elements, let alone understanding the importance of information architecture to website effectiveness. As a result, this paper takes an ordinary website for example and marks information architecture's compositive parts on its screen shot, making the visualization of website information architecture possible. The responsibilities of information architects, of course, aren't confined to designing efficient information architecture, but include the maintainance and improvement of information architecture to meet the need of the changing information environment. And before each betterment, it is necessary to make a comprehensive and scientific evaluation on the existing one. Just as people are usually not conscious of information architecture, however, it is difficult to prove its influence on website effectiveness, which throws an obstacle to information architecture evaluation. Fortunately, it is not an obstacle that cannot be cleared up. After recognizing such difficulties in evaluation, the author makes cluster analysis of the factual data and arrives the conclusion that information architecture is a determining factor of website effectiveness. Because information architecture evaluation is a relatively new task, the researches on it primarily stay on the theoretical level - no practical methodology has been set up. From the discussion of the intimate relation between information architecture and usability, the author discovers that the well-rounded evaluation techniques in the domain of usbility could be used for reference. This paper carefully analyzes various usability testing methods and establishes Information Architecture Evaluation Methodology which is made up of heuristic evaluation and user testing. The former conducts a qualitative research on the four parts of information architecture and finds some obvious problems; the latter conducts a quantitative research on the information architecture as a whole and finds some minor problems which otherwise might be neglected. The results of these two methods are complementary and verify each other. So to speak, the author not only complete the evaluation of website information architecture, but also testify to the rationality of the methodology.