Week 4 Learning Journal

When analysing a website’s information architecture I had always just accepted the notion that the less clicks to perform a task the better. I had not considered this critically before reading Garrett’s article Information Architecture in The Elements of User Experience: User Centred Design for the Web and Beyond. In it he states that it is much more important for the task to make sense to the user (Garret 2011). To me this is a much more important aspect to focus on; if someone is performing a task that makes sense to them they are not going to be thinking about how many clicks they have made. 

For example in the do activity for this week I found it was very easy to find information on pet ownership on the City of Melbourne website as the steps made sense to me, I never thought about how many clicks it took me to get to the information. Hobart City Council’s website took just as many clicks but as it took me ages to find, because it was not under a section I would normally associate with pet ownership I took some time to find the information I was not satisfied with the Information Architecture.

References

Garrett, J.J. (2011). Information Architecture in The Elements of User Experience: User Centred Design for the Web and Beyond, 2nd edition, pp.88-101