Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

I love the flood on information that is sent my way on a regular bases.  I'm always checking Google Reader to see what new headlines or blog articles pop up.  I'm still getting subscriptions that come to my email - though I should just take 10 minutes and finally unsubscribe to these.  And of course there is the constant sharing of information on Facebook and other social sites from peers and friends. It's a wonderful thing really, but is it sometimes too much?

I'm a list person. I have to finish my time sheets every day. And because of this personality trait, I have to scroll through and read EVERY headline in my news feed. I feel guilty if I don’t.

Anyone else on information overload?

Visual thinking, best explained by Kermit the frog. Some things are timeless.

Kermit Scats

Imagining Shapes

One thing I continue to struggle with is how relevant sitemaps are--and to whom?¹

Below is an example sitemap, which indicates the basic hierarchy of pages or categories within a site.

What's wrong with this picture?

Sitemaps don't represent pages...

Implicitly, they communicate pages of content. This is not necessarily the case. They are a quasi-system model that blurs the lines between content and page. This leads to misinterpretation.

Extending this, they are rooted in a page-centric approach that assumes pages have one state. Ajax-y interactions that reload different content into the same page aren't communicated. 

...and they don't really represent content.

They suggest content, but a through the lens of a page. This, I believe, is an artifact left over from the days where sitemaps were closely tied to the physical implementation. As we've evolved the idea of a sitemap away from actual pages, we didn't rethink how it is actually interpreted or used by either developers or clients. 

...and they don't reflect true navigation or interaction paths.

In fact, they indicate a hierarchical flow between pages. Sitemaps suggest that users typically access the site through the home page. Users who arrive via a search or a link from a friend are likely to be entering at a deeper level than the home page. Luke Wroblewski has a great podcast and set of slides on this.

And sitemaps don't account for related items--hyperlinks that bring together similar content that exist in different categories of the site. Similar information may be "nearer" than sitemaps suggest. The perceived distance is content too and associate navigation can be as important as the categorical navigation. 

So, what do they do well?

For me, they are good as a sketch -- not a final product -- for how content may be organized and how navigation may occur. They work well for initial scoping. But having to caveat what sitemaps are feels like a cop out. There's gotta be a better way.

 Any thoughts? Do sitemaps help you or confuse you?

¹I'm talking about the information architecture kind, but many of the points also extend to those junk drawer sitemap pages that many sites have. That's entirely another issue to address.

If you didn’t take how to write a press release 101 in college or work in agency, the term boilerplate may be foreign in this context… "Do we have any boilerplate content on usability?"

The term originated from sheets of steel, originally used to build steam boilers, used as printing plates for widespread reproduced content, like advertisements of syndicated columns. Today boilerplate is text that can be reused in new ways and stays the same or changes slightly from the original. You see boilerplate information on the bottom of press releases or in legal documents.

Our interactive group uses boilerplate information in our strategy documents, Situation Analysis and Blueprint. Our standard definitions and terms have been evolving since our conception and with each new hire or project launch we learn something new and things change. A year ago we hardly mentioned the word SEO (search engine optimization) and with addition of a new developer that had a passion for the concept, we added an interior section to our strategy documents.

Some may think that having standard copy speeds up our process or leaves room for the dreaded cookie cutter experience. But with every new project we reexamine our meaning of usability, RSS, SEO, accessibility, global navigation, user experience best practices, etc, and bring a bit more knowledge to the table. Our team deals with these terms daily and sees them through different colored glasses, so why would we want to deprive our clients of this cumulative thinking.