Workshop: 9. Organizing Web Site Information: Principles and Practical Experience

Sunday 09:00 - 17:30.

Kate Dobroth, American Institute for Research, USA
Paul McInerney, IBM, USA
Sharon Smith, Compaq Computer Corporation, USA

As web sites continue to grow in their complexity, one of the most important usability design decisions in web site design is how to structure the web site topic hierarchy. If anything is clear about the organization of web sites, it is that there is no single best way to go about it. Different types of web sites seem to demand different approaches to organization.

The primary purpose of this workshop is to discuss and develop solutions for organizing information in web sites taking into account:

• theories about how humans process categories
• solutions arrived in the course of the practice of web site design

We will select 10-20 participants with practical experience in web design and/or theoretical knowledge in relevant disciplines, e.g. cognitive psychology, library science, and information retrieval. Applicants should provide a position paper on their background and information on one or both of the following:

• Web design experience: describe up to three web sites you helped design or evaluate and include interesting issues in organization and categorization, as well as description of the content, size, users, user's tasks, usage patterns, topic hierarchy, rationale behind the topic organization, pre-design analyses (if any), and design evaluations (if any).
• Research experience: describe research (including hypotheses and supporting data) that you have done relevant to web site organization and categorization. We are especially interested in hearing about research that you have applied to the design of a site.

More information is on the workshop's web page.

Contact:
Sharon Smith
Compaq Computer Corporation
550 King Street
Littleton, MA 01460 USA
Tel: +1 978 506 5672
Email: sharon.louise.smith@digital.com