Comments on: Site Diagrams: Mapping an Information Space http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/ Boxes and Arrows is devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design; including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture and the design of business. Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:43:59 +0000 hourly 1 By: nemanja http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5657 nemanja Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5657 - Jason

“Additionally, rather than trying to develop one massive site diagram it can sometimes work better to focus on multiple smaller diagrams.”

I share your idea here. Nice Article !

Regards,
Nemanja

]]> By: scottg http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5658 scottg Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5658 Regarding Mike’s comment… For large sites, some text labels or clear abbreviations may be appropriate for specifying levels/hierarchies and numbering pages. It can certainly take up a little more space, but offer clarity in a large structure. Especially if there’s tons of tree/flow pages and you’re sharing docs withn non-IA types who might be more likely to be easily lost in a structure. Plus, assuming this is used only at a 2nd tier category level, if you have cause to move the 2nd tier boxes around, you don’t have to re-number everything. Face it, you move stuff when you can’t fit things below, to express the order of menu items, (even if it doesn’t really matter because you’re not really reflecting the design at this point). And you certainly can’t have 1.3 showing up to the left of 1.2.

For example, you might have 1.0 as the home page, then 1.abt for the About Us section, which would subsequently have 1.abt.1.x and so on. (Or whatever works for you.) Personally, I like the numbers better, but I’ve found the text method useful on a few occasions.

The thing is, even with some small abbreviated text, if you have a textual outline or page list with page requirements, (for example, using MS-Word and tagging the page names with a heading), you can still easily outline/sort the page requirements and automatically create index/tables of contents.

]]> By: friveraz http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5659 friveraz Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5659 Good article. However, one thing I don´t find a mention to is how to handle several global navigation menus. Say for instance you want to seperate the main content pages (About Us, Products, Contact, etc.) from the secondary content pages (Privacy Policy, Careers, Advanced Search, etc). These are both Global in the sense that they are accesible from all pages, but you don’t necessarily want to group them into a single navigation menu.

]]> By: polarforsker http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5660 polarforsker Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5660 Fernando > I would typically avoid having more than one ‘real’ global menu (in terms of hierarchy) and instead cross link from the home page to sub-pages (About us > Careers etc.). Otherwise you might end up having an complex website structure that makes website adminstration overly difficult for the webmaster… and in extreme situations the user as well.

On the other hand, assuming you number your home page 1.0 and the subpages 1.1, 1.2 etc, you could label the pages of the second global menu from 2.0, 2.1 etc.

I’d say i depends on the qualifications of the client/webmaster…

]]> By: tonant http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5661 tonant Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5661 I’m interested to know how you model menu items in this diagraming approach. In many cases the name of the menu item is not the same as the page itself as such it is often useful to include them in the site diagram.

]]> By: jwithrow http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5662 jwithrow Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5662 Patrick – in cases where the menu item does not match the page name, I put the menu item in parentheses after the page name, such as: Contact Us (Contact) 1.6

]]> By: stryker http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5663 stryker Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5663 I think we can expand the diagram by using colors to add more information.

]]> By: goldmon3 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5664 goldmon3 Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5664 Level 1 can start at 0 (unless you have a ton of sites to document and you want to assign a unique number to each site).

]]> By: mlee3680 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5665 mlee3680 Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-5665 Perfect post. Here’s a tool that helps create Map Mashup providing a step-by-step wizard that generates ready-to-deploy code on any website or blog http://blog.caspio.com/integration/announcing-the-new-and-improved-map-mashup-version-7/

]]> By: Jason Withrow http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-9788 Jason Withrow Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/site-diagrams-mapping-an-information-space/#comment-9788 Danny – good point about having different versions of the diagram, tailored to each stakeholder group. My only concern is having to track multiple versions and the time it could take to create them. I was hoping to serve the needs of both groups at once (in a single diagram), but tailored versions would allow for more specialized information.

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