[thelist] information architecture & visio

[Paola Kathuria]

"A. Erickson" wrote:
> I'm looking for some thoughts on ways to present information architecture to
> clients in an attractive and easily-understood manner.
> 
> I've seen people use visio and then I've also seen large stacks of paper
> where nearly every page in the site is "layed out" with an indication of the
> number of links that need to go on the page and the things that *must* be
> there (logo, tagline, photo of the pres, etc.)

I'm not sure that the two things you've described are the same
thing as they describe different levels of abstraction; doesn't
the second paragraph describes interface design?

For site structure, I use CorelFlow 2 - I don't know if it's
still available.  The IA's on the SIG-IA list mostly use Visio.
Visio output looks stunning but I like the lo-tech approach of
CorelFlow as I suspect things take 10 times longer in Visio
because of all its options and features.

My diagrams are very simple and in black and white, and
distributed on 1-6 standard letter-sized (A4) sheets (depending
on the site).  Clients tend to copy and fax them and I don't want
any info lost in the process.  An example of them can be seen as
part of an article on written requirements
http://www.limitless.co.uk/innovations/library/requirements-high.html
(this link bypasses the document which explains the diagrammed site):


Paola