
<p-lg>There were a couple ideas from this week's reading (M&R, W&G) that I found really powerful, and somewhat related.<p-lg>
<p-lg>The first was the idea of Bottom Up IA. So many people build a website expecting people to go to the home page, then browse around until they find what they're looking for. The author suggests (and rightly so) that this isn't a really great approach because people are actually probably going to Google a question looking for an answer, which will drop them into the middle of your website that happens to have a possible answer.Now imagine if you were dropped in the middle of an unfamiliar library with no clear signage (this actually happens every time I have to go to Walmart Home Office, a different building from the one I work in. No signage. Just long windy halls lined with cubicles).<p-lg>
<p-lg>Which brings me to the second area I thought was interesting, Stewart Brand's six layers of buildings:<p-lg>
- Site
- Structure
- SkinServices
- Space
- Stuff
<p-lg>This stood out to me because you can't just expect to fill a building with "stuff" and expect the space to work the way you want. If you put signage in a library that sounded like a theme park or super goofy, people would have a hard time navigating the space. These 6 layers are important for your website as well, and they need to be thought through.<p-lg>