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According
to the cover notes, Clay Andres, the author, comes from the American
west coast web design community. He is cofounder of one of these
west coast firms and the interviews and quotes throughout his book
as well as the example sites show that he is acquainted with many
other similar people and companies. His background is in old media,
design, typography and journalism. Strange then that the book begins
with Information Architecture (or Hierarchical Structure of Information)
and Navigation.
The
first two chapters are extremely weak and seem to ignore much of
the rich literature which exists on the topics discussed. The first
chapter on structure and organization of web site information has
a few observations such as "The two-level hierarchy is quite
flexible and is easily expanded." However, that's where it
ends. There is no reasoning behind the observation, no analysis
and no strategies for making such a design choice. The side bar
interview with the authors colleague Gargan does little to enlighten
us further. By page 7, Andres appears to be advocating design according
to the business structure of the client organization. Somehow one
feels he is not a fan of Jakob Nielsen.
Moving
on Andres tries to explain the development of an information structure
and he almost touches on disciplines like Data and Object modeling.
It's a pity that he evidently has little knowledge in these areas
as it would make the narrative stronger.
By
page 10, we are told that 4 top level menu choices are "obvious"
but without any adequate explanation of why this should be so. It
wasn't at all obvious to me. Chapter 1 continues in this vein. Observation
without explanation!
Chapter
2 continues the now established pattern. "You don't want to
force browsers to traverse a long hierarchy to find information..."
So advocacy for breadth rather than depth style navigation but sadly
no justification or explanation.
The
explanation of navigation continues and all to briefly goals get
a mention. We are told that we must, "create the paths of hierarchy
and allow navigation that ignores hierarchy." Yes! But how
do we do this? The book never bothers to explain. I found myself
asking it "Why?" and "How?" throughout Chapter
2. The most worrying single thing about this navigation section
and the book as a whole - the User never ever gets a mention. It
appears that Users are unimportant in "Great Web Architecture".
By
the end of the second chapter, I was ready to stick the book back
on the shelf and do something more rewarding instead. That however
would have been a pity, as it gets better.
Things
can only get better!
Chapter
3 looks at defining design elements and suddenly the author is on
firmer ground. As the song said, "Things can only get better..."
and they do! Looking at the Getty Center site starts to reveal Andres'
strengths and some good design analysis emerges. He begins to look
at how to tailor a design to target a demographic. All good Industrial
Age design ethics and for industrial age firms merely marketing
on the web, it has to represent good advice. [ See Alan Cooper on
Demographics and the Industrial
Age ] Chapter 3 concludes with a example of how to design for
expansion. [ A theme which Laura
Arlov also touched on recently. ]
Chapter
4 is "Tufte-esque" with its title "Envisioning Information".
However, I didn't like the Nielsen-esque approach which suggested
that the web was all about the visual communication of information.
Yes, it is I here you cry, but it is also about Extranet Applications
and interactive community sites and new Application Services and
many more things besides. It has become more than just a marketing
vessel. If you are going to lay claim to the architecture of web
sites then you have to encompass these wider applications too.
Chapter
4 really does start to offer value and there were several David
Siegel style tips on html implementation. The side bar interviews
started to get more interesting. The "Specialized" web
site example appealed to the mountain biker in me so my judgment
may be impaired as I empathized with the muddy characters in the
photos.
Chapter
5 looks at typography and on the whole I liked it. However, I can't
claim to be an expert in this field.
Multimedia
Chapter
6 shows us that this is a newer book than "Creating Killer
Websites" for example. It looks at Flash and Shockwave and
several other multimedia options for the web designer. I liked the
example sites in this chapter as they demonstrate how to use multimedia
creatively and constructively rather than just for show. There is
some reasonable debate about the pros and cons of Flash in particular.
Information
and Edward Tufte again
Chapter
7 kicks off the second half of the book. It sets out to define Web
Architecture but I found the definition weak. Somehow Web Architecture
by the author's definition fails to be Information Architecture,
Interaction Design or Web Design but something that is none of them
and yet distinct in its own right. Huh?
The
study of large information sites such as encyclopedia sites again
overlaps with Edward Tufte material. I found the comparative study
of Compton's vs. Britannica interesting. Again, this is accompanied
with a good description of some well designed sites but offers us
little analysis on how the design was achieved.
I
was left with the conclusion that the book was offering little more
than the advice that reverse engineering someone else's great site
is the best way to achieve a good, quick result. For sure this goes
on but I didn't have to read through 130 pages to learn how to lift
an existing design.
The
Plumb Design Thinkmap example was an all very interesting look at
the visual display of information [ Edward Tufte again ] but it
had little relevance to Great Web Architecture.
Selling
and eCommerce
Again
Chapter 8 is packed with some beautiful eCommerce site examples.
However, once again there is little meat in the narrative, it's
all description without explanation. It takes Andrew Sather of Adjancency
to point out, in the side bar, that eCommerce Design is Application
Design. Application Design implies Users and behavior. The Chapter
concludes with a comparison of the Dell and Apple online stores.
Self
Promotion
As
though to emphasis the "old media" design influence, the
book begins to wind up with a look at self-promotion sites. Some
of the great names in Web Site Design and Development have their
sites dissected. Most interesting is a look at the contrast between
the [ deceased ] StudioArchetype site and others such as Razorfish.
StudioArchetype was one of my personal favorites :-) There is some
passable explanation of implementation level design and analysis
of how StudioArchetype designed their two level navigation structure.
Finally,
in perhaps the best side bar of all, Thomas Mueller of Razorfish
points out what the book should have been advocating from the beginning,
" What matters is finding the things in the site useful wherever
they are. We are moving away from hierarchical trees and static
hierarchical structures..."
10
Questions Anyone
The
final chapter asks a series of ten questions to a number of influential
creative web design people. Some of these questions look at process
and project management. There are a few gems but the signal to noise
ratio is high. If you have read this far, you may as well stick
it through to the end.
Conclusion
Too
many books recently have failed to tackle the really big issues
for web site architecture and design. None has so far delivered
breadth and depth in fields such as Information Architecture, Design,
Communication, Editing, Navigation and Usability. If you want to
lay claim to the term architecture applied to Web Site design then
you must be addressing all of these issues adequately and providing
analysis of problems and teaching design solutions for those problems.
Sadly, Great Web Architecture fails to deliver. It's superbly chosen
example sites and lush color screen shots are merely dress to impress,
there is little meat on which to chew. The lack of analysis and
constructive educational design solutions mean that the example
sites merely remind you how inadequate your own work is, in comparison,
whilst offering little to help you improve.
Recommendation
2/5.
Weak! Looks wonderful but sadly isn't all that "Great"
and isn't about architecting anything much. It is about the web
and it does show off some nice sites. Read the interviews and analyse
the screen shots.
Order
this book...
Check
out the Companion
Website for "Great Web Architecture"
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