Design Technique 10: Page Description Diagrams
Another interesting take on the information architecture side of design techniques is the Page Description Diagram. In the article I’ve linked to D. Keith Robinson puts forward a good scenario where he takes a wireframe to a client who doesn’t understand it. These artefacts suit some people better than others and you might assess whether to use one method over another by your expetation of how the client’s (or other stakeholder’s) mind works best at putting concepts together. Some people need to see a wireframe and others just need the information in Page Description Diagrams. OK then how do you go about that? I’m glad you asked.
The Page Description Diagram is simply a text description of each page – its goals and what you see as being important. There is no content here and only descriptions of what you envision the page will contain or an overview of its purpose. It is a generality and what I like particularly about how some people go about this is by prioritising some elements over others on a priority scale. This document can give a designer in the next phase of the project (perhaps that’s still you) a good tool for seeing what the vision of each page is – all the better to support these goals in the final design.
Like a lot of information architecture techniques this is unsurprisingly about capturing information and creating an artefact. Its fine to imagine you can just hold all these concepts in your head as abstract ideas and artistically pull them together. I’ve seen it done that way on numerous occasions – when a freelancer cuts corners its often the artefacts that go first. But as project scopes grow and as sharing information among teams becomes more of the norm in your career you’ll move toward the idea of doing things with process. Toward formal written documentation you can physically forward as a milestone, have signed off by a client or which can be discussed among peers.
Like D. Keith Robinson says in his article – be creative.
