Project Proposal for Information Architecture Evaluation and Redesign for LANIC Website

Team Members: Diana Miranda, Kam McEvoy, Norma Palomino, Tabassum Khan, Verónica Parsiale

1. Introduction

 The Latin American Network Information Center’s (LANIC) (http://www.lanic.utexas.edu) mission is “to facilitate access to Internet-based information to, from, or on Latin America.” Its main audience includes people living in Latin America, as well as those around the world who have an interest in the region. While its website is designed to facilitate academic research, the site has also become an important gateway to Latin America for about anyone looking for information on this region.

 LANIC reviews, evaluates, and compiles a broad directory of links to Internet resources on and from Latin America, available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

After several years, the site grew in pages, links, and information, making it difficult to navigate, to maintain consistency across different pages, resulting in many cases in overlapping information.   

 2. The Project

 2.1 Purpose

 This project constitutes an attempt to analyze, evaluate, and offer an alternative design for LANIC’s website. The final product will be a proposal document and key web pages templates to be submitted to LANIC’s site managers for consideration.

 2.2 Objectives

            a) To gather data about the content, context, and users of the site regarding its current design and usability.

            b) To assess the strengths and weaknesses of the site considering LANIC’s mission, goals, organizational structure, and users’ profile.

c) To develop an information architecture strategy for redefining the site.

2.2.1 Critical Success Factors

 These factors are twofold. First, the collaboration of the site’s internal and external users in the process of evaluation, as well as the availability of the documentation by LANIC’s managers. Overcoming research resistance constitutes the most important factor because this project is actually assessing and redefining an existent site, which holds an established culture of using related to it. The second is creativity, given the limited budget and human resources available.

 2.3 Assumptions 

1. The scope of this project does not encompass the implementation new IA design at the LANIC site.
2. The deadlines and timelines as stated in the proposal are subject to changes as we gather further insight into the project.
3. The group and individual responsibilities stated in the report shall also be updated as the project progresses.

 2.4 Constraints

1. Limited budget.
2. Limited access to tools that could be most beneficial.
3. There are no designated technology or functional members on the LANIC team to get inputs on the project.
4. There is limitation on the time that can be devoted by the team members for fully professional work.

 2.5 Risks    

1. One of the mains risks is to redefine a site that is difficult to maintain given the particular characteristics of the institution, and the current workflow.

2.      There is also the possibility of undermining Latin American user’s needs (i.e. external users) by following the demands of the internal users (LANIC managers, researchers, etc.).

3.      A third risk is related to the implementation of a site with limited technological resources, because it can contrast with the general informational architecture of most sites at UT-Austin. 

2.6 Team Members

 Tabassum Khan, tabassum@mail.utexas.edu

Kam McEvoy, kamcevoy@mail.utexas.edu

Diana Miranda, diana@correo.co.cr

Norma Palomino, norpa@gslis.utexas.edu

Verónica Parsiale, parsiale@gslis.utexas.edu

2.7 Team Responsibilities 

3. Project Planning

 3.1 Project Scope

 ·         Evaluation the site as a whole

·         Focus on pages with main architectural problems. Development of page templates addressing current problems and proposed solution.

 3.2 Deliverables

·         Page templates evidencing proposed solutions for main problems identified in the site’s evaluation phase.

·         Documentation:

The group shall maintain the following details collectively: -

Project proposal

Project Plan

Requirements study results

Information Architecture methodology

Design templates/ Project prototype

Feedback from LANIC team

3.3 Timeline for Deliverables

 The timelines as detailed here shall be maintained :

 3.4 General content specifications

LANIC’s website consists primarily in pages with links to relevant resources on or from Latin America.  

3.4.1 Existing content and design 

Links are organized in two main categories: Countries and Subject areas. Within each country page, links are divided into main subject areas subcategories. Likewise, within each subject area, links are broken into country, regional, and international resources subcategories. 

Example:

Country page: Brazil

Subcategories: Academic Research Resources, African Diaspora, Agriculture & Ranching, Architecture, Arts & Humanities, … Health, etc. 

Subject page:  Health & Medical Sciences

Subcategories: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, … Regional Resources, Subject Areas (Aids, Cancer, Pharmaceuticals, etc.) 

LANIC’s architectural design is based on the principle of simplicity, partly because of the weak technological communications infrastructure available in Latin America. The graphics are kept to a minimum because of the bandwidth and connectivity constraints faced by users in Latin American countries. However, this approach produces a lack of consistency among the different pages categories and subcategories. 

On the other hand, the huge amount of links and their unstable nature, impedes the development of certain tools that would enhance consistency, such as an index., but we believe other solutions are available.  

One of the main problems with the existent architecture design is that the links under Brazil-Health, and Health & Medical Sciences-Brazil, for example, won’t be the same. Therefore, if a researcher looks for information under Brazil-Health, but doesn’t look under Health & Medical Sciences-Brazil, he will probably miss important links. Even though for LANIC’s web authors there is a difference between the content of country pages and the content of subject pages, it may not be clear to the end user.  

According to Kent Norsworthy, who is the person in charge, the idea is that the “Brazil-Health” page must have the general links about health in that country and the “Health and Medical Sciences-Brazil” page must have the specific links related to the topic in Brasil.  This is a good argument but it means that an important part of the project should be to think how to make clear to the end user this difference between categories.

The index page for the site fails to introduce to a new user some good features offered by the site like access to twelve specific databases, site map, site tour and so on.  

3.4.2 New Content and Design 

This project proposes to keep the same content available but to change the architecture and design. The main idea is to improve the web site’s users usability and increase the team productivity.