Rating: 
Summary: I begin to know what Information Architecture is all about
Review: In the previous, I thought information architecture (IA) is just about organizing the content, defining the labels and designing the navigation schemes. After reading this book, I understand IA is much much broader and useful than I can imagine.This book explains why we need IA and shows us steps and examples of how to do it well. The first few chapters of the book are about some basic user experience design and usability knowledge. They are useful if you are new to this field. After that few chapters, the book becomes more and more exciting. The author started to teach us the foundation of many IA techniques including user interviews, card sort exercise, meta data, controlled vocabulary, personas and scenarios, task analysis, web UI design and diagramming. Personally, I love chapter 9 - "Making It All Up, Writing It All Down" so much. It is about diagramming and documentation. It makes me understand that there are a lot of stuffs I have to prepare before I really build a web site. The example on re-organizing the Digital Web Magazine in chapter 10 also opens my eyes. Thank you, Christina!
Rating:
Summary: The Straight Goods
Review: In this book, Wodtke presents a no-nonsense design methodology. Initial words condemn the shallowness of a "design-by-guru" methodology, and the rest of the book follows this up by giving plenty of hooks for thought and reflective design. Even if you are a seasoned designer and already understand and use the fundamentals that Wodtke puts forward, this book is a valuable opportunity to get into the mind of another designer. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Information Architecture (IA) moved closer to a science
Review: The ergonomically correct design of a web page is a very difficult task. The placement of information on pages and links to other pages is a very inexact, yet necessary science. However, great strides have been made in understanding how humans follow the flow of web pages, what attracts us and what sends us scurrying away in frustration. Many of the results of this ongoing research are summarized in this book.
Information architecture is a new area and it is defined as the overall structure of a web presence. It starts at the initial idea of what you expect the web page to offer, continues through to the expectations that the user will have, passing through every facet of what the web page presents to the world. If there is one thing that the dot-bomb phenomena should have taught all of us it is that creating high quality web pages that work is a very hard thing to do. Subtle clues such as proximity, a slight difference in a color or font, location on the page from top to bottom and left to right all communicate something to the user. While those messages are very soft-spoken, they are very real and powerful, so it is necessary to learn them to be successful. The expenses of doing a quality job are much higher than almost everyone realized, so anything that can reduce the difficulty is appreciated.
This book will do that for you. It will show you how to start the project by expanding the original idea, how to storyboard the page and how to refine it at the end. It can save you a lot of money and also is an excellent choice as a text for courses in how to design web pages.
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Summary: Pretty standard stuff
Review: There ain't much to say about web-building that doesn't boil down to Jared Spool's motto: "It depends..."
Does this book fill a real need? Does it clarify the challenges that face designers who have to be business people? Not really. Does it present research in a way that goes beyond what's out there? No, it just uses jargon and gets tangled in terminological quibbles.
Rating:
Summary: Don't miss this book
Review: This book is full of that kind of energy that makes it hard to stop reading. You can tell that Christina Wodke takes IA as something very personal, and has placed all that passion into these pages. She starts by making a solid case for IA, then proceeds to ditch the gurus and their hard rules with braveness and wit. Next, she opens her toolbox, and starts showing you an impressive set of tools which are exhaustively described, with all the secrets you need to use them effectively and great examples. It's the most practical book on Information Architecture that I've read so far. It doesn't matter if you are new to the discipline or an experienced architect, you'll still learn lots of useful stuff. The traditional subjects of IA are presented in a refreshing point of view, and it explains subjects that nobody before had revealed, with clarity and detail. For example: best practices for developing user research, how to build a good taxonomy, a great chapter on interaction design, and all you need to know about documentation - just to mention sample topics that were particularly relevant to me. Then she wraps it all up into an exercise project, and as if that wasn't enough the goes on to give you greats bits of advice on how to be a better professional, like how to get out of a creativity block and how to win the respect of the people you work with. Prof. Norman is best as describing it in the back cover: "what else can you ask for?" Within the first pages she says it's a small book, I'd say that's not quite precise. She also says she's put her whole brain into this book, she surely did. So my recommendation would be: don't waste the chance to feed on a really bright brain.
Rating:
Summary: It's worth taking the time to read a book like this
Review: This book won't present shocking facts about IA but it puts in writing many things that come in handy when you have to work in this field. The author includes good examples and the book can be read from cover to cover without feeling overwhelmed. Overall, it's worth taking the time out to read a book like this.
Rating:
Summary: Clear, sharp and helpful
Review: This is a clear, concise guide to Web site architecture written with a sense of humor and whimsy that makes it an entertaining read. Christina brushes aside pat answers and offers an extraordinarily sharp analysis of Web architecture based on what counts most: helping users find what they want. Here's a book that offers important basic information on everything from organizing your content (she's exceptional at approaching a complex concept analytically) to deciding where on the page the links should go. And it's illustrated with loads of screen shots and examples from Web sites to help it all make sense. I'd rank it an "A" or "A+++++++" on the eBay ranking scale.
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Summary: insight into a true leader
Review: this volume is an extremely valuable lesson from a true leader in the field. Wodtke provides insight into the thinking behind some of the most-used services on the Internet today.
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Summary: Another book on usability
Review: Three first chapters are quite original. But nothing new in the rest of the book. Good ideas. But I won't say that is a basic book or a must read. Is interesting for people who builds websites or deeply interested in them. Is a mixture of usability, test, architecture. And you cannot say the last word on every topic in the world in 300 pages.
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Summary: What the doctor ordered
Review: When I read the following, I knew I'd purchased the right book: "You are going to do it. You might be the project or product manager, the designer, the engineer, or the marketing guy. You're not really sure why it landed on your desk; heck, you're looking around to see if there is another desk you could slide onto. But as your hope for getting someone else to do it fades, you realize it has to be done. And this is the book I wrote for you." I am a software engineer (primarily web application development) and I spend most of my time writing "backend" code to query databases, apply business logic and generate server driven web pages (much like the one you are viewing right now). As these applications grow more sophisticated it becomes more and more important to organize the which, how and what of content. This comes up in many ways: the order in which the user sees information, the navigation from screen to screen, the amount of data being display and so on. This book begins with a description and basis for information architecture and then introduces a variety of principles that one can employ in creating an information architecture for a web site. Some examples of topics include wayfinding, navigation, organization, interviewing and mapping content. The author's voice maintains an informal tone - it's obvious the author did not want to sound pedantic. However, the content is rich and well developed so one doesn't feel patronized. The hidden value of this book is that it gives many examples when a principle is asserted. Just by touring the websites given with these principles in mind will make one a better information architect, be it formal or informal. So my rating is 5 stars; loved it, loved it, loved it!
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