Scoping a website

I would argue that Jonathan Lane in "Information Architecture - Planning out a website" misses some of the main points about creating a useful website. The first decision you need to make is to decide on the purpose and context of the site. It’s fundamentally a publishing project in a dynamic environment enabling added functionality.

Design and functionality are necessarily interrelated, (they shape the look and feel of the site) and are driven by the motivations for the site and what you want it to do. You cannot determine the functionality of the site without understanding the reason for the site. Back to the purpose and context of the site, including its potential audience.

Clarifying the purpose of a client can be a challenge. You need to define the scope of the project and to work with this expression of purpose and manage it in both a financial and technical way. You also need to manage a client’s expectations.

In his diagram, Jonathan Lane is confusing the mind map of the purpose with how to structure the site. For example, there is an underlying assumption that there is only one entry point to the site. “The Dung Beatles” would want fast easy entry into dates, store or discography. Just as abc.net.au/news takes us immediately to breaking news, or the Encyclopaedia Britannica has multiple entry points, we need to be able to enter /store /tours /forum /music. The “Dung Beatles” would probably also require a good interface with social networking such as Myspace and Facebook. Structure is integrally related to clarity of purpose and a good understanding of context is crucial.

Jonathan Lane has designed static pages and the high level business needs, could best be represented with bits of content in different places, some of that dynamic e.g database powered. Is international touring in their sights, do other languages need to be considered? General accessibility including disabled access needs to be considered.

If you begin with a scope, design and content emerge from that.

For example I worked on a site for an Australian media commentator and as part of the briefing we analysed 11 comparable (some potentially ‘competitor’) sites in terms of content and design. The purpose was to review baseline sites and understand the purpose and content and points of difference of the site being built.

I believe Jonathan Lane’s article is simplistic in its approach.