Information Design, Edu and You

I'm so excited to introduce a new blog team member and brand new blogger, Josh Isaak, web designer and much-esteemed (although he'd probably say much-maligned) colleague. Please welcome him. (And follow him on Twitter too!)

In his seminal work, Information Anxiety, Richard Saul Wurman lays out the basic principles of information architecture. As is often the case with such groundbreaking texts, the challenge lays not in understanding the authors theories and concepts, but in applying them in a practical manner to ones own work. Over the next few months, I will attempt to find that practical application with the field of higher ed and web site architecture.

The basis of of Wurman's work is the LATCH principle. All information can be organized in 5 different ways ...

L - Location
A - Alphabetical
T - Time
C - Category
H - Hierarchical

Let's explore these organization schemes in the context of high ed. This is in no way a comprehensive study of all possibilities, but more of skimming of the surface, to show examples of application. Next post is our first stop on LATCH .... location.