Brian - thanks for the thorough and thoughtful response. The "we'll go to three" levels of navigation is one that I'm wrestling with right now. We're using a similar criteria as our first cut, and then diving deeper or coming up where appropriate. Like anything I expect, determining where existing content lives in the new IA is based upon a set of criteria. For me, these include:
* place in current IA * place in physical domain directory structure * whether the content seems globally relevant vs. very specific * who owns it currently * the nature of its current IA or design 'Course, none of these are absolute qualifiers -- they're odors, if nothing else. And, there's always the concern that not enough attention is given to really reorganizing the deep content. But I guess at some point, life moves on. :) Cheers, Todd On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Bryan Minihan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I had a very similar political/IA problem a few years ago redesigning > an intranet portal for a very large company (120K employees, 42 > countries, 18 languages, and extremely distributed content > development, including 9000 custom "widgets" we had no control > over). > > To cut to the chase (it was an 18 month project, more or less), we > got reps from each BU to agree on the depth and scope of the top of > the taxonomy, and commitment to adopt that throughout their > navigation. Everything below the first 3 levels was their own > domain, and it worked very well considering once you got past the 1st > 3 layers of navigation, you were in "your own BU space" anyway and > most of the content down there had to be very specific to what you > were looking for. > > Some groups had very loose, shallow taxonomies (e.g. HR), but our R&D > dept, for instance, had at least 10 more levels below the top 3, and > about 9 different vectors across which they sliced. > > The UI was a little easier, because we already had a common global > stylesheet and color theme everyone had agreed to adopt. On the > other hand, we tended not to strictly enforce design standards in > highly-specific apps, and opted instead to call attention to any > content that appeared to "general employees". That meant about 80% > of the publicly navigable UI looked and behaved the same, while the > BUs had a large number of apps to feel comfortable in and design for > specific expert groups (fewer complaints, and cheaper for them to > outsource, that is =]). > > As for your questions: > Incentives? For the UI, we used a ton of industry accessibility > reports and user feedback illustrating how the standard styles and > fonts we chose were more usable and accessible. For the taxonomy, > the big incentive was that if we could optimize everyone's ability > to get down to the deepest levels of the company as fast as possible. > Our central group maintained the motto: Our job is to get people to > your content without having to think about it. That helped everyone > see that we weren't trying to reorganize their BUs, but were just > trying to help everyone work better. > > Managing expectations? After convening our BU reps, they did much of > the work for us, but we had a pretty good roadmap following our > initial design and a dozen or so "road shows" to get everyone > comfortable with what we were, and weren't, planning to do. > > Determining boundaries? The rule of thumb we used was: If a taxonomy > change generally makes the "global news", it probably belongs in the > global taxonomy. Or better yet, if a changed required very > domain-specific experts to work through a global bureaucracy to > change one of their apps or add a menu item, it was probably too > specific to be in the global taxonomy. > > What didn't work? > - Trying to map out what the entire taxonomy might look like, > including every BU and global item in a single layer. No one > understood it and it was obsolute 2 hours before we finished - waste > of time. We wound up showing the top 3 layers and a few sample sites > to illustrate how it might appear. > > - Using dummy 'lorem ipsum' text in our mockups. If I had a dime > for every time someone asked us for "the english mockups", I'd be > rich. > > - Trying to delegate maintenance of the global taxonomy to specific > groups, or trying to create a group to manage it. Wound up > leveraging existing governance teams who had very little time to > review/approve suggested changes. This also helped clarify how much > throttling the global taxonomy could take, and winnowed out a few > misplaced items early on after the redesign. > > If you have any specific questions feel free to contact me offline. > I couldn't resist posting here since your situation sounded exactly > like where I was a few years back. Best of luck, I hope you have > some good contacts throughout the business =] > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=31556 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- ____________________________ http://www.oombrella.com oombrella /a/ gmail.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... 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