Pervasive Information Architecture: Designing Cross-Channel User Experiences

by Andrea Resmini, Luca Rosati

Pervasive Information Architecture explains the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of pervasive information architecture (IA) through detailed examples and real-world stories. It offers insights about trade-offs that can be made and techniques for even the most unique design challenges. The book will help readers master agile information structures while meeting their unique needs on such devices as smart phones, GPS systems, and tablets. The book provides examples showing how model and shape information to adapt itself to users’ needs, goals, and seeking strategies; reduce disorientation and increase legibility and way-finding in digital and physical spaces; and alleviate the frustration associated with choosing from an ever-growing set of information, services, and goods. It also describes relevant connections between pieces of information, services and goods to help users achieve their goals. This book will be of value to practitioners, researchers, academics, andstudents in user experience design, usability, information architecture, interaction design, HCI, web interaction/interface designer, mobile application design/development, and information design. Architects and industrial designers moving into the digital realm will also find this book helpful.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Reference

272 pages, Paperback

First published March 23, 2011

About the author

Information architect, researcher, compulsive reader, pensive writer, cross-channel piano player, husband & dad. Place-maker, author of "Pervasive Information Architecture".
President, Information Architecture Institute.

Reviews

[Leonard Houx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book took me through some big peaks and troughs. Initially, I was amazed by the rich multidisciplinarity of their approach, bringing in linguisitics, library science, film theory, literature, wayfinding, architecture, and cartography. Even more, I was awed by the prospect of Pervasive Information Architecture itself: how you create truly integrated experiences between places, channels, and devices. But, in the end, I was frustrated and a bit despondent by the lack of practical insight.

Resmini and Rosati provide five main themes, which they call 'heuristics' (but whose names don't necessarily give away what their ideas actually are):

place making (orient users and give them a sense of home)

consistency (use faceted classification, mix top-down and bottom up taxonomies, remember that it's all relative anyway and how people organise things depends on what's important to them)

resilience (let users make their mark on your places/sites/apps, bear in mind different information behaviours

reduction (make sites less confusing to use, but not less rich and interesting);

correlation (used faceted classification... wait a sec, isn't this 'consistency'?).

At the end of each 'heuristic' I was hoping for some practical application. But, the authors would just, so to speak, wink and ask that I bear with them. But, in the end, the practical application amounted to a few pages at the end that amounted to little more than some practices I could have guessed anyway.

In the end, I reckon Resmini and Rosati are clever, interesting chaps – your ideal dinner guests. Great, good stuff. But I don't want to read a book about that.

[Mikal · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was quite a challenge to finish.

Does this book want to be a theoretical review of Cross-channel information architecture, or an empirical guide about how to apply it for your own use?
While the heart of this book 'wants' to be about the empirical (just read the book description, its all about the 'how). The heart of the authors clearly lies in the theoretical.
The authors define five heuristics:
1. Place-making
2. Consistency
3. Resilience
4. Reduction
5. Correlation
But the authors also take the longest of the long windy road to describe each. The authors include a number of 'tongue in cheek' jokes that pose rhetorically: 'you may be asking what does this have to do with that' or 'time for a little break. fancy some bagpipes?' to me aren't cute references that bring the reader along but examples of poorly written text. There is no reason why concepts like their inane short hand for categorizing user tasks made it to the final book.

I'm a bit frustrated because this book needed to be written. However in spite of the author's self-proclaimed expertise in the subject we get no case studies from the authors experience. Instead we get theoretical examples about grocery shopping without the rigor as to the details of the how.

The heuristics are good and I will take time to review the book to find out the salient points as the authors have yet to learn to step outside of their own writing. Sadly, each reader will have to develop their own framework for applying the insights as the authors instead fell in love with the theory of their own ideas as opposed to the application of their own ideas.

[HomeInMyShoes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not everyone is going to love this book, but I did. Andrea goes perhaps a little off-track every now and then, but there is usually a point to the wanderings. After the first couple of chapters the information comes clearer and one is rewarded with views on what makes an information architecture work across channels.

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holistic perspective

I really enjoyed the praxis perspective give it this book. It arms you with a deeper method of thinking about designing multimodal services and experiences. Thoroughly enjoyed learning some new tools and mental models as I work on IA projects.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fantastically imaginative textbook and the one that I keep returning to the MOST. The criticisms about lack of practicality aren't fair - it just takes a little bit of work on the reader's behalf to connect the dots and see how these concepts can apply to your own projects. Really ahead of its time in 2011 to be writing about pervasive IA and it's only gotten more relevant since then. The book is very interdisciplinary so you have to keep an open mind while reading; the examples used aren't always immediately clear, but it all comes together. It's the complete opposite of a "dry, academic textbook" - it's creative and mind-expanding and all Information Architects/UX Designers of the future should read this book.

[Xuejin Chuang · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book could have been thinner and concise if the author did not add unnecessary background stories. I was constantly skipping paragraphs.

Now should UX-ers pick up this book to read? If you are a newbie, i would recommend you to stay away from this as this is too theoratical. For experienced designers, reading this book should give a refreshing perspective on designing IA. We have been doing this for years, and what the author does is reframing them in a more abstract manner (read: philosophy, academic). E.g Correlation is what we are doing in related cross-linking, personalisation. Resilience is what we are doing in providing multiple paths to the same destination that suit different user mindsets.

However, I won't be picking up this book again. I wish i could give a 2.5

[Robert Bogue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I view Information Architecture (IA) as the organization of information around you. I picked up Pervasive Information Architecture: Designing Cross-Channel User Experiences because I wanted to see how others thought about the problem of keeping messages consistent. In what I’m trying to do I was less concerned about eCommerce / brick-and-mortar mixtures of experiences – which the book spends a great deal of time on – rather I was more interested in how our experience on our desktop, on our phone, and on our bookshelf impacted the way we should think about information architecture.

Click here to read the full review

[Kisholi · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tad long winded and really makes you work for it. The overall insights/theories/examples are great - I just wish the key takeaways had been presented more clearly and practically.

[Number 41 Media]

2 copies - August 5, 2016