Talk:Website IA

Website IA

Website IA initiation (office hour 06-08-2023) Script

Website IA initiation (office hour 06-08-2023) is the office hour event on June, 8th about Initiating Website IA

Preview video

https://youtu.be/inzTVq140mg?si=0XcWUbv_1vyR0KTO (38:28)

Introduction

We are in the office hour with Kevin.

Project: CNMCyber IA

Yesterday Kevin and Erastus were assigned to a project which is CNMCyber IA. It is new, we've never done it before so I will try to do what I feel it can be. I'm not sure whether it's a right or wrong way but at least we will we will do it.

The Idea for CNMCyber.com

I will start with CNMCyber.com which is important because technically the idea of the website should be expressed in the first paragraph. Right now, if we look at CNMCyber.com it says “CNMCyber.com is the primary hostname of CNMCyber and its signature CNMCyber website”, which is correct but at the same time what we see, the idea is like a signature. Basically, CNMCyber should be the place where everyone who is looking for CNMCyber can type in any search engine it will show this CNMCyber.com.

Prototype for CNMCyber.com

CNMCyber, we will advertise as the pre-entry level jobs incubator so maybe we can use the Prototype which I created before. However, before the prototype was made mostly for comprehensive career services so the challenge is to keep the prototype as it is or to concentrate on CNMCyber as a pre in entry-level jobs only so it can be “Welcome to the home of pre-entry level jobs” is the question.

We will use the Prototype that was developed before for Career Services: Learn, Network, Partner, Work it might work better there I'm not sure. it is your Sprint therefore your decision. I will add a link here to the IA page. The DNS records should be on a separate page, and they are also outdated.

For now, I will just put a link to IA but we will need to put a more comprehensive solution, some sort of section which will lead to different pages.

Creating CNMCyber.com IA

Here we will say that CNMCyber.com is the primary description of information architecture ( IA) for CNMCyber.com website. Instead of saying CNM website every time because CNMCyber.com also can be the host, we can add (hereinafter the site). So now we will use the site meaning CNMCyber.com.

if I were you, I would go to information architecture and put some information here about what information architecture is, I see that there is a lecture I created but this really brief. In the information architecture page, there should be some explanation, what information architecture is. Some refer to the information architecture of their corporation as Big IA and Small IA to refer to a website or some like web resource. In our case, information architecture will be the small IA.

Information architecture is generally how to align the content in the website, so the person who will go there can find the information that they need and should be usable.

For now, I will just put the sections, we need to work on them and arrange them better. Based on our work right now we can get back and redefine the table on the project page.

Creating CNMCyber.com IA: Idea

The site shall… There are several purposes, you have some business degree in a sales funnel or marketing funnel, and there are several types of customers. We have unaware customers, for instance, if we want to capture someone who is looking for a job but has no specialty, they are looking for their first ever job and they live in Eldoret. We want this person to type in the search like “no specialty job’, for instance, and we will show up on the results.

The idea is;

1. Respond on requests for no specialty jobs via web search engines.- That is someone who is unaware.
2. Educate Prospect leads about job offering.- This is for someone who knows that to get no specialty job go to CNMCyber.com. Our goal is to bring them as leads to our website, so we need to work with web search engines. For prospective leads who want to be educated, we educate them about job offerings.
3. Accommodate those customers who decided to start by leading them to the registration and further to CNM Cert if we use it for the first course- This is for those who decided that they want to start we need we need to help them to get started.
4. Inform about news including announcements for CNMCyber events.
5. Redirect to Careerprise- Kevin: Will we keep records for potential employees so that someone looking for employees will be able to scroll and see the qualifications of these people looking for a job?

Gary: I didn't get this idea clearly but right now, we're drafting, I'm showing you what the process is but you will get there. If I didn't get precisely you…

Kevin: Will it inform potential employers or potential employees who are actively looking for jobs or will we offer this service on Careerprise?

Gary: Yeah, it will have to be on a different service. If you want to give that kind of service to employers for money, it should not be on CNMCyber.com, but we can lead those people to say Careerprise. It will redirect those consumers who are looking for career services, employees, Workforce preparation services or any other employment service to Careerprise. We will need to define which one.

So this is the idea, I'm more of showing the process but I want you to think about those who are already in the program like you or Erastus or Rita or someone else whether CNMCyber.com will be useful, maybe yes.

This is like really raw, it must be developed and must be noted there.

Creating CNMCyber.com IA: Personas

In terms of personas, we can create some;

1. Layla -- 18-year-old… any younger we will need parents’ consent probably it will be complicated. Let's move with a legal age like …18-year-old female leaving in Eldoret, who recently graduated from High School and thinking about her future career.
2. Zayn -- Counselor of Employment Agency.
3. Nadia -- 25-year-old female working on a low-paying job because she doesn't have qualifications to get more paying ones.
4. Yusuf – 30-year-old male has some tech skills but lacks experience.
5. Lila – a 35-year-old female who has some education but lacks recommendations to get interviews.

We could go on and on.

Kevin: Yeah, the main points I have seen like how it will be developed so we can develop it further.

Gary: You need to think of who really can go and then why we need this persona. You will try to think how this person will feel when they get to this website, whether they will find something which they are looking for.

Creating CNMCyber.com IA: Hierarchy

I would say CNMCyber.com was initially imagined as for career services like a full spectrum. Eventually, I will make at least five different websites. One will be just like a shell, it will be like the landing page (registration), and then for those looking for a job it will send them to a worker-oriented site, For those looking just to learn skills, we send them to our partner. I don't want to be kind of a training company as I said so we will work with our partners, we will send them to their sites. Those working in the industry looking for partnerships should accommodate them and so on and so forth.

For CNMCyber.com, I feel like it should be a comprehensive website, and should have many pages. I will probably put the whole orientation on the web so you need to figure out hierarchy of how it will be. Research on the internet about hierarchy of a website for information architecture. Makeup something because I don't want you to do what I know. I know what needs to be done but I might be lacking something.

Creating CNMCyber.com IA: Roadmaps

For every Persona, you will create roadmaps. For instance;

1. As Layla, I go to bing.com, type “first job remote Eldoret”, get cnmcyber.com suggestion on the second screen, click there get to the landing page.

So what she needs to see will be like a roadmap like noted this page okay read about this decided to try click. Based on this, you will be able to create the roadmap.

Creating CNMCyber.com IA: Labels and Navigations

Technically, labels are based on hierarchy. That is how you will label your pages, and what people will see on the top.

Menu and labels are kind of similar. Instead of menu, I used navigations. How many menus should it have?

Maybe only on mobile, otherwise I don't like drop-downs like JavaScript based which appears on the side. It can be like a static drop-down which you click and then go like on mobile. It can be sandwich style which will be better.

Creating CNMCyber.com IA: Search

What will be on the search page? How people will search the website? Put something there.

Conclusion

There should be some category for this page but we have just started so you can think further about it. Based on your work, we will refine and polish it. We may rearrange the topics, put in different personas, and chunk the idea a little. We can do many different things but at least we have started.

We can continue on Tuesday, I wanted to change the time but now I'm not sure because it looks like it's working for you and you are one of the most active people.

Kevin: We will continue on Tuesday and I'm sure by then I have done something and I'll also have more questions.

Gary: I see Erastus and Grace are here too, I recorded this session and will post it as soon as it is available but if you need a separate session you can always email I'm available all the time for our initiative.

Thank you and bye-bye

Website purposes for IA (office hour, 06-29-2023) Script

Website purposes for IA (office hour, 06-29-2023) is the office hour event on June, 29th about Website purposes for CNMCyber.com IA

Preview video

https://youtu.be/7z56_IhZEPk?si=J04_XvDXejBNMugY (38:50)

Introduction

My name is Gary and we're in the office hour with Gracie and Rita. We will be discussing the questions that Gracie sent about information architecture for Friends Of CNM website:

1. Should the developer finish the website features such as hierarchy or roadmaps before starting the requirements for the prototype?
2. Use blueprint Vs. from scratch.
3. The main things to consider before starting the prototype.

First, let's see what you have done so let’s take a look at all developments.

Developments: Requirements

“The ‘’Site’’ will be a site for individuals or organizations who want to partner in CNMCyber endeavor by either offering their services or support in contribution and grants.” this makes sense to me.

Developments: Design

Design I meant graphic design and UX design, what you wrote it's more of information Architecture. You kind of laid out what you are envisioning, that there should be some call to action, header section. This is not a design, design is more like a graphic or UX design.

Developments: Home page

We also need to write something here too, because FriendsOfCNM group was the former name of CNMCyber when it was still an initiative. Instead of writing somewhere there, I would say you'll need to update kind of that page too if you want to continue working on this. Because friends of CNM website is kind of the page that should describe the website and the purpose of the website should be here. We also need to change this Landing page. Everything on this page should go somewhere else. Do we have all these services or not or do we need all these domains and subdomains are the questions for information architecture.

Whatever you know right now a CNMCyber used to be at friendsofcnm .com and then we moved to cnmcyber.com. We may have to keep it for the purposes of search engine optimization because kind of Google will rank bigger sites higher.

I however don't see any development of the idea that we started creating, the idea that someone will come to the website friendsofcnm.com and we have these tentative personas which we need to call like and so on so forth and someone who is a potential volunteer, what this person needs to see, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to click do you want me to read and when I read, what would I do, where should I go? Did you think on this? To work on the website, you need to have some idea of the front page and to decide what should be on the front page you need to make… The website is a tool

You have to envision what this website should be like, what should be on the front page moreover what should be on the landing screen so let's open the Kenya Airways website “when adventurers make the best stories”, they decided that would attract. What we can say about the idea of the website is that they have flights and they want to sell them. The information infrastructure is to help book a flight on Kenya Airways, also another tab is guest support, it's a kind of client support so it will be the place where I can get the most updated information for the flights. I can also see loyalty programs so they want to keep me involved with them. I can learn about them by clicking About Us.

You can see they define what they want from their websites, they say for people who want to travel time use Kenya Airways want them to be able to book a flight then when they book the flight they can be able to check what the status is. We want them to be involved through our loyalty program. So they have the idea, they say for people who want to fly we want them to type where they want to fly it and to be able to book the flight. F or those who have already booked the flight can check the status of their flight.

They have a clear idea of what they want people to do. Potential passengers looking for information for booked flights that’s the first persona, the second persona is someone who wants to invest in them, and the third Persona is someone in their loyalty program.

This is the same idea with friendsofCNM, we need to decide who we are targeting and what we want these groups to do. For someone who wants to volunteer what would we offer and what do we need them to do? When someone wants to volunteer, do we need to give them some button or form or something? People will read and then what next? The same for employment provider and so on and so forth. Based on that we can think of what should be on the landing, the main. The home page is like the whole page it can have like several sections I mean kind of the landing screen or landing section, when the person opens the website what this person will see. Mostly it's the main menu and what will be on the first page. It can be a character cell it can be several messages but I don't like Carson by the way, they're kind of jumping in I have no control. it's not user-friendly in my view.

1. Should the developer finish the website features before starting requirements for the prototype?

Hierarchy

From the Kenya Airways website, the hierarchy was ticket booking, this is kind of their main part right so the same then they created Asante, the loyalty program users and it has another completely another section right it's another menu and other pieces but you can jump back then they put okay corporate for investors and it has its own menu too. These three different sections of the website have separate menus and you can navigate to another one from which you are in. There are some websites that are really good and expensive like for instance basel.com this website they spent millions of dollars to develop this one website and they put many things you can do.

If you don't know for whom you are developing this website and what you want people to do, how you will build hierarchy.

Roadmaps

Roadmaps is basically what you intend. You want like to create someone who wants to volunteer, for instance, you would want this person to see on the front screen, should they scroll down? where will the button be? and so and so forth. You then need to create a roadmap. For instance, My name is Michael, I'm a retired IBM expert specialist searching for volunteering opportunities. I heard about CNMCyber I got there and clicked on partner got redirected to the friendsofsenam.com website and then what should this person see there?

2. Use blueprint Vs. from scratch? The main things to consider before starting the prototype

I don't know, like there are many different ways there are many tools. You can start with the description as you started or you can just draw it some people use just paper and pencil and you can sketch something easily also there are some professional tools you can use any content Management systems or the wiki and make a Wiki prototype. There is no single tool, tools are secondary, the purpose of these tools is the primary and you focus on the purpose, on the primary what the site should do.

We can use many different tools, for prototyping there are special tools, personally, I use Balsamiq lately people use Figma a lot, basically it gives you kind of a feeling of the website and you can host the website there too. Before Balsamiq, we used Axure RP, but this is kind of paid. There are many that are free, I like pencil projects. I decided for now, that to our clients what should be on the front page Wiki is enough, and Wiki is under control and you have seen what Erastus and Kevin did with cnmcyber.com. This looks like and feels like a website, but they didn't finish it, everything should be clickable and be able to go to a different page. I like Wiki because it's trackable you can see the history, and you can see who contributed what. Other fancier tools don't have versioning control at least I'm not aware of any. So you cannot see who did what but with the wiki yeah it has kind of some Version Control you can track and get back and see what happened. You can use this as the blueprint.

In a nutshell, the information architecture is things from the perspective of the business goals like what we want this person to do so let's say cnmcyber.com is our tool to attract volunteers right or make volunteers to join our team so how will they do it? should they do kind of a form sign a form or or something else.