Group+Task+B


 * Group B**


 * Critically discuss the role of Information Architecture in Information** **Interaction.**

Note: This is meant to be a group task that will be presented in the class. You must also be prepared to answer questions posed by other groups as well as other participants. It is strongly advised that every member of the group should participate fully. Questions can be directed to any of the group members. Also, your group task and performance at the presentation will add up to form your continous assessment. You can also contact the teacher anytime you need clarification. //**Answer**// People need to interact with the content of an information system. The process by which this is done is called 'Information Interaction'. Information Architecture has important role to perform in making it possible for people to interact easily with information system content. Information Architecture can be defined as the combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within an information system. It involves the structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content. Information Architecture also deals with the structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information. It is a field of practicing how to focus on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

**FUNCTIONS OF INFORMATION ARRCHITECTURE** Information Architecture illustrates key concepts or steps through graphics. It designs the maps of any site. It is to create metaphors in order to brand content and promote navigation. Information Architecturedevelops style and formats templates for elements of information. It conducts user analyses. It creates  scenarios and storyboards. It deals with building of taxonomies and indices. It is also for evaluation of user’s experience. Furthermore, Information Architecture performs the following functions in Information Interaction

(a) Creation of content organization systems.

(b) Creation of semantic organization systems.

(c) Creation of navigation systems.

(d) Creation of interaction designs.

(e) Information Architecture is a process.

All these make it easier for users to interact with the content of an information system.

This is the process of identifying, collecting, and cataloging the project’s content to establish the scope of materials involved. Initial information taxonomy also known as a hierarchy is also prepared by sorting the information into common, subjectively derived sets such as alphabetical, chronological, geographical, or topical among others. When organizing the information and describing or representing the topics a set of term names or labels is established to provide naming consistency that can be derived from this taxonomy. Also important to keep the content organized and presented consistently throughout the project, and for user consumption is the classification of content types and formats to provide the basis for presentation (markup) standards.
 * // Creation of Content Organization Systems //**

The semantic (logical and associative) organization of the information that is created by Information Architecture may involve the process of coding a set of data with a set of overlapping or multifaceted conceptual organizational schemes, such as those required for browsing, searching, learning a concept embedded in the information, or performing a task based on the information. This semantic organization can be used when accessing information via a search function and could be used to suggest alternate searches or different types of search results. IA also needs thesauri and indices that are populated by controlled vocabularies and synonym rings that provide a variety of language to enable users to locate sought-after information.
 * // Creation of Semantic Organization Systems //**

//** Creation of Navigation Systems **// The user’s view of an information space is significantly influenced by navigation systems. Points of access to associated information via any interaction method from simple Web links to more complex animations, dynamic lists, or software application-like functional menus are provided.


 * OLAOLUWA E.O.I. (160959).**

Firstly, information architecture is a way of designing a layout or platform that make information system become easier for anybody to access irrespective of their location, color, time, and space. Also, an individual can develop on this platform to make information system bearable to all users. Information interaction involved collaborative work of ideas, research tailored towards achieving aims, objectives, and goals of an individual or corporate body. However, the role of information architecture in information interaction include the following: 1. It builds a platform or a layout information can be transact between two or more people 2. It is a standard or system that make information acquirable to all users 3. It encourages collaborative management of information 4. It bring about ease access of information irrespective of time or color, among others......WASIU,S.A matric no 160961

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black','sans-serif'; font-size: 19px;">NAME: AKINWUMI TEMITOPE AYOTUNDE <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black','sans-serif'; font-size: 19px;">MATRIC NO: 162022 <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black','sans-serif'; font-size: 19px;">DEPARTMENT: ABADINA MEDIA

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'arial black',sans-serif; text-align: center;">CRITICALLY DISCUSS THE ROLE OF INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE IN INFORMATION INTERACTION

**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">INFORMATION INTERACTION ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information interaction is the process that people use in interacting with the content of an information system. Information architecture is a blueprint and navigational aid to the content of information-rich systems. As such information architecture performs an important supporting role in information interactivity. This article elaborates on mode of information interactivity that crosses “the” no man’s land between user and computer articulating a model that includes user, content and system, illustrating the context for information architecture. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">How people interact with information rich digital environments is directly influenced by the environment’s information architecture. The quest for information is carried out thought querying and browsing, but also represents situated action and reflects the experiences that one has in interacting with an information system. This integrated process is information interaction. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information architecture, on the other hand, is a map of the underlying information structures. It was defined some what simplistically by Davenport (1997) as “simply a set of aids that match user needs with information resources” Rosenfeld and Morvile (1998) popularized an operationalized the concept, and use it to denote a blueprint for information organization and access for web sites. In most abstract sense, information architecture provides “a structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal paths to knowledge” (Wurman, 1996). In essence, it enable access to content by providing a systematic and primary a visual approach to the organization of content and thus facilitiate the quest for information. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">This article articulates a theory of information interaction is how information architecture along with other components contributes to the information interactivity in an additive way. The emphasis, however, is on relationship between the information architecture and information interaction. **<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">INFORMATION INTERACTION’S ROOTS ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Traditionally, the quest for stored information centered around scanning tables of contents, back of the book indexes, and various types of bibliography. With the advent of the computer the process became query-driven, command line systems demanded complex sometimes obsequious syntax, intended for execution and manipulation only by an expert intermediary. Graphical user interfaces simplified the process by making visible many of the options buried in command and code. CD-ROM encyclopaedias, in particular, with their rich content supplied resourceful indexes, providing users with several pathway to the content novel (at that time) options to a formal query. It is the web, however, that turned the quest for information into an “experience” and into a richer process than that previously entertained for information tasks. Today, people do not simply search information; they immerse themselves in a body of information. **<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">FOUNDATION OF INFORMATION INTERACTION ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information interaction is a complex process that integrate aspects of the user, the content, and the system that delivers the content of the user. There are many theories that could be applied to information interaction. Many are clearly single object models (Nielsen, 1990). Most describe only the affective or behaviour characteristics of the user (e.g Ellis, 1989; Kuhlthau, 1991) or only the conceptual or procedural processing of the system (e.g., Marchionini, 1989). None of these focus on the interaction (Saracevic, Mokros, & Su, 1990), and few acknowledge the presence of the user within this process (Beaulieu, 2000P). <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">The idea generated by Bush (1945) in his concept of the memex seem to be lacking in formal paradigm of today. Perhaps new approaches to the information quest may generate innovative conceptual framework such as Pirolli and Card (1999)’s foraging theory, yet even it assumes user assumes user as an automation. In cognitive psychology, there has been a shift form viewing them as adaptive and adapted organisms whose whole computational mechanisms are specialized and contextualized” to a particular environment (Medin, Lynch, and Solomon 2000). Current models have not embraced this notion. Although one might speculate that typical models of human –computer interaction (e.g Norman, 1986) have direct application, these models are not a perfect fit. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">First, the complex of information interaction is not well expressed in typical models of human computer interaction. The range of tasks in general supported by computer system extend from routine tasks to problem-solving tasks that require extensive backtracking and digressions (Simon and Young, 1988). In predictable task-driven systems the user interacts with the system’s implementation of the task. Examples include making cash transaction, monitoring a power plant’s operations, and playing computer games. In systems that support information seeking, each action taken is the result of a set of intricate decision points (Simon and Young 1988). As suggested by Simon and Young (1988) and Toms (1997) such an unstructured, complex problem solving tasks place in an interactive, user-controlled environment, and cannot be reduced in a predictable way to a set of routine Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selectings (GOMS), which is based on a model human information processor (see Card, Moran, and Newell, 1983, or Olson and Olson, 1990, for an explanation of GOMS). Although GOMS has been applied to the information task by Carmel, Crawford, and Chen (1992), GOMS best represents routine tasks with highly predictive behavioural pattern (Carroll, 1997). <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Toms (1997) of browsing, which is turn, is a variation of Guthrie’s information location model (Guthrie, 1988; Guthrie and Mosenthal (1987) a model with its roots in analogical reasoning (e.g, Gentner and Rattermann, 1993),and in models of human problem solving (Newell & Simon, 1972, Simon, 1978). Although the information interaction model could be described according to either of the threads that are physically represented by the layers in figure 1, the view describe here is from the perspective of the user (rather than the content or the system). <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">In information interaction, users are likely to perform several literations of the process before terminating the session. They either initiate the process by formulating a goal, i.e the traditional information seeking process, or simply by making a decision to examine a body of information. In either case, a category such as menu, is selected. The user scans the text, although it may be graphical as well. When a cue is noted, the user stops to examine the text, and may not extract and integrate the information. The user may recycle in multiple, noalinear ways through category selection, cues, and extraction. This process can be viewed as a series of state transitions in which each state represents the interests of the user at that particular moment in time (Kok, 1991). Thus, the same set of items could be presented to the user, but different choices might be selected at different times. The state of the user changes with time, a single instance is unlikely ever to be same for the same person or for different people. Each of these stages are briefly described in the following subsections.

**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">STAGES IN INFORMATION INTERACTION ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">A goal is defined as the object or purpose of the quest. It is the user’s intention and may range from a precise, well defined purpose to an imprecise, or ill –defined purpose. There are many theories that explain why a person seek information such as Dervin and Nilan;s (1986) sensemaking approach, Belkin’s a quest for information need to be goal based (Toms, 1997) as evidenced by, among other processes, Web surfing. Users do not always have explict goals such as “look for information about…” learn something about…” Tague-Sutcliffe (19950 suggests that information has become like the air we breathe, so pervasive that we scarcely notice is existence and yet to essential that we cannot live without it”. Like the basic physiologic need for food and shelter, users seem to be driven by a need to know by a natural curiosity about their environment and the world in which they live-but not necessarily because of a conscious admission of a void. Thus, as illustrated, an explicit goal may not always be present.

**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">SELECT CATEGORY ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">The user selects a category (or a search term) that is one of two items; an objective of meta-information (Belkin, Marchetti and Cool, 1993) such as a menu or index, and/or a term from that meta-information. Guthrie and his colleagues consider category selection equivalent to choosing from the structure of the text, for example, selecting the appropriate page, chapter, or subsection that contains the needed information (Guthrie, 1988; Guthrie and Mosenthal, 1987). In more recent work, category selection was defined in two ways; the method of accessing the system, i.e deciding how to approach the problem, and selection a term or concept (Dreher and Guthrie, 1990, Guthrie. Weber & Kimmerly, 1993), Guthrie (personal communication, June 28, 1995) elaborated that for users to properly select a category, they must: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">(a) Know the organizational structure of the document <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">(b) Know what the category of information is called <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">(c) Know something about the category’s contents. The first one is defined as procedural knowledge and the last two as conceptual knowledge (Byrne and Guthrie, 1992). Thus, a user may choose a type of meta-information, if mor than one is available, and/or choose more narrowly within that meta-information. How people interpret concepts and categories is a rich area of inquiry.

**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">NOTE CUES ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Cues play a key role in information location (Toms, 1997), an aspect not identified by Guthrie. These cues serve as landmarks that influence the direction a user takes in scanning information. Selected words or phrases embedded in the text cause a searcher to examine a segment to text. This is an extension of the definition used by Heffron, Dillon, and Mostafa (1996) and suggests the existence of “affordance” (Gibson, 1977) in the text (Toms 1997, 200b).

**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">EXTRACT INFORMATION ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">When a change in the system state is identified by the users, the user observes two items, a change in the node of information displayed, an an adjustment (if applicable) in the state of the interface. The user may navigate within the information node almost without direction attention to interface objects. **<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">INTEGRATE INFORMATION ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information that has been extracted is integrated with information previously known (Guthrie, 1988). The more specific the search goal, the less extraction and integration will be required (Armbruster and Armstrong, 1993). This component is instrumental in assessing a user’s confusion and disorientation (Guthrie, 1988). If a user returns to the same section of information, it means that the user failed to integrate all the information initially, or alternately that the system filed to provided adequate support. **<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">EVALUATE ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">In essence, users are constantly questioning: is this content, menu and so on useful? Guthrie (1988) maintains that users recycle through the components until the goal is met, a result he describes as a “best fit” rather than a perfect match, a view that is diametrically opposed to standard information retrieval evaluation. **<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif';">THE ROLE OF INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE IN INFORMATION INTERACTION ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Three objects serve as the foundation for the model of information interaction: User, System, and Content, Users bring to the process their human information processing capabilities that aid them in translating intention into actions, and in interpreting both system output and informational displays. The system, a set of dynamic computer processes, contribute its artificial information processing capabilities that parse and interpret keyboard commands, perform operations, and respond to input. The content or knowledge representation is a blueprint that contain a series of words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs, hierarchically organized and contained within a logical superstructure. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">In information interaction, a user interacts with a system to examine an information blueprint, analogue to traditional reader – text interaction established in a printed-paper world. This is impacted by the system’s management of the content and the system, user andcontent interact synergistically. In addition, user, system, and content are also viewed as a series of two-way interactions. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">This abstraction is derived from and informed by multiple theoretical constructs as indicated information interaction takes place at the confluence of these objects and interaction. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">The generation/evolution of goals (when applicable) is a cognitive process that initially might not be affected by the information system. Similarly, integration and evaluation are outcomes of information interaction and are also cognitive processes-solely characteristics of the user and not of the complext interaction of user, content, and system. The success of the remaining three components depends on the effectiveness of the information architecture. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">The identification of a “category” may be selection of a tool such as a menu (Dreher and Guthrie, 1990), a keyword or concept from an index, a title from a list, and so on. The “textual cue” is a word, phrase, or concept identified within that “category selection” that acts as a stimulus influencing the user’s focus (Toms, 1997).
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">User-system interaction in which the user communicates with the system via two-way connecting information flow that spans the “gulf of execution” and the “gulf of evaluation (Norman, 1986), separating user from system.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">System – content interaction, which is in essence the result of applying a set of computer processes to the microstructure and macrostructure of the text to provide access, storage, and update facilities
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">User-content interaction, i.e reader-text interaction occurs between the visually processed text and the activation of existing knowledge.

**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information architecture has become one of the latest areas of excitement within the library and information science (LIS) community, largely resulting from recognition it garners from those outside of the field for the methods and practice of information design and management loen seen as core to information science. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">The term, information architecture (IA) was coined by Richard Wurman in 1975 to describe the need to transform data into meaningful information for people to use, a not entirely original idea, but certainly a first-time conjunction of the terms into the now common IA label. Building on concepts in architecture, information design, typography, and graphic design, information design, typography, and graphic design, Wurman’s visions of a new field lay dormant for the most part until the emergence of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, when interest in formation organization and structures became widespread. The term cam into vogue among the broad web design community as a result of the need to find a way of communicating shared interests in the underlying organization of digitally accessed information.

**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">DEFINING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Formal definitions of IA tend to vary from the general to the multiple. Rosen field and Morville offer a variety of definitions as candidates: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Central to this mix is the idea of structuring information spaces for management and use, which can be interpreted in several ways, either as a relatively narrow concern with labeling, as in (1) or more broadly is a concern with facilitating interaction, as in (2). For present purposes, we emphasize the larger or broader perspective. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Other definitions abound, but it is clear that the precise wording of any one has failed to capture the terrain in such a way as to be taken as definitive. Even Wurman, in his original conception of the field, left scope for interpretation in his definition of the information architect as “the emerging 21st century professional… focused upon clarity, human understanding and the science of the organization of information. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">In as much as there is or could be a science of information organization, other disciplines may lay justifiable claim to the territory library and information scientists who have long dealt with classification and categorization of recorded knowledge, cognitive psychologist who have contributed to our understanding of information use, comprehension, and problem solving, anthropologists and sociologist who analyzed cultural constructions of meaning, to name but a few. To this extent, IA is an interdisciplinary field of practice and research, borrowing heavily from these domains. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Dillon offered a broad definition that attempted to accommodate the diversity of approaches by defining IA as the process of designing, implementing, and evaluating information spaces that are humanly and socially acceptable to their intended stakeholders. This not only aimed at inclusion, but bypassed any reference to IA as a discipline or field of its own, likening to more to human activities such as design or creative writing, which of necessity draw on disciplines to support process and education. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Furthermore, Dillon advocated a view of IA as craft rather than engineering, a distinction based on the lack of separation within IA between the design and the manufacture of the resulting application. As craft, IA creates as it produces, often reacting to emerging elements of its own design to drive subsequent modifications. Craft-based disciplines are less amenable to formal methodological abstraction for management and instructional purposes, which can result in them shifting or being altered radically by outside forces. One problem facing the IA community in its driver to professional status is the need to overcome abstraction and education problems in order to provide the filed with the legitimacy accorded to related fields with information science.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">The combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within an information system.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">An emerging discipline and community of practice focusing on bringing principles of deign and architecture to the digital landscape.

**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">WHAT DO INFORMATION ARCHITECTS DO? ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">One can gain an appreciation of the process of IA by examining what practitioners actually do. An incomplete list would include: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Engineering approaches to the building of the IA include: programming and database design, content and sources code management, functional evaluation (including usability testing), as well as final information development and versioning. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">The breadth of these IA activities suggests that most information architect perform only a few of these tasks, owing to either skill limitations or the constraints of he IA project. Generally, IA task revolve around four major areas of effort. The first involves understanding the information as content and shaping its organization and access, the second includes building the abstract association between units of content, the third focuses on developing browsing and searching functionality, and the fourth is designing the graphics, interfaces, and interaction techniques to allow users to access the body of information. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information architecture seems assured of a long future, even if the term itself ceases to gain formal agreement. A world of digital information will always need people to architect spaces for sharing collecting and organization documents and resources. The current understanding of IA as a discipline is likely to evolve as the profession grows and formal education takes shape. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Technical and theoretical advances are likely to yield new opportunities for tailoring information for personal use. The dynamic structuring of information in response to user activity is likely to offer increasing challenges for research to understand how people construct meaning and navigate through fruit information environments. IA is likely to develop a set of roles that will offer an identity to the profession that is shared by more than the rather limited number of people with that job title currently. For this to occur it is likely that a more formal educational path will need to emerge for his profession. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'arial black',sans-serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: justify;">NAME: AKINWUMI TEMITOPE AYOTUNDE <span style="display: block; font-family: 'arial black',sans-serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: justify;">MATRIC NO: 162022 <span style="display: block; font-family: 'arial black',sans-serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: justify;">DEPARTMENT: ABADINA MEDIA
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Illustrating key concept or steps through graphics
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Designing site maps
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Creating metaphors to brand content and promote navigation
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Developing style and formatting templates for elements of information
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Conducting user analyses
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Creating scenarios and storyboards
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Building taxonomies and indices
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Testing user experiences.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif';">INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">The term information architecture was first carried by Richard Saul Wurmon in 1975. He was trained as an architect but became interested in the field of information architecture especially how information is gathered, organized and presented to convey meaning. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information architecture is a term used to describe the structure of a system that is, the way information is grouped, the navigation methods and terminology used within the system. As a discipline it is method that alm to identify and organize information in a purposeful and service-oriented way. It is also seen as a specialized skill set that interprets information and express distractions between signs and system of signs. It tends to categorize information into a coherent structure preferably one that most people can understand without much effort. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">An effective information architecture enables people to step logically through is system confident they are getting closer to the information they require. Though information architecture is mostly commonly associated with websites and entrants, but it can be used in the content of any information structures or computer systems. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">The concept of information architecture means different things to different people and organization. Architecture to the world wide web is defined as the art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and internets to help people find and manager information. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Infact, information architecture is been described as the blueprint developers and designers used to build the system. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information interaction on the other hand is the process that people use in interacting with the content of an information system. Information interaction is a complex process that integrates aspect of the user. Though the compliantly is not web expressed in typical models of human-computer interaction. The range of tasks in general supported by computer system entered from routine tasks to problem solving tasks that require extensive backtracking and digression. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif';">Information architecture play prominent roles in information interaction: **<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif';">it tends to provide and create an enabling structure for easy access to information through interactions i.e the users interact with the system to examine information. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Apart from this above it make possible an easy retrieval of information. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">The information architecture improve information access, relevancy and usefulness to a given audience as well as improve the publishing entity’s ability to maintain and develop the information over. It also plays the role of influencing the users cognitive functions. The semantics and structure of the content, and also the characteristics of the system. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">It also make possible for the user interacts with the content of a web site or other information system. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information architecture performs artificial information processing that interpret keyboard comments for use, it contains series of words, phases, sentences, paragraphs, etc. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Information interaction is the process by which people use and this is achieved by the system’s ability to communicate with the user. Information Architecture is a classification of labeling of concepts, navigation and search, access system for information. Information interaction is a cognitive process that initially might not be affected by the information system.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">**<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif';">CONCLUSION ** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'bookman old style',serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">From the foremention roles discussed above, it is essential to established the fact information interaction on web site can function more effectively by the adequate provision of information architecture.

Another cogent role which information architecture played in information interaction is that **IT ACCOMMODATE MULTIPLE USERS**. Thus, whether it is public web site, an intranet, an extranet, or an application will have a large heterogeneous audience. Each person in the audience brings his or her own information needs. Recognizing that your target audience represents constituents with a variety of goals and demands is the first step in developing an intranet system. While there are many techniques for identifying users and their needs, the ultimate purpose of these exercises is clear, to get inside the head of people in your target audience. Collectively, these techniques are referred to as " users-centered design,' methods for ensuring the system focuses on meeting users needs. Although the fields of market research and demography each have proven techniques for understanding people, designing an interactive system requires a slightly different perspective. In forming a picture of your target audience, consider their goals and their tasks....**Wasiu, S.A 160961**


 * Information Architecture plays the role of making possible an easy retrieval of information and improve access, relevancy and facilitate users effectiveness. Wasiu, S.A**