Information Architecture
Design of Large Scale Websites
Ecommerce
Elearning
Interface Design for Interactive Media
Design Analysis of highly efficient Environments

Information Architecture

As the chief designer of the World Bank's intranet of 300,000 pages and then as Chief Information Architect at the World Bank sponsored Global Development Gateway -- an economic development portal of tens of thousands of articles -- I have extensive experience in the practical challenges of organizing huge information spaces. In corporations, the design of intranets and knowledge management systems requires close collaboration with sector specialists, librarians and IT staff, all professionals whom I have worked with extensively. I have been teaching the practice of information architecture to UCSD students for over 9 years.

View the current Global Development Gateway

Design of Large Scale Websites

Once an information architecture has been developed it is vital that the navigation system and visual design of a site support the architecture effectively. In work at the World Bank, Global Development Gateway, Inter America Development Bank, and in my own extensive elearning courses, I have designed and supervised the creation of very large scale websites with powerful navigation systems.

Elearning

Elearning is about providing interactive exercises and learning content in places on a website where students will use them. There is often an attitude in elearning that if you build it they will come. After many years of delivering courses online both synchronously and asynchronously I now doubt that stundents will properly explore the content on a website. A textbook or collection of articles is better for many purposes. On the other hand, if content is arranged in a more just in time fashion, where key resourses are hanging off of mandatory exercises or there are interactive exercises which students are required to do during class, then we can increase both student satisfaction and the amount of content read.

My approach to elearning is to coordinate web based activity and exercises to ensure higher learning performance. This applies as much to corporate learning requirements as to academic.

Two courses to view are Cogsci 25, Cogsci 187A The back end of the elearning system is visible in this photo sequence.

Ecommerce

Included in the meany websites I have designed or managed are ecommerce sites where design has been oriented to optimizing search engine discovery, visual design is oriented to keeping consumers on site and workflow focuses on making consumer tasks easy.

Interface Design for Interactive Media

Practical design of interactive media, including personal video recorder, remote controls, and other processor based devices that interface with substantial information resources.

Design Analysis of highly efficient Environments

Workspaces can be evaluated in terms of cost functions, such as the cost of recovery, ease of learning, variance or error, speed accuracy of routines of increasing complexity, and others. I have done ethnographic studies of a variety of service and industrial environments, in each case articulating methods for evaluating their effectiveness, and showing how they can be redesigned.