Information Architecture Institute

http://www.iainstitute.org

Intended Audience:

Degreed IAs, and career-related professionals, IA students and prospective IA students.


Usefulness of the Content:

I would imagine this content is useful for the professional who wants to network with other IAs, or find out about conferences. So the site fulfills its primary function.

Students can access information about IA as a profession through "Learning IA," but this information is out-of-date and not all of the links work.

I think the institute could do more to advocate for the profession to college and graduate students. By publicizing job fairs, having up to date information on feeder programs, and hosting a live on line chat with an IA professional.


Consistency of Design:

The design team for this site chose four highlight colors (indigo, green, aqua, and gold) which is generally more than you would see in most heavily branded sites, i.e. IKEA.
I like the color combination but think it has not been used to its greatest advantage. The impact and pop-y nature of the color scheme could be enhanced with larger graphics and more dynamic menus. Since, most users of this site will have fast internet the load time of the page is not an issue.

They have incorporated color coding in to the navigation scheme of the site with each of the four global navigation labels assigned a color, e.g. gold for About us, indigo for IA networks.

Navigating away from the home page using the top navigation bar the particular color is used more in the sub sites. This is a nice way to orient the user.


Ease of Navigation:

Navigating through the this site is largely intuitive. There is no site map or index which belies the site's size. The site's global navigation includes four topic labels: About Us, IA networks, Learning IA, and Member Services. By clicking on one of these you can see the local navigation system, which uses the typical hyperlinked text. The navigation bars are in the usual places so most users are not disoriented, if they get lost there is a search bar at the top left corner.