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Wikipedia:WikiProject Information Architecture

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Welcome to the Information Architecture WikiProject!

This project is intended to increase the discoverability and awareness of content related to Information Architecture, and to provide a place for Wikipedians to collaborate on related topics. We are also hoping to recruit IAs for collaboration with the WikiMedia Foundation on understanding and developing open source tools for better findability and user experience.

This project is intended to validate and promote improved information architecture thinking and methodologies throughout Wikipedia (not just promote the practice of IA). The goal of this project will be to better understand, organize, and improve topics related to this discipline to better communicate what Information Architecture is and its relationship to fields such as User Experience Design (UX), Interaction Design (IXD), Human-Centered Design, Human-Computer Interaction, and its foundations in Cognitive Science, Library Science, and Physical Architecture. For more information on Information Architecture, refer to the Information Architecture article.

This is not intended as a vehicle to promote the commercial interests of persons or companies practicing IA. Be sure you understand the Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest policies before editing.

Please refer to training resources developed for the IA and Wikipedia presentation at IA Summit 2015.


 Resources 
 Related Projects

Scope

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Welcome to the Information Architecture WikiProject.

This project deals with the categorization, creation, and improvement of articles under the purview of Information Architecture and related topics. Most articles within Category:Information_architecture will be within the scope of this project.

The scope of this project will also include ways that information architects can use their expertise to make it easier for users to discover topics of interest. Tools that align with information architecture practices include search, linked data (Wikidata), and Wikipedia categories, lists and navigation templates. Following on participation at the Information Architecture Institute's 2016 workshop, Architecting the Information of Georgia House Bill757, we will continue exploring discoverability of diversity and accessibility at Information Architecture Summit 2017 in Vancouver, March 22-26, 2017, [1], Theme: Designing for Humans.

Background

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Information Architecture, is described by Richard Saul Wurman as "the creating of systemic, structural, and orderly principles to make something work — the thoughtful making of either artifact, or idea, or policy that informs because it is clear. It is a field of practice that has recently reached its fortieth anniversary (1976). Many tools and schools of thought have developed over the years to inform designers and information professionals on the design and management of information space. This project intends to recognize and celebrate the foundations of this field by discovering and informing the public about the history, tools, practitioners and benefits of information architecture.

Statistics

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Wikipedia has a way to identify pages in the WikiProject Information Architecture by status and class. We need to add this table to keep track.

User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Information Architecture

Ongoing Tasks

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Open tasks can be broken down into a couple distinct groups. For specific tasks, look at the articles requiring improvement section below.

Information Architecture Topics

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The following tasks are related to identifying, assessing and improving articles in Category:Information architecture.

What How
Identify articles related to Information Architecture and tag them appropriately Add Category:Information architecture to the article page by appending the following code:
[[Category:Information architecture]]
Identify articles requiring more citations Research those topics and add references to the sections needing support or add the reference next to the article name on this page.
Improve representation and diversity of practice and practitioners Research people making significant contributions to the field worldwide, especially women, minorities and people from non-US/European countries, as well as IA tools and processes that help with the discoverability of diversity topics.
Determine which articles related to Information Architecture require further editing to effectively communicate their topic Identifying, tag, and add references to notable IA works.
Add the articles to the list of names or topics below so other group members can more easily identify and improve them
Suggest new articles to be created Add new article suggestions to the New Articles section below.
Find instructions, guidelines, and archived article assessment details for WikiProject IA Go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Information Architecture/Assessment
Identify unassessed articles Browse the relevant Category page: Category:WikiProject_Information_Architecture_articles
Create an Information Architecture portal The HCI Portal can serve as a template for the IA portal


Information Architecture Tools in Wikipedia

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What How
Explore tools used in Wikipedia to promote search and discovery. Visit Wikipedia Tools Lab
Explore Wikidata and learn about how Wikimedia products use linked data. Visit Wikidata
Add an Infobox to a page (Infoboxes contain structured data that is sourced by DBpedia and can be used by third party applications to improve discoverability and expose relationships between topics). Visit Help:Infobox to learn more
Read about Categories, Lists and Navigation Templates to learn how Wikipedia organizes pages and topics groups for exploration. Visit Categories, lists and navigation templates
For a topic of interest, find out if categories already exist and either create a new category or use an existing category to tag relevant content. You can add the Information Architecture category to a page by copying the following code into the page edit field:
[[Category:Information architecture]]

Visit Wikipedia:Category to learn more.

Create a list of Information Architecture methodologies or educational programs. Add a link to the list to the main Information architecture page. (You can create lists for any topic that interests you). Lists can be embedded into an article using simple bulleted or numbered list markup or tables, and can also be separate pages. Visit Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists to learn more about how to create lists. Simple markup for lists and tables is shown on the [Visit Help:Cheatsheet.
Explore Wikipedia navigation templates.


Information Architecture Resources

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The Information Architecture Institute has compiled a library of resources that you may use for citations within your articles. You may find a list of current IA resources including a curated list of IA publications in the IA Library. These resources contain discussion of information architecture practices, theories and methodologies. They range from highly notable sources, such as books and academic journal articles to less notable blog posts. Keep in mind the Wikipedia:Notability requirements when selecting sources.

Curated List:

Original List:

IA Topic Lists:

Articles to Improve

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The following are main topic articles within the category of Information Architecture. These are good places to start either by improving the articles themselves or by researching topics and resources mentioned within these articles to create and improve additional articles.

People

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Who would you add to the following lists of PIoneers, Influences and Information Architects? Note that for all living individual, you must review the requirements for Biographies of Living Persons before creating a new article. A facilitator can help you create a stub article for review.

Pioneers

For Pioneers, I selected the founders of the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture  and people who wrote the first books on the topic. Who else would you consider to be an Information Architecture pioneer?

Name Significance Assessment
Michael Angeles IA Institute Founder
Creator of Balsamiq software
Creator of widely used Konigi Templates for OmniGraffle wireframing software
Jorge Arango IA Institute Founder
Co-author of the classic IA text Information Architecture for the World Wide Web [1]
Past President of IA Institute
Lane Becker IA Institute Founder
Sean Belka IA Institute Founder
Peter Bogaards IA Institute Founder
Paul Ford IA Institute Founder
Jesse James Garrett IA Institute Founder
Co-founder of Adaptive Path
Author of the classic IA/UX text The Elements of User Experience
Dave Gray IA Institute Founder
Co-author of Gamestorming (O'Reilly Media, 2010) [2] and The Connected Company (O'Reilly Media, 2014) [3]
Author of Liminal Thinking (Rosenfeld Media, 2016)[4]
Jan Jursa IA Institute Founder
Berlin IA/UX Meetup
Jonathan Knoll IA Institute Founder
Michael Leis IA Institute Founder
Peter Merholz IA Institute Founder
Co-author of Subject to Change [5] and Org Design for Design Orgs [6]
Peter Morville IA Institute Founder
Co-author of the classic IA text Information Architecture for the World Wide Web [7] and Ambient Findability [8]
Kiki Mills IA Institute Founder
Leisa Reichelt IA Institute Founder
Louis Rosenfeld IA Institute Founder
Co-author of the classic IA text Information Architecture for the World Wide Web [9]
Christina Wodtke IA Institute Founder
Co-author of the classic IA text Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web [10]
Richard Saul Wurman Architect
Coined the discipline of "information architecture" in 1976
Author of the seminal text Information Architects [11] and Information Anxiety [12]
Influencers

Influencers are people whose work has shown an established influence on the work of information architecture.

Name Significance Assessment
Christopher Alexander Architect
Author of A Pattern Language[13] and The Timeless Way of Building'[14]
Add to WikiProject:Information Architecture
Marcia J. Bates Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of California, Los Angeles
Known for work on information seeking behavior, search strategy, subject access to information, and user-centered design of information systems
Add to WikiProject:Information Architecture
Stewart Brand Founder of The WELL
editor of the Whole Earth Catalog
Author of How Buildings Learn'[15]
Vannevar Bush Inventor of Memex, a hypothetical, hypertext system first described in 1945
Author of "As We May Think"[16]
Bob Doyle (inventor) IA Institute Advisor
Creator of first Information Architecture Glossary
Creator of CMS Review
Henri La Fontaine Co-founder with Paul Otjet of the Mundaneum, a precursor to the modern internet (currently a modern non-profit archive)
Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant) Co-Founder of Nielsen-Norman Group
Author of
Add to WikiProject:Information Architecture
Florence Nightingale (believe it or not an early proponent of infoviz)
Donald Norman Co-founder of Nielsen-Norman Group Add to WikiProject:Information Architecture
Paul Otlet Co-founder with Henri La Fontaine of the Mundaneum, a precursor to the modern internet (currently a modern non-profit archive) Add to WikiProject:Information Architecture
Howard Rheingold Social critic and writer specializing in the internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities
S. R. Ranganathan Inventor of Colon classification
Author of The Five Laws of Library Science [17]
Add to WikiProject:Information Architecture
Edward Tufte Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics and Computer Science at Yale University
Author of Visual Display of Quantitative Information[18], Envisioning Information[19], Visual Explanations[20] and Beautiful Evidence[21]
Add to WikiProject:Information Architecture
David Weinberger Former advisor of IA Institute
Author of Everything is Miscellaneous [22]
Add to WikiProject:Information Architecture
Information Architects

Some of the following people who work in the field of information architecture already have a page in Wikipedia. Most do not, and they may not fulfill Wikipedia's Notability requirements.

Name Significance Assessment
Abby Covert Former IA Institute PresidentAuthor of How to Make Sense of Any Mess
Christopher Crumlish Former IA Institute board member
Member of Howard Dean 2004 presidential campaign website team
Co-author of Designing Social Interfaces[23]
Author of The Power of Many[24]
Austin Govella Co-author of Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web[25]
Adam Greenfield
Andrew Hinton Former IA Institute board member
Author of Understanding Context[26]
Dan Klyn Current IA Institute President
Founder of The Understanding Group
Erin Malone Co-author of Designing Social Interfaces[27]
Stacy Surla Former IA Institute board member
Eric Reiss Former IA Institute President
Author of Usable Usability[28] and Practical Information Architecture[29]
Andrea Resmini Former IA Institute President
Co-author of Pervasive Information Architecture[30] and Reframing Information Architecure[31]
Luca Rosati Co-author of Pervasive Information Architecture[32]
Donna Spencer Former IA Institute board member
Russ Unger Former IA Institute PresidentCo-author of A Project Guide to UX Design[33]
Javier Velasco Former IA Institute board member

IA Topics

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The following topics were primarily derived from the controlled vocabulary underlying the online library at the [Information Architecture Institute]. Some terms were adjusted to reflect an existing page and some were removed because they were too general. Many are already pages which could be improved, while a few do not exist yet.

What other Information Architecture topics would you like to research? Add them below.

IA Topics

For Pioneers, I selected the founders of the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture  and people who wrote the first books on the topic. Who else would you consider to be an Information Architecture pioneer?

Name Significance Assessment
Architecture
Audio
Blueprint (web)
Branding
Breadcrumbs
Browsers
Card sorting
Classification
Cognitive science
Cognitive walkthrough
Communication technology
Computer science
Information architecture conferences could also be a category
Content inventory
Content management
Content
Contextual inquiry
Contextual navigation
Controlled vocabulary
Design
Digital library
E-commerce
End user
Experience design
Expert opinion
Extranets
Faceted browsing
Faceted classification
Flow chart
Graphic design
Hardware
Heuristic analysis
Human-computer Interaction
Hypermedia
Index design
Indexing
Information architecture
Information architecture guides and collections could be a category
Information architecture methodologies could be a category
Information architecture research could be a category
Information design
Information organization
Information retrieval
Information scent
Information seeking behavior
Interaction design
Interface design
Intranets
Knowledge management
Labeling
Library and information science
Management
Metrics
Media
Metadata
Mobile information architecture
Natural language processing
Navigation
Ontologies
Organization
Organizational theory
Patterns
Personal digital assistant
Personalization
Personas
Placemaking
Portals
Primary navigation
Project management
Prototyping
RDF
Responsive design
ROI
RSS
Search technology
Search engine technology
Semantic web
Social context
Software
Structured information
Supplemental navigation
Theory Remove-too general
Thesauri
Usability
Usability testing
User centered design
User experience design
User needs assessment
User scenario
Video
Visual design
W3C
Wayfinding
Web browsers
Web blog
Web design
Web development
Wireframe
Wireless networking
Web search
World wide web
Writing for the web
XFML
XML

Suggested Articles

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Add some additional topics for this project.

IA Categories

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Articles may be tagged with the following categories. There may be articles already tagged within these categories that need improvement.

Existing Categories

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Articles under the following categories also may be of interest:

Outreach, Events and Editathons

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Information architects are natural Wikipedia and Wikidata editors. WikiProject:Information Architecture has been working with groups like the Information Architecture Institute and the Association for Information Science and Technology to introduce and promote Wikipedia and related tools in IA practices. To date we have logged the following participation:

Upcoming Events: IA Summit 2017!!

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  • March 24-26, 2017: The Information Architecture Summit has invited Nwhysel (talk) and members of WikiProject:Information Architecture to expand participation for the 2017 conference. We are doing two sessions. The first on Saturday, March 23, 2017 at 3:30pm is Diversity and Inclusion in Wikipedia, and will give an overview of outreach and edit-a-thon activities of interest to information professionals in improving access and discoverability of underrepresented topics and people in Wikipedia. The second session is a working lunch at Noon on Sunday, March 26 and will cover how Information Architecture professionals in particular can use and improve Wikipedia findability and semantic tools. Please post to the talk page if you are interested in helping.

Join the Event

Past Events

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  • May 22, 2016: Wikipedia: The Game was presented at Game Night at the IA Summit 2016 as a fun introduction to Wikipedia category structure. [2]
  • May 7, 2016: Nwhysel (talk) represented Wikipedia at the Information Architecture Institute's workshop on "Architecting the Information of Georgia House Bill 787," to describe the diversity efforts underway at Wikipedia to make articles of underrepresented groups such as women, minorities, disabled and LGBT people.
  • June/July 2015. Information Architecture in Wikipedia published in the special Information Architecture Edition of the ASIS&T Bulletin.
  • March 25, 2015: Poster presentation by Nwhysel (talk) on IA in Wikipedia Poster at the 2015 IA Summit in Minneapolis as a companion to IA Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon. The poster included a full bibliography of over 650 items from the Information Architecture Institute library which can be used as verified sources on Wikipedia articles.
  • March 25, 2015: IA in Wikipedia editathon held at the 2015 Information Architecture Summit in Minneapolis as part of the summit interactive sessions. Members of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Wikimedia chapter attended as facilitators, along with Nwhysel (talk) and Msweeny (talk).

Editithons

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Editing Wikipedia

Wikipedia Help and Guidelines

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The boxes below provide help on Wikipedia editing policies and guidelines.

Please check with a WikiFacilitator before starting new pages – recommend beginners start editing existing pages vs. starting new pages

Quick + easy! Infoboxes, stubs, obits with tons of biographical info, Wikidata, etc.
 
Add an infobox!

It's fun, not super hard, and improves Google search results! Plus you don't need citations for infoboxes!

Improve an existing stub article!

Clean up existing citations, add a new citation, add a selected works and publications section for published authors

Add citations to articles that have none!
Other easy ideas

Obituaries are a great starting point, have tons of biographical info!

Like tagging? Add Wikiproject:Information architecture tags to pages

Use the code: to add a page to the Wikiproject:Information Architecture

You can also add category tags by copying the following code to pages:

Are you into more tech-based data? Are you a librarian? Add Authority Control info to Wikidata!

Update Wikidata using Virtual International Authority File (VIAF.org)
  1. Go to VIAF.org
  2. Search for person (last name, first name)
  3. At bottom of page, where it says History of VIAF, expand section. See Werner Herzog example
  4. Add each listed Authority to Wikidata if its info is not already populated in Wikidata
  5. Add {{Authority control}} after External links section above Categories
  6. Refresh Wikipedia page

Join this WikiProject

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If you would like to identify yourself as a member of WikiProject Information Architecture, please put the following banner on your user talk page.

User banner Template definition
This user was a member of WikiProject Information Architecture.
{{User WikiProject Information Architecture}}

To join the WikiProject as an official member, please add your name to the member list below.

Active Members
User Member since Project roles (or project interests) Member status
Nwhysel • Talk • Contribs 22:41, 16 April 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Resmini • Talk • Contribs 07:16, 2 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Natedavisiii • Talk • Contribs 05:25, 6 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Samradd • Talk • Contribs 13:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
mksweeny • Talk • Contribs 13:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Abby The IA • Talk • Contribs 19:06, 9 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Danklyn • Talk • Contribs 19:07, 9 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Lwcavallucci • Talk • Contribs 19:24, 9 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Anarchyshake • Talk • Contribs 19:53, 9 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Lishubert • Talk • Contribs 20:42, 9 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Jarango • Talk • Contribs 03:39, 10 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Mintz • Talk • Contribs 10 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Bruce Esrig • Talk • Contribs 14 March 2015 (UTC) Will contribute supporting edits Active
Ms eleeb • Talk • Contribs 14:26, 22 March 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
CookieMonster755 • Talk • Contribs 19:03, 1 April 2015 (UTC) Editor Active
Tipoqueno • Talk • Contribs 17:18, 13 April 2015 (UTC) Editor Active

Templates

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The following templates may be placed on the Talk page of an article or User page to identify it as related to WikiProject:Information Architecture. Be sure to place these templates only on the Talk page of a selected article or User page.

Future Projects

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When the WikiProject Information Architecture is mature we may want to create a portal that Wikipedia users can use to learn about the topic of Information architecture. A sample portal from a related discipline is Portal:Human–computer_interaction. More details on creating a portal are at Wikipedia:Portal.

References

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  1. ^ Rosenfeld, Louis; Morville, Peter; Arango, Jorge (2015). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  2. ^ Gray, Dave; Brown, Sunni; Macanufo, James (2010). Gamestorming. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  3. ^ Gray, Dave; Vander Wal, Thomas (2014). The Connected Company. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  4. ^ Gray, Dave (2016). Liminal Thinking. Sebastopol, CA: Rosenfeld Media.
  5. ^ Merholz, Peter (2008). Subject to change: creating great products and services for an uncertain world. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  6. ^ Merholz, Peter; Skinner, Kristin (2016). Org design for design orgs: building and managing in-house design teams. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  7. ^ Rosenfeld, Louis; Morville, Peter; Arango, Jorge (2015). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  8. ^ Morville, Peter (2005). Ambient findability. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  9. ^ Rosenfeld, Louis; Morville, Peter; Arango, Jorge (2015). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  10. ^ Wodtke, Christina; Govella, Austin (2009). Information architecture: blueprints for the web. New Riders.
  11. ^ Wurman, Richard Saul (1997). Information architects. New York, NY: Graphis.
  12. ^ Wurman, Richard Saul (1989). Information anxiety. New York, NY: Doubleday.
  13. ^ Alexander, Christopher (1977). A pattern language: towns, buildings, construction. New York: Oxford University Press.
  14. ^ Alexander, Christopher (1979). The timeless way of building. New York: Oxford University Press.
  15. ^ Brand, Stewart (1994). How buildings learn: what happens after they're built. New York: Viking Press.
  16. ^ "As We May Think". The Atlantic Monthly. 176 (1): 101–8. July 1945.
  17. ^ Ranganathan, S. R. (1963). The five laws of library science. Bombay, New York: Asia Pub. House.
  18. ^ Tufte, Edward (1983). Visual display of quantitative information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
  19. ^ Tufte, Edward (1983). Envisioning information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
  20. ^ Tufte, Edward (1983). Visual explanations. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
  21. ^ Tufte, Edward (1983). Beautiful evidence. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
  22. ^ Weinberger, David (2007). Everyghing is miscellaneous: the power of the new digital disorder. new york: Times Books.
  23. ^ Crumlish, Christian; Malone, Erin (2015). Designing social interfaces (2nd ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  24. ^ Crumlish, Christian (2004). The power of many: how the living web is transforming politics, business, and everyday life. San Francisco: Sybex.
  25. ^ Wodtke, Christina; Govella, Austin (2011). Information architecture: blueprints for the web. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
  26. ^ Hinton, Andrew; Morville, Peter (2014). Understanding context: environment, language, and information architecture. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  27. ^ Crumlish, Christian; Malone, Erin (2015). Designing social interfaces (2nd ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
  28. ^ Reiss, Eric L. (2012). Usable usability: simple steps for making stuff better. Indianapolis, IN: John Wiley & Sons.
  29. ^ Reiss, Eric L. (2000). Practical information architecture: a hands-on approach to structuring successful websites. Harlow: Addison Wesley.
  30. ^ Resmini, Andrea; Rosati, Luca (2011). Pervasive information architecture: designing cross-channel user experiences. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.
  31. ^ Resmini, Andrea (2014). Reframing information architecture. New York: Springer.
  32. ^ Resmini, Andrea; Rosati, Luca (2011). Pervasive information architecture: designing cross-channel user experiences. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.
  33. ^ Unger, Russ; Chandler, Carolyn (2009). A project guide to UX design: for user experiene designers in the field or in the making. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.