How a site is structured with content and navigation can greatly determine its success. Managing content is critical. This structure and organization is the foundation for the rest of the development process. Site architecture is how a site is built. The site map acts like the blueprint - the concept and understanding of the information involved. The process flows are similar to a building's plumbing and electrical systems - how the active parts of the site run, and the wire frames are the framing of the physical site.

The structure phase should also address a variety of requirements. Business,technical,design and user requirements should be investigated fully and incorporated into the structure of the site. It is from this stage that the remainder of the project phases will grow and develop.

• How would the team deal with content?
• What functionality needed process flows?
• What types of navigation were best?
• Who are the users?
• How will all requirements be defined?

the team worked together to develop a content management tracking system that included what content was to be included on each page specifically,how much content was needed and when the content was needed by. The challenge was to create a site with very little text content, but heavy on images.

The client would benefit from having an email form on the site. The team needed to investigate the functionality of this form and its implementation with Flash technology. Creating a process flow for this helped the team design and implement an email form solution.

The team investigated several different types of navigational schemes and compared the scheme with the content that would work best for the target users. It was determined that a top global navigation with (card sorting)tested label names would work well.

User scenarios and task matrices were created to help define user requirements. Well defined users helped the team design a user centric web space.

From the user scenarios it was easy to then define the technology and design requirements. The team had already addressed the business requirements in the discovery and define phases. Before working with the team, the client had no clear direction or goals. With the creative efforts of the team, the client was able to identify and define her business goals and requirements more clearly.

This phase was the most challenging for the team. It involved many pieces and much research. Each team member was assigned several tasks to contribute to the production of the information architecture deliverable. I was able to keep the team focused on the individual pieces while providing an overall voice for the document. Strong organizational skills were required. I implemented a numbering system to control the content and to reference the content to the site map.

Client communication during this phase was extremely important. In order to build a content inventory and to be able to structure the site we needed complete cooperation from the client to supply us with the necessary content. The Project manager was diligent in stressing the importance of this to the client, and the client responded with supplying content within the scheduled timeframe.

During this phase it was important to provide positive feedback to the team. It helped to remind the team that this was a critical phase with many steps involved, but proper execution of this phase would result in quality requirements for the build of the project. I provided feedback and encouragement to help to keep the team working toward its goal.