infoarch

Top-task management is a method championed by Gerry McGovern to improve and optimize websites. I’ve been thinking about this method for some time now. I was planning to start by sharing my understanding and experience with the method. But then I bumped into a post about the limitations of the top-task management approach  by Philippe Parker. Bottom-line of the post is that top-task management doesn’t work for sites with which you want to achieve engagement. Top-tasks vs. engagement I’m sure the top-task approach can work in some cases, but I see too many consultants always applying this method. Top-task management tries to make something simple when it can be simple. But I see it applied to websites when the need is complex as well.  A task is clean and can usually be clearly described. But real work like searching, learning, listening, processing is messy. Parker says: tasks are not the only thing people come to the site for. He goes on to say ‘engagement’ is the...

Well, this doesn't have much to do with 'information architecture', it's family-related. My dad has been developing a tool for years and years now that analyzes requirements using natural language processing techniques. It's called Requirements Assistant . NASA set up an evaluation of several comparable tools and guess what? My dad's tool scored best and they bought a license. Congratulations dad! You can get a copy of the paper on this evaluation and corresponding presentations here (category "Requirements Analysis"). It's titled: "Evaluation of Current Requirements Analysis (RA) Tools Capabilities for IVV in the RA Phase". (You have to leave your name and email address to download it.) As you can read on my dad's site , he's (a.o.) working on preparing Requirements Assistant for the Eclipse environment.