Today was our day off after 9 days of ATG training. Yesterday afternoon, we were all mentally “full” of all we’d been learning. I wasn’t sure how productive I’d be at work today.. and as it turned out, it was one of those great days where you just can’t get enough done!

The morning started somewhat slow, but we had a major meeting scheduled from 11-12:30 for an upcoming project in which we’re to flex our new ATG skillz. The meeting went really well, we went over the strategic and creative briefs before getting into some more technical details.
Because I’m trying to get into an IA role, I was really excited about dissecting the tiny pieces that went into what we saw on the screen. For me, IA isn’t just about sitemaps and wireframes. I come to it from a programmer’s perspective: so what different objects make up the site; what are the properties of each.

After the formal meeting, several developers and our director were chatting about templates, and all of a sudden I got what was described as an overwhelmed look on my face. I was thinking about templates on two levels: templates that referred to data: mapping a template to a particular type of content, and then templates as they related to presentation. The scribbling to the right was my attempt to get some of this stuff out of my head: we could describe an object (say, a press release) as an aggregate of its parts: title, description, accompanying image(s), accompanying link(s). There could be a generic template used for this type of content, with variations based on the existence of different aspects of the element. Still, the underlying template would be of a press release.

But a template could also be used to vary presentation: a template could use the same attributes of a press release, but vary in terms of its orientation (image on the right versus the left). Where does the specification of this lie? Is it on the level of an individual instance (press release 1 could have the left-hand images, press release 2 could have the right-hand images), or should there be consistency across item types. (My personal thought is that for optimal user experience, items of similar types should be displayed in a similar fashion).
It’s like the post I had not long ago about areas of variation, or all the common UI building blocks discussions we had at LexisNexis. It’s about building a web application, not a web site.

After our group pow-wow, I still had all these questions on my mind, and I cheerily sat down to go through the wireframes. I tried to identify major item types, trying to consider all the information I’d taken in over the last few weeks. One major consideration is content updates, and I think sitting in training on the managerial track next week will help me understand what tools we need to provide for people to achieve their goals. (granted, we’re talking about my colleagues, who work at an interactive agency. We all have an abnormally high familiarity with the web, so we’re not indicative of a typical client)

I’m not the architect on the project, but I can’t help but see how the various pieces will fit together. I have a strong opinion on tying together semantically related content: an individual page describes a particular item, it is not simply a group of “stuff”. The challenge is looking across items to figure out how the compare and contrast. In training I asked about the possibility for a slot to be populated with different types of media — an image, a video. The response was that a slot can only contain a single item type: but the solution is to make a generic enough “type” that all media can be supported. I want us to see these patterns from the outset, rather than pigeon-holing ourselves into having unique, un-extensible content scattered throughout.

I’m really looking forward to this process…