Assignment ll: CSS Boogaloo

If you were RoboCop, you'd probably say, "Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the law." However, I doubt you're a cyborg cop from Old Detroit or Peter Weller, so I have no idea what your pre-existing prime directives are. (And yes, Peter Weller is a vigilante with the same prime directives as the character he played in RoboCop. How do you think they cast him?)

Since you've somehow found your way here, your new prime directive might be to learn about information architecture, usability, and interface design. It just so happens that I have information that exactly fits said new prime directives. What luck!

This information might fit with your prime directives, but this isn't the definitive source on these three topics. You might want to read other books on usability or web design like Horton and Lynch's Web Style Guide, which is what this site's information is based upon.

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A fair question, but one that I can't fully answer. The answer to that question ultimately depends on why you're reading this, but I can briefly explain why the topics of information architecture, usability, and interface design are important to a variety of documents and readers, especially those on the web.

In academic fields like DTC these concepts are often are hyper-scrutinized and understanding them is important to exploring things like the digital divide, digital literacy, rhetoric of media, human-computer interaction, and so on. However, the importance of these three ideas reaches far beyond academic pursuits. Many people, particularly those who have an interest in (digital) media (both producers and consumers), are dealing with these three issues everyday. For example, when someone reads online documents, they are relying on information architecture, usability, and interface design. If these things aren't used effectively, everything would look like this (turn down your speaker volume) and only the most persistent or self-destructive among us would actually use the web. Knowing what these topics are and how they're used enhances everyone's literacy online and the more you know the better.

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