So today at my job I heard from one of the front-end guys that the new Information Architecture involved repeating a subnavigation several places on a single page. This got me thinking, I, as a developer know that I should do my best to stay DRY (don't repeat yourself), does this same axiom apply to Information Architecture/Design?
I think it does. As a developer when I see a pattern form, I know that it is forming because of some end goal that I am needing to produce many times, most likely this is a useful end goal. I then refactor/rearchitect the code to extract the pattern, make it reusable and extensible (well not always, but if I have my druthers I do).
The same should go for design. If we see that we are doing a sub-navigation 3 times on a single page, then don't we think that maybe our whole page might need some work? Why is the user experience such that the nav has to be 3 places? Is the page too long? Is there too much on the page? Would one sub-nav suffice but it is not big enough or doesn't stand out enough?
My theory (the Ostheimer DRY Design Theory) is that IA/Design are confined to the same DRY theory as software engineering: if you are repeating yourself a lot and that seems to be the only solution, then something bigger is wrong.
Seems like a reasonable stipulation. Tried selling this to the IA team?
ReplyDeleteI find that the prod folks don't always respond well to developer thoughts... but maybe I will. Perhaps it is likely that this specific thing I am seeing is a "stopgap".
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