The Practice of Web Information Architecture in Large Organisations

This thesis outlines a research endeavour to better understand the way that large organisations organise information on their websites and to gain insights into the situated nature of this practice. The structure and design of the information on any website, its information architecture (IA), is an important criterion in the successful use of the online environment “ for both an organisation and its clients. Whilst there is now a well-defined process for designing the information structures of information-rich websites (Morville & Rosenfeld 2006), less is known about its everyday practice. A theory of The Situated Practice of Web IA that draws on practice-based theory (Gherardi 2006) is proposed. This fluid, integrated theoretical framework for the work of web IA in large organisations has a central construct of practising web IA that portrays web IA as a fledgling practice with great variability in its shape and the profile of its practitioners. Underpinning constructs of knowing, enacting, owning and negotiating web IA reveal a conceptual picture of the broad, yet detailed, activities of web IA.