Making the Web Work: Designing Effective Web Applications

Chapter 6. The Organizational Model: Organizing and Structuring Content and Functionality

“A place for everything and everything in its place.”

—Isabella BeetonHousehold Management

As the final layer of the Structure tier, the organizational model details how a site’s functionality and content is categorized into intelligible groups. As human beings, we use organizational models as a basic cognitive tool for recognizing, experiencing, and reacting to virtually everything we encounter. For example, we categorize animals as wild or domestic, people as male or female, and nations as developed or emerging. However, we also categorize those things by a variety of other properties: large and small, exotic and conventional, cultured and swine. Selecting ...