Web Site Architectures: A Perspective on Information Design

Push technologies like Pointcast, BackWeb, and Marimba have begun to make electronic information consumers expect content to be delivered to them. The information harvest is brought to users' desktops without any more effort than the selection of a few preferences.

This is a dramatic evolutionary leap from the hunter-gatherer days of surfing the Net for each morsel of information. Unfortunately, the information presented to the users by these push devices is "lumpy," that is, it's not terribly well filtered to their needs and expectations. This portends the emergence of Web sites delivering highly specific information to individual users as they come to the site and are identified by a login ID or a cookie.

Web designer, Nat Connacher, founder of Connacher Design, a Stamford, CT-based multidisciplinary design firm, has very aptly characterized the evolving paradigm of information architecture.

1. Traditional html-coded Web site The user clicks through the information following a predetermined hierarchical path. Information is presented as the user goes to each new page; however, information is the same for all users at all times. Information also remains constant until the page is reprogrammed.
2. Data base-coded Web site A user continues to navigate to information along a predetermined path. As they reach each destination page some/all information is dynamically presented based on user-specific or time-dependent criteria. Information, either text, graphics, or multimedia, can change merely by updating the database.
3. User-centric Home Page The user interface is a menu of choices unique to the user, i.e., "channels" and "programs." As each selection is made using the Home Page, user and time-specific information is assembled in a new, content browser window. The user can easily return to the Home Page, which remains available on the desktop, to redirect the information in the presentation window. Again, information changes by database update. User benefit: I know where I am. I know what I want. And it comes to me.

Howard Koval, Exec. VP for Business Development of The Interactive Connection, thinks that the Web site of the future will be a custom-tailored interface to databases and streams of real-time information. The users' profiles will determine what information is served to them and what interactive options ssuch as discusssion groups or chats are offered to them.

The Interactive Connection is the creator of "middleware" that serves the needs of information providers and users. Their Content Engine aggregates content from over 400 high-profile, branded information providers and can deliver customized, streaming content components to host sites based on the profile of the user.

The Content Engine consists of three main components that receive, filter, and distribute the content. Media formats can range from text and binary data to audio, video, graphics, and photos.

The Pfizer Managed Care News area on Physician's Online uses the Content Engine to offer breaking healthcare industry news from 150 sources to POL's member physicians. Other users of the Content Engine include Computer News Daily and Your Health Daily--both publications of the New York Times Syndicate.

Push technology is certainly the wave of the future, but that doesn't necessarily mean the death of the Web browser--as Wired magazine suggested in its March 1997 cover story.

The ever-expanding wealth of information on the Web and on the Internet still beckons us to surf, but the drilling for information will now be done for us. We'll visit sites that we trust to be reliable sources of information, and the information that we most desire will be pumped out to us when we arrive.

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