Pat Barry
PAB Consulting
pat@patbarry.net
847.612.1051

Portfolio: Information Architecture, Web Design, Usability

~ Information Architecture ~

I was a team member on two information architecture projects at Allstate Life Insurance company. The first was as a precursor to designing a management information system. The second was to develop an information strategy plan for the profit center's whole systems architecture. In graduate school, I looked at examples of good and bad web site architectures and developed the architecture for this portfolio site.

NEU Policies & Procedures
Improve an Information Architecture (pdf)
In this paper I recommended navigation for a policies web page that is 24 pages long and has no indication of what policies are actually on the page. Users have to scroll through all of them to see if what they are looking for might be there. Here's the page as it was in November of 2008.

    Portfolio Categories

    Skills Used
  • Site planning
  • Web page design
  • Information architecture
  • Usability principles
  • Spatial perception
  • PowerPoint
  • Visio
Case Study: Well-Designed IA (pdf)
In this case study I present the specific reasons the Society of Technical Communication's web site gets such high marks for usability. There is a navigation aid I've never seen on a web site before!
PB Site Wireframes
Portfolio Site Wireframes (pdf)
These are the wireframes I started this site with. I changed some things from these original plans but the basic structure and navigation have remained.
Portfolio Site Map (pdf)
This document is a map of this site's hierarchy and structure. I created it in Visio and use it as a starting point when making any changes to this site.