Design

Users of the Internet have become increasingly sophisticated in their expectations for the content and timeliness of informational Web sites. This is especially true for sites that deliver real-time information. For example, content portals such as Yahoo! provide late-breaking news through content management systems, and sites such as weather.com have realized that in addition to serving their core users, they can also syndicate their contents to a variety of other sites. In order to provide value to these end users, designers of Web pages are changing their approach from designing static Web pages with content that seldom changes to designing templates into which new information can be frequently added. It is not enough to design templates that structure navigation and visual identity. Truly dynamic presentation of information will take a modular approach, and templates will need to include a rule structure that specifies how content and interactions are combined. As content management and other systems enable and demand such modular approaches, the role of the information architect becomes more challenging. This article will provide a brief overview of some of the design imperatives and implications of using templates to create a modular Web design. It will review the contribution of content management systems and the means by which template rules can be used to create customized, personal-ized experiences. The emergence of templates and modular design has clear implications for Web interface designers: Site maps and interactive wireframes are not sufficient to capture the essential features of an interaction experience. Instead, designers will need to adopt a rule-based approach and become comfortable with creating placeholders for content and interactions. Content management systems allow businesses to create, manage, and publish content to the Internet (or other electronic venues). The power of such systems lies in the fact that people outside an information technology (IT) department can perform daily workflow tasks to publish content into templates that maintain the corporation's brand integrity and remove formatting and design burdens from content creators. Content management systems can be understood as modular because they separate the content from display through the use of templates. Authoring templates allow content providers to create and edit content without concern for presentation. Conversely, presentation templates match the content with design for publication. This separation allows businesses to easily make changes to the presentation templates, changes that are then made with no effect on the content. Such systems also allow for …