Site Map Diagrams
A visual site map 17 is quick to make, fairly expressive and easy to change. People have all sorts of methods for building site map diagrams. Whatever your tool, the diagram is a useful way to demonstrate hierarchy. It clearly shows the relationships between pages and tells you where your website is too shallow or deep.
What’s it for?
To visually explain the relationships between pages on your website.
What’s good about it?
Nothing better illustrates the hierarchy of a website than a diagram with lines and arrows indicating the relationships between pages. Clients naturally understand it.
What’s bad about it?
The actual relationships between pages can be hard to grasp. What looks good on a chart might not work well on a website. And a site map diagram is not really useful during the development phase, quickly becoming a dead documents.
In sum
A site map diagram is a quick way to sketch navigation and hierarchy. Don’t try to cram in other bits of information that just don’t fit.
A few resources to learn more about site maps and diagrams:
A Visual Vocabulary for Sitemaps 18
The Lazy Information Architect’s Guide to Making Sitemaps
Elise Mandat on 14 Jan 11According to my best-case scenario dream, I looked high and low for a tag on Google for "fun architecture firm" or fun portfolio." They exist, but not advertised as such over the internet. Ideally, I would ask, "How do you create a fun portfolio to land a fun job?" Now I figure this is either inherent or not in the way you display yourself, so I decided to form another question: "What qualities of a person are employers most looking for behind their portfolio?" According to one site, it comes down to four qualities: 1. enthusiasm (do you want to learn?) 2. skepticism (do you think critically?) 3. eloquence (can you speak and write well? 4. attitude (will you get along with others?) 'Talent' is not a prerequisite for being able to learn, adapt, and grow. A future employer wants to know you will fit with their goals and perhaps style, yet more importantly be able to mold to their already-established way of doing things. They want to know you've got the stuff to make good things for them in the future under their company. Displaying these qualities - enthusiasm, skepticism, eloquence, and attitude - is a promise that you be able to produce great work beyond what you already have in an intelligent way.
