Architectural Page Mockups

Information architecture blueprints are most useful for presenting a bird’s eye view of the web site. However they to not work well for helping people to envision the contents of any particular page. They are also not straightforward enough for most graphic designers to work from. In Fact no single format perfect job of conveying all aspects of information architecture to all audiences. Because information architectures are multi dimensional, it's important to show them information multiple ways. For these reasons Architectural page mockup are useful tools during conceptual design for complimenting the blueprint view of the site mockups are quick and dirty textual documents that show the content and links of major pages on the website. They enable you to clearly (yet inexpensively) communicate the implications of the architecture at the page level. They are also extremely useful when used in conjunction with scenarios. They help people to see the site in action before any code is written. Finally, they can be employed in some basic usability tests to see if users actually follow the scenarios as you expect. Keep in mind that you only need to mockup major pages of the web site. These mockups and the designs that derive from them can serve as templates for design of subsidiary pages. The mockups are easier to read than blueprints. By integrating aspects of the organizational labeling, and navigation systems in to one view they will help your colleagues to understand the architecture. In laying out the content on a page mockup, you should try to show the logical visual grouping of content items. Placing a content group at the top of the page or using a larger font size indicates the relative importance of that content.

While the graphic designer will make the final and more detailed layout decisions you can make a good start with these mockups.