Comments on: Flexible Sitemaps

By: Travis Schmeisser

Travis Schmeisser — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:12:46 +0000

I've switched to a method like this and it really does save time and make for easier revisions. When showing to clients, I've found the lines don't help denote hierarchy any more than this. You can also move to indenting with a line extra deep pages if you find the color and tone don't work deeper.

By: Sticky Sitemaps › Wireframes Magazine

Sticky Sitemaps › Wireframes Magazine — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:03:27 +0000

[...] need for flexible design documents such as sitemaps has already been noted in the past. In this example however, instead of using the computer, a very similar style of [...]

By: Jakub Linowski

Jakub Linowski — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:54:06 +0000

In this sample at least, all number references contain no relationships. Perhaps these related links is something which could be set in the sitemap itself or in another document if they are very complex. In the sitemap for example, a new section could be created to group related or similar pages together. I just find that keeping relationships out of the numbering scheme affords more flexibility. That's all.

By: josh

josh — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:27:13 +0000

Excuse the very very late reply. How do you represent crosslinking or related links without the use of numbering? ie. A "Related Links" nav that displays a grouping of related content that lives elsewhere on the site? I ask this as I want to move away from numbering my IAs while still making the flow chart easy to reference. Hope i'm making sense. Thanks!

By: Tyesha

Tyesha — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:53:20 +0000

I really like this and not just for the time savings of not messing with lines and arrows. I never want the "bubbles" on my site maps to be considered Pages, they are pieces of content or functionality that are living in a certain hierarchical structure. Thinking about it this way allows this stage of the process to be separated from the design stage. If no one is attached to something being a "Page" then you have lots of freedom to design in the best way possible (layers, tabs, ajax, scrolling, floating, swilling, whatever…)

This type of visual design really helps express the non-pageness of the bubbles.

Thanks!

By: Jakub Linowski

Jakub Linowski — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:00:12 +0000

Thanks Tai. Will have to have a look at Omnigraffle one day. :)

By: Jakub Linowski

Jakub Linowski — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:56:10 +0000

I used Illustrator for the above example. Will have to check out MindManager. Thanks for the tip.

By: Tai Toh

Tai Toh — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:22:58 +0000

Hi Jakub,

Great to see this site coming along. Omnigraffle is quite good for traditional sitemaps and Hierarchical organizational charts. It has an "outlining" feature that allows you to easily input and nest new objects. I don't know about @Josh's question regarding numbering–I don't think it does it.

Great work. Keep the content coming.

By: Ruven Gotz

Ruven Gotz — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:20:10 +0000

Have you investigated using a mind mapping tool for this task? The lines redraw automatically, and the hierarchy formatting is applied automatically. As changes are made by simply dragging and dropping, all the lines and formatting magically update. I have been using MindManager for just this purpose and it works very well.

By: Jakub Linowski

Jakub Linowski — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:38:32 +0000

Hey Josh.
One other thing which I try to stay clear of when numbering are nested references such as "Wireframe 3.2.1.4" where the numbers represent (and duplicate) relationships and structure. For example, in this same sitemap example above I only create one number references such as "W02" or "W12" which are independent from content structure. This gives a bit more flexibility as it decreases the need to update the numbers after rearranging. Hope that helps?