Information Architecture
COMD 311/312 section 1.
Mondays 4pm. Steuben 407
 

Large-scale Packaging
Monday, 27 October

It’s all about quantity and quality!

Objective

To develop a packaging system for a company with a large number of SKUs. Packaging system will utilize controlled vocabularies, consistent meta data and a templating system to keep everything organized and scaleable.

Process: Building a Controlled Vocabulary

Take a mail order catalog (3 should have been brought into class) and a spreadsheet (aka Excel or something like it) and enter in all the product data from your catalog into Excel. Stuff like the product name, the brand name, the type of product it is and certain features it has are important.

After that is done look at your columns of data. Are we referring to similar items with different words? Are we talking about similar product features with different words? If so, make a copy of the spreadsheet column and start to reduce the number of variants but deciding an a single preferred term for a given idea / product feature / product type.

Process: Categorization & Labeling

After your CV is complete it is time to decide on the best way to group your product list into categories. Do we group them by the tasks that you products accomplish? By manufacturer? By color? You can determine your categories by any column of data in your spreadsheet, but which way is the best?

After you have decided on a categorization system, you will need to come up with some clear labels for your categories.

Process: The Packaging

Work from your product data! Determine how much of the data in your spreadsheet needs to be on the outside of your packaging. Determine how many different sized boxes you will need, and then start to develop your grid and packaging concept.

Schedule

  • 27 October : Assignment given. Review catalogs.
  • 03 November: Spreadsheet of products and metadata of products.
  • 10 November: Comps of templates
  • 17 November: Comps of box forms
  • 24 November: Fully resolved CV + templates and forms
  • 01 December: Finals Due
  • 08 December: Last day of class

Assignment :: Information Architecture

 
 

Maintained by James Spahr
prof (at) spahr.org

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