American Institute of Architects selects NavigationArts

MCLEAN, VIRGINIA, June 21, 2006 — American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected NavigationArts to provide user experience consulting and assessment services for the organizations’ web site.

Over 77,000 AIA members use the web site as a medium for professional knowledge sharing. In addition, the site is an important mechanism for communicating the interests of the profession to government regulators, business, and the public. Supporting the needs of these user types with content and functionality, and making those resources easy to navigate and find is a significant challenge.

AIA has engaged NavigationArts for a comprehensive assessment of the site navigation and structure, both to improved usability and to integrate new content. Drawing from their best-practices based methodology for user experience design, NavigationArts will perform an expert assessment of the AIA web site using generally accepted principals of usability and their proprietary heuristic approach. This effort will generate practical, actionable recommendations to improve Web site usability and navigation, and provide an extensible framework for growth.

"We have called ourselves 'architects of the user experience,' and so it is now a fitting challenge to work with the premier organization for architects to improve their user experience," said NavigationArts’ CEO Leo Mullen. "Many of the issues are the same, since great architecture must combine aesthetic beauty with utility or usability."

NavigationArts is working in collaboration with AIA’s web site managers and an extended group of stakeholders to conduct the assessment and develop recommendations. The assessment phase should be finished in Q3 2006.

About NavigationArts

NavigationArts (www.navigationarts.com) is a strategic consultancy providing expert strategy, information architecture, design and development services that optimize the business value of their clients' online programs for commerce, communications and marketing. NavigationArts’ practice areas include Financial Services, Education, Energy, Retail, Publishing, and Associations.