GUI design: From information architecture to interactive experience

This paper analyzes Graphic User Interface (GUI) design bases on Nathan Shedroff’s theory about data, information and knowledge. Actually, interface is the information between data and knowledge. User is the center of classifying and organizing information, and all kinds of methods base on user should be chosen. And graphic becomes the medium to transform and restructure the user information, which should follow such principles as relevancy, signification and objective. In the case study of web navigation graphic, the author analyzes embedded frame, tree frame, ladder frame and ZIP. From the viewpoint of media evolvement and human behavior, it points out that interactivity is the meta-media, and the essence of the interactivity is human interaction. Bearing these on mind, the author analyzes that the users are dissociating between the truth and the virtual, which makes the interaction more extensive; the new interaction based on the co-existence and co- evolvement between human and computer can be created by making good use of technology; and what to be innovated is not only the interactive “object”, but the interactive “affair”, whose core is still to create experiences full of meaning. Consequently, Web GUI design is not only an esthetical form, but also information architecture to communicate effectively and human user experience.