The Art (?) of Information Architecture

Information Architecture (the short definition) is: analyzing, organizing, and structuring information on websites so the average user can easily find what s/he is looking for. A simple enough idea but is it simple (read easy) to do?

The Information Architect (IA, for short) has to strike a balance between what the owner of the web site wants (requirements), the content of the site (what to keep from an existing site and what to replace), and what the user wants and/or needs. It is like someone juggling, too much of one will impact the others, it may be in a good way or maybe not so good. This is where the "Art" (the skill and creativity needed for an endeavor) part of IA comes into the mix.

A fairly common thing to find when dissecting a web site is the design of an organization's web site mimics the organizational structure of the entity. This usually happens because the Information Architect follows the existing flow or structure of the organization. However, does the site user know (or care) that the Company's financial information is gathered and managed unders the direction of the VP of Customer Service and will be located under the Customer Service tab on the web site because this is the way the reporting structure is organized? I doubt the user will care, all she wants to do is land on the web site home page and with one or two mouse clicks find what she is looking for. Here the "Art" is being used to balance the company needs with the user needs.

Thinking about our user in the above paragraph, what does the Information Architect have to do to make the user experience a good one so hopefully, she will return again and again to our web site? The IA has to be able to figure out how the end user thinks and then use this information to structure the web site so that it is intuitive for the user to move around and through the site.

Try using these 8 steps the next time you are asked to build an Information Architecture.

1. Understand the web site (system) requirements
2. Talk to the end users of the existing site, or if there is no existing site, conduct interviews of potential and/or targeted users
3. Develop a draft architecture and get client feedback on the proposed architecture.
4. Understand that this is an iterative process, you won't get it right the first time around
5. Eventhough this won't be the final architecture design, document, document and document some more
6. Develop persona(s) and define what tasks these persona(s) will do when using the site (storyboarding)
7. Have the project team review the storyboards
8. Create detailed page layouts to support the storyboards (this also provides valuable information for the web designers and developers

Bottom line, effective information architecture should provide the means for users to quickly and easily find what they are looking for on a web site.