Information Architecture (IA) is the art and science of organizing information in such a way that it is intuitively acquirable. It is the practice of creating order out of information chaos.
Basically, figuring out how to arrange your content so that users can easily find what they are looking for
IA involves planning a scheme and method for ordering, structuring, and labeling your content. It also involved creating a site navigation scheme which enables users to easily locate information on your site.
The end goal is to create a clear mental model of your site content in the mind of the user. That way, your content structure becomes second nature to those navigating your site, and everything becomes easy to find.
IA has many of it's roots in library science, since librarians have been categorizing vast amounts of information into search-friendly systems for many years.
The interactivity of the web, however, has lead to new ordering schemes that have not been available before, since content itself can now cross reference to other information.
IA is a multidisciplinary practice. In most cases, there is no formal degree for information architecture.
Many IA practitioners are designers by trade, but specialize in designing information systems.
IA practitioners can also be Interaction Designers, Usability Engineers, and programmers.
Everyone involved with developing web content should be aware and knowledgeable in IA
Information architects need to be those that are problem solvers, and able to read between the lines to find the solutions to complex problems
IA is NOT the same as usability design!
Although good IA can lead to a more usable site
What makes IA important?
IA is important because increasingly people are subject to a deluge of more and more information, and it is important that information is easily digestible.
In the past, there has been resistance to IA, because it is generally an intangible service, and does not clearly map back to discernable deliverables.
This attitude is slowly changing, however, because ignoring IA has lead to:
Increased technical support costs.
Loss of viewers and customers
Expensive training costs
Lost of revenue due to the need to rebuild ill conceived sites that just don't work.
More and more information is available of the internet, and methods for finding information are therefore more important.
Aspects of IA
IA is generally concerned with establishing a system of content organization the makes it easy for users to find content. This is done by focusing on three main aspects:
Content - What is the content you need to organize? Is it tax records or photographs?
Context - What is the greater organization in which this content will be viewed? What are the relative social mores surrounding how the content will be viewed?
Users - What type of users are going to look for information on your site? What are they looking for? What tasks do they want to complete?
Taking into account these three factors will usually result in a unique organizational structure for each site.
Designing information to meet users' needs is the most important goal. Since each site caters to a unique set of users, it can be expected that each site will be structured differently.
Even though the over all structure is different, the rules that govern the organization may be similar.
The best place to start is to model a typical user and assess their needs and behaviors in order to determine a site structure that works best.
Asks yourself, "What are users hoping to find on my site?" and "What do I hope they find on my site?"
User Behavior
Users will generally look for information in one of two ways.
The will either be Exploratory Seekers, which are users that are not precisely sure what they are looking for .
Or they will be Exhaustive Searchers, those looking for all of the information on a topic.
Exploratory seekers need to be led to information, because they may not even know what topic they are looking for.
Iterative browsing is a good method to lead them to information. In this case, each topic selection leads to a subset of selections, and so on, until the information is located or the right resource to ask is found.
Iterative browsing is initiated by dividing content into categories, which is a list of overlying labels and destinations.
For instance, the OSU home page offers destination grouped by category.
yahoo.com began as a categorized entry point into web content.
Exhaustive seekers may want to search on a topic, and find like results that lead to other areas of interest.
On Google, each search result leads to similar results, expanding the path into an information topic.
Main Components of IA Design
Organization systems - how content is categorized.
Labeling systems - the text or visual labels assigned to categories and content
Navigation systems - the system that allows access to the labeled categories
Search systems - the system that allows exhaustive seekers to search for content across categories
1) Organization Systems
Ambiguity causes classification based on words to break down, since words can mean different things and therefore be classified differently
For example, the term pitch can mean different things in different contexts.
This is because terms can be highly context dependent. For instance, a baseball organization would categorize this term in a very different way versus a musical organization.
Another example, the item tomato
Tomatoes causes problems because it belongs in potentially three categories: vegetable, fruit, and berry.
Organizational Systems are comprised of organizational schemes and organizational structures
The organization system is key to developing a mental model for the site user. If a user has a clear mental model of your site content organization, they will be able to intuitively locate information.
Schemes are overarching methodologies for the grouping of items.
Exact grouping schemes are, for example: alphabetical, chronological, and geographical
Exact groupings are a good fit when the user knows what they are searching for
Ambiguous schemes are groups by topic, task, or audience.
Topic - what does the user want to find?
Task - what does the user want to do?
Audience - are the site users doctors or mimes?
Ambiguous grouping makes sense when the user enters a site and does not really know what they are searching for
Ambiguous schemes also include metaphor groupings, such as the desktop and folder metaphors used in Microsoft Windows
Metaphor schemes are hard to pull off. It is very difficult to find adequate metaphors that forms intuitive mental models in a large spectrum of users.
Metaphor schemes can be limiting by confining information within a metaphor. Thus, they do not scale well.
Metaphor schemes can be the most creative, however.
Hybrid schemes combine ambiguous schemes.
For example, Microsoft Windows combines a metaphor and a task based interface.
Structures are the way information is assembled into a mental model. For example, a tree structure.
Hierarchies or taxonomies are very natural way to visualize data
Humans have been formulating information in taxonomies for millennia
Good for grouping physical items
Taxonomies must be mutually exclusive. Each child can have only one parent
Polyhierarchies are tree structures in which each child can have multiple parents
Therefore, a tomato could be classified as fruit and a vegetable
Good for grouping conceptual items
Faceted structure - items are decorated with information that describes them
Very intuitive, close to a natural way of thinking
For example, a tomato is a vegetable, a fruit, red, and a spaghetti ingredient
Database model - similar to a facet structure, but the descriptive fields are very well-defined structures and optimized for indexed searching
Also known as a relational model
When choosing a scheme, it is important to keep the big picture in mind. Remember your audience and what mental model will work best for them.
2) Labeling Systems
Labeling systems apply names to category definitions
Labeling systems generally defy a firm methodology for creation
Trial and error is important here, as labeling schemes are much more art than science.
Create labeling schemes, and test them with focus groups.
Links and labels are all about context
If links and labels are surrounded by descriptive content, they can be short and they do not need to describe themselves
Headings may be numbered to reinforce order in a stepped process
Try and create consistency between label names, link treatments, destinations names (page titles), and headers
Labels can be textual or iconic
Iconic labels are very difficult to create, just like metaphoric organizational structures
It is very hard to create an iconic image, a graphic that means something to everyone
Stick to well-known tasks for iconic labels
To ease the process of labeling, narrow your site's user scope
Do not try to be all things to all people; target a specific audience
Or, if your site must be large, break the site into smaller, specialized sub sites
Develop a methodology for labeling that uses a consistent grammatical style, presentation, syntax, granularity, and comprehensiveness
Look to other sites that have a similar audience for labeling ideas.
Use sites that have heavy research and development dollars behind them. Leverage their heavily funded ideas.
Use a card exercise to determine a labeling system for a specific audience.
Create cards for each piece of content and ask a focus group to arrange them. Then ask them to name that logical group.
3) Navigation Systems
Navigation systems create a physical method of traversing your site's organization system. Navigation systems use your labeling system to provide link names.
For large sites, consider a visual indication for what section a user is in