Information Architecture and the rise of voice interfaces
Have you ever stopped to take a look at the way everything in Amazon’s homepage is so organized? While this may seem completely natural to us users, the design of the site is carefully constructed, based on Information Architecture (IA). IA is all around us and can be found on every interface including websites and mobile apps. As the world wide web began to rapidly grow during the second half of the 1990s, web designers needed a structure to help better organize the content on their sites. Most turned to the fundamentals of IA and as the years progressed, so did the quality and clarity online content.
To understand why IA is used as a foundation of web content, we must first understand how it works. The fundamentals of IA consist of the interplay, arrangement, and interaction among a product’s parts. This is better known as Ontology, Taxonomy, and Choreography.
These fundamentals of IA can be further broken down even further:
Findability: Users should be able to easily locate what they are looking for. In the case of Amazon, AI is used to suggest what it thinks you’d be interested in. If you’re interested in something else, you can easily search for it by using the prominently places search bar, and even search according to category. The cart is prominently placed at the top right corner, something which has become the standard on today’s e-commerce websites.
Accessibility: The product should be able to be accessed from all platforms, be it web, mobile or tablet app and meet the standard of its target audience. Additionally, it should be accessible to the hearing as well as visually impaired. Amazon is accessible on all platforms and home assistants like Alexa help the visually impaired.
Clarity: The product should communicate to its users in a clear way. Navigation within the app should be straightforward and without complications. The steps required in purchasing an item on Amazon are in a logical progression so that users can easily and hastily make their purchases.
Credibility: This is especially important in the world of e-commerce. Ever come across a shady website selling something which you needed, but were nervous to input your credit card details? This is where credibility comes into play. The product should feel secure. Users should be able to use it without any concerns. Almost everyone trusts Amazon due to their security and reliability.
The Rise of Voice Interfaces:
Although still in its early phases, Voice Interfaces will likely change Information architecture. While basic Information Architecture will still exist, there will be some changes that will affect the way products are designed. These changes will vary by product. In cases like social media platforms, changes will be minimal. This is because social media is a visual platform. Almost all social media rely on text, with images and video at their foundations. Voice Interfaces could be used to search for users, and we could possibly use it to read back statuses, but overall, social media platforms like Facebook Instagram and even Twitter are strictly visual.
Voice Interfaces shine in areas where we use a product to carry out a task for us. An app that is used to control a smart home can have minimal display screens and mostly use voice as a way to control it because all the user is actually doing is stating basic commands can otherwise be done by tapping on a screen.
Information Architecture changes the most with Voice Interface integration in e-commerce sites like Amazon and has the most potential to create a truly better product for users. Amazon is unique because it replicates shopping in the real world. Users search for a specific product find the ones they like best and buy them. Search Algorithms on the platform do their best in recommending what users may need, but it is just not the same as having a store employee or friend help while shopping. Even though the current Amazon interface works like a store personalized to match the wants and needs of each of its users it still fails to replicate the old shopping experience because users need to search and browse for items the same way they search and browse through Google.
Fully Integrated VI would affect Amazon in positive ways. The home screen would display suggested items, and not be cluttered with anything else. Users could command Amazon to search for something specific. “Show me 4 person camping tents that cost up to three hundred dollars” Those items would be displayed in groups of threes. Users would then be able to see the product rating and comments. They would also then be able to ask to purchase the items and say which payment method they’d like to use.
As technology evolves, so does Information Architecture. Integrating Voice interfaces to products will change the way we interact with products. Instead of just being handy tools and assistants, applications will turn into friends, assistants, mentors, and instructors.
