After taking my time to pick apart UX research and its tools and problems, I feel that it’s appropriate to talk about a close relative of that topic. It is, of course, information architecture. I’ll try not to dwell too much on what it is but, rather, talk about why I find it important and how to best deal with it. Having just finished crafting a new website for Incode Group, I’m pretty entangled in the topic and have a few things to say.
What Is Information Architecture?
Nothing too complicated, really, it’s just the way you structure information and pages in an app or on a website. Technically speaking, it’s always present, even if you didn’t do any conscious structuring yourself. After all, there’s this voice in your head that will shout at you if you try to place “FAQ” under the “Gallery” submenu. We just have this innate sense of placement that prevents us from such goofs.
For real-life examples, just look in your fridge. You’re not going to put a head of lettuce next to a piece of raw bloody meat, right? If you are — gross, don’t do that. But if you’re not, congratulations, you’ve been architecting your fridge all along. It’s not rocket science and, this might get me in hot water with part of the design community, you don’t necessarily need a dedicated specialist to handle your project’s information architecture. Any designer (or UX researcher!) with common sense and the right methodology can handle it on a small scale. I know I did and I, hopefully, did just fine, though that’s up to the site visitors to determine.
Why Is It Needed?
User-Side:
Put yourself in the user’s shoes (in fact, do it more often. Do it all the time, really. It’s a healthy practice). You enter the app and, immediately, decide to adjust some setting in your profile, be it some UI tweaks, changing the password, or looking at some other preferences. By following standard information architecture, you’d expect all of this to be in one subsection of the menu — the User Profile. If it’s spread across three different subsections, the user gets irate. It wastes time, it’s non-intuitive, and it’s certainly not the optimal way to do things.
Your site/app/database needs information architecture because, at its core, it’s kind of like a shopping mall. When you walk into it, there’ll be signs guiding you to the section you need and we, as a people, have this mutual understanding that similar products will be grouped together. Nobody is going to put the dollar store next to the luxury clothing store, at least not in a well-designed mall. And it works because it’s been architected from the ground up.
Designer-side:
If you look at it from the seller’s perspective, information architecture has some direct advantages aside from getting the user comfortable with your app. For one, if you want to push a certain section or product into the limelight, you can simply pair with another, more popular option. That way it gets more exposure and is more likely to be noticed by the users. Now, it does mean that the options have to be similar and make sense as a group. No matter how unique each person is, the paths we take when navigating apps/websites are often standardized. This means that a hard veer from one subject to another is unlikely, even if there’s a factor of surprise when you see the “best bargains” section in, say, the “Contracts” menu. Most people will just feel weirded out not intrigued.
And that’s where the need for a designer or an information architect appears. You need someone who knows how to push the limits but not overstep them and how to structure information. Above all, you also need to have your architects collaborate with your SEO specialist, because the way you structure your website has a substantial impact on your ranking in search engines.
Practices In Information Architecture
Many of the techniques used when it comes to handling information architecture are carbon copies of the ones I described here. After all, card sorting is a staple of both and it’s actually one that I’d consider very underrated. Sure, it’s simple and cheap but it delivers results. Especially if you use both reverse and direct methods and survey several groups. It’s important to always get a second (and third and fourth) opinion and use the results to form a consensus option.
Similarly simple is never putting your opinion over the feedback from users. Again, I’ve mentioned this before but it’s a staple of good design and it’s something that too many people ignore. You need to understand that your professional view of the site is different from the way the average user approaches it. By paying attention to the feedback freely given to you, you can unearth the way to a more sensible architecture.
Also, remember that not all sites/apps are created equal. You can’t create a cool architecture for an eCommerce project and then paste it onto every project from there on. Instead, use personas and real user testing to determine how this site is special and what the users want to do with it.
Don’t hesitate to create wireframes and use them for a while. Sure, deadlines may be tight but a broken site is no better than a site delivered two days late. In fact, it might be worse, though your boss might have a different opinion on that. When making Incode Group’s website, I spent a day or two planning out the architecture before the retooling even started. And still, I took some time to have a wireframe where I could test the architecture to double-check my ideas.
If you’re struggling to build your site from the top down, consider switching to the opposite: bottom-up architecture. By taking this 180° turn, you might make progress instead of endlessly trying to get out of the rut.
In Conclusion
All in all, it’s pretty easy to tackle information architecture if you’re approaching it with a clear mind, a willingness to adapt, and some experience behind your belt. If you take the time to refine architecture, results will make themselves evident later on so please don’t ignore it. It’s an important aspect of web/app design and I hope to see it gain more respect among professionals.
Disclaimer: Though it can be hard to practice what you preach, I always strive to do so with my work at Incode Group and personal design projects, which you can find on my Dribble and Behance pages. Don’t hesitate to contact me with feedback about my articles or collaboration offers!
