Rediscovering information architecture
As most of our civic, social, and commercial interactions move to the digital space, we need to find new ways to map and visualize the digital ecosystems we create and live within.
Moving fast has made a huge mess
As we move our lives to digital spaces comprised of information, from streaming services to food delivery, companies are extending the reach of their business and increasing complexity for their users.
Jorge Arango, author of Living in Information, observes, “we now live in a world in which we form our opinions in places made of information. 2020 is a presidential election year in the U.S. We can expect lots of thinking (and speculating) about the role of social networks in politics.”
Understanding and designing for these information spaces is becoming more important than ever: “Designers must understand the structural aspects of these places and how business models inform these structures if we are to respond meaningfully to the challenge of designing ethically.”
“Information architecture is the way that we arrange the parts of something to make it understandable.” — Abby Covert, How to Make Sense of Any Mess
Information architecture is a foundational part of digital design, yet it has been less prominent in the design discourse in recent years. When the software market was heating up, the pressure to launch products quickly forced businesses to copy established structures from their competitors. The incentive to fix structural problems was low since it required a lot of extra work; the reward was not clear and neither was the path to get there.
Furthermore, designers entering the field are trained to fill this need to move fast and conform to a rigid development process with their product teams, one which they reproduce over and over. For Jorge Arango, the work of the designer often happens in a limited environment, focused on the user interface, missing the opportunity to impact the conceptual structures that underlie the experiences.
The architecture of everything
As we enter the year 2020, things start to change as information environments become the core of all digital institutions surrounding our lives. “Organizations are stewards of information environments, and information structures are a key strategic concern. Companies, governments, and non-profits must aim for these structures to be useful, usable, and coherent — not just for themselves and their stakeholders, but for society as a whole,” explains Arango. “These factors increase the strategic importance of design in general and information architecture in particular. IA is long overdue for rediscovery and resurgence.”
However, it’s not only designers who need to understand information architecture. Since our lives are intertwined in multiple information systems, being able to visualize how these systems affect everything from our day-to-day lives to our larger political and economic structures is an important piece of knowledge for everyone to have. GDPR, the European regulation on the handling of personal data, and CCPA, the Californian version of it, are good examples of this need for transparency. Not only are these regulations tackling how we can reclaim the ownership of our data, but they help people visualize and understand how their personal information is organized, handled, and connected within their digital ecosystems.
In 2020, we need to leverage our visualization skills to make sense of the bigger picture of a product’s information environment — rather than solely focusing on its interface.
This article is part of our State of UX report: a holistic analysis of digital design as a discipline, and what to expect for the future.
