Information architecture (also known as IA) is the foundation for sound Web design. It is the document upon which all other aspects of the site are built — form, function, navigation and interface, interaction, and visual design. Information architecture is the first thing you should do when designing a site.
Clients sometimes view the development of an IA to be impractical, both in terms of the time it takes and the skill needed to do it effectively. But this mentality is slowly changing. A good IA is incredibly effective, and knowing the basics of the IA process can save both time and money in the long run. Also, you don’t need to be an expert in order to use it to your advantage.
The first step in the IA process is to define the site’s goals. It sounds obvious, but think of how many horrible sites are out there. Do you think the people who created them really thought about their goals? Maybe members of the marketing department went nuts and built a site without asking anybody how to do it; they just had to have a site because everyone else has one. Or maybe the site was designed by committee. If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, why bother building a site?
After figuring out why a site should be built, the second most important aspect of designing IA is determining who the audience is. This is an invaluable step that many people fail to grasp. Many site designers do not even take into consideration who the users will be. How can you design a site if you don’t know who’s going to be seeing it?
Some people think an audience is defined by the technology it uses to access the site. This, too, is missing the point. The fact that a user visiting the site is utilizing a 28.8 modem is only a small part of the audience definition. A true audience definition consists of who the users are, as well as their goals and objectives. Scenarios, or stories, are useful in visualizing the audience.
Now that you know what your site is going to be about and who it is for, you are ready to pinpoint what it will contain. Everyone around you is starting to get ideas, and some of them may even have a mental image of what the site should look like. You need to harness this creative energy and channel it into a productive process. You already have an agreement on the goals and the audience, and you will be using the steps with which everyone is familiar by now.
The point of this part of the information architecture process is to gather the pieces for creating the structure and organization of the site. You will need to answer two questions:
(1) What pieces of content does the site need?
(2) What sorts of functionality will be required?
Think of it this way: If you want to build a spaceship out of Legos, you need to pick out all of the pieces you will be using. These pieces represent the content. If you want your Legos to do things, you need to choose which motors and processors you need (yes, Legos are computerized in this exercise). These pieces represent the functionality.
In order to harness all the ideas about how the site will work, create a list of the content and functional requirements, then reach a consensus on how this content will be grouped and labeled. A side effect of this process is to create a content list, or inventory, which is the basis for the site structure.
It is now time to define the site structure, which is the foundation on which everything else is built.
Think of the site structure as a skeleton that holds the body together. Without it, your site will be a jumbled, confusing mess — kind of like an amoeba. Do you want a primitive, disorganized, hard-to-use site? No! You want an evolved, highly structured, and easy-to-use site that can walk upright on its own two legs, so to speak.
After a good site structure is created, everything else will fall into place. It can’t help but do so! A well-designed structure will, in turn, make it easy to define a navigation system — and those two elements working together make designing page layouts and templates a snap. This is the last step before you can get into the process of building your site in earnest.
By now, you know a number of things about your site: why you are building it, who the audience is, what will be on the site (i.e., the content), and how the whole thing is structured. You are now ready to work on the visual design, which is often the most satisfying aspect of site construction.
One of the main purposes of visual design is to provide users with a sense of place: they need to know where they are on the site, where they have been, and how to get to where they want to be. A good site structure, combined with an effective visual design, enables users to construct a mental map of the site.