Design: Information Architecture

Today, information architecture (IA) is a recognized term in many technology, product, and Web-design organizations. However, in many other organizations, information architecture is still “the pain with no name.” [1] If you ask senior practitioners of information architecture, they’ll tell you that information architecture is central to the creation of human-computer interfaces. But the fact of the matter is that the popular view of information architecture represents just a very small subset of its total value.

In this column, I’ll first summarize the popular conception of the practice of information architecture, then I’ll highlight the broader scope of the practice that still remains to be realized. Read More

Donna Spencer is one of Australia’s best-known information architects, organizer of the UX Australia conference, and a frequent presenter at UX conferences in Australia, the US, and Europe. I caught up with Donna between her appearances at the IA Summit and RedUX DC to talk about card sorting and her new book, Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories, which Rosenfeld Media recently published.

SB: Can you tell us a little bit about your background? How did you get started?

DS: I was working for a big government department in the very late 90s. (Actually, I worked there for all of the 90s, but not on the Web.) I moved to the Web team right when they were expanding the Web site from 20,000 to 200,000 pages. At the same time, there was lots of discussion on the Internet about information architecture (IA), and that’s when I found my thing.

But that’s about how I found information architecture. You are probably also interested in how I found card sorting. There’s a story for that, too. Read More

During an information architecture project, creating index pages for items within categories can result in a lot of unexpected work.

Organizing and classifying a Web sites’ content when you’re developing its information architecture (IA) is one of the key activities you must undertake to deliver a usable site. Designing an information architecture to ensure users can reliably reach the information they want—and in less time—is the main focus of an information architect’s work. To accomplish this goal, information architects employ user-centered design methods, keeping users at a project’s center.

Over the years, the design and development of user interfaces for products and services has evolved, resulting in design conventions and best practices that we follow when designing a user interface. However, following common practice can occasionally lead us astray. This article cautions you against following a common information-architecture practice that can have negative consequences in terms of costs: the creation of index pages that correspond to a single item in a category. Read More