INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE DEVELOPMENT
Information architecture (IA) focuses on organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way. The goal is to help users find information and complete tasks.
Why a Well Thought Out IA Matters?
The purpose of your IA is to help users understand where they are, what they’ve found, what’s around, and what to expect. As a result, your IA informs the content strategy through identifying word choice as well as informing user interface design and interaction design through playing a role in the wireframing and prototyping processes.
What You Need to Know?
To be successful, you need a diverse understanding of industry standards for creating, storing, accessing and presenting information.
- Organization Schemes and Structures: How you categorize and structure information
- Labeling Systems: How you represent information
- Navigation Systems: How users browse or move through information
- Search Systems: How users look for information
In order to create these systems of information, you need to understand the interdependent nature of users, content, and context. Rosenfeld and Morville referred to this as the “information ecology” and visualized it as a venn diagram. Each circle refers to:
- Context: business goals, funding, politics, culture, technology, resources, constraints
- Content: content objectives, document and data types, volume, existing structure, governance and ownership
- Users: audience, tasks, needs, information-seeking behavior, experience
