A detailed study on Information Architecture
Anuj Bisht | 3rd October 2019
If you are a designer then you definitely heard about Information Architecture. It is used for the structuring of the website or App which makes your thoughts and flow clear. You can also use the term IA as a short form. IA is a part of the designing process which contains the flow of the screens and also the relation to each other.
What is IA?
Information Architecture is a blueprint of the App or website, It contains the details like the flow of the Application, content, and structure of the Application. IA does not have any set limit of design you can modify it according to your detail. Just you need to create a basic structure which is useful for all whoever is interested in it.
How to design IA?
IA is followed the pattern in which, we can use shapes and lines to connect each other and organize the flow according to the application details. The major challenge while creating IA is when we create the IA according to the user perspective.
The most important part of IA is you have to maintain the visual hierarchy and also created legends for showing different types of elements.
What is Visual Hierarchy?
The very important part of the IA is the visual part of the Architecture. If you are starting the IA from scratch then you have to collect the information of every module or every part of the product. Not because of the visual part but it is because it gives you the broader point of view that which part of the app is primary for you to focus on or which is least in your priority.
Tools for creating IA
There is much software also through which you can build an Information Architecture design. This software gives you the basic used tools like shapes, lines etc for making the IA quickly.
- Draw.io is one of the tools used for making IA, it is free for all types of users whether you are using it personal or professional. This software allows multiple users to work on and see the results live in front of you.
Principles of Information Architecture (IA).
There are many things you need to keep in mind while making IA. There are basically eight principles for reference.
- Principle of Object – content should be treated as a living component. It has behaviors and attributes. Before start designing, we can identify the kind of content to be used in the product.
- Principle of Choice – give user minimum choice as much as you can because if you gave the user more choices, they get more confused and not able to use the product.
- Principle of Disclosure – show as much as you can show in the product screen, because when the user gets what he wants on the page then only he/she will dig into it.
- Principle of examples – show the example of the content which gives the user more obvious view if they see it from the very first time.
- Principle of front doors – show the basic information of the product on every page of the site, so that the user know who are you. Also, navigation options should be there.
- Principle of multiple classifications – you should give multiple ways to the user to find out the details of the product.
- Principle of focused navigation – keep the navigation simple so that the user never gets confused. Do not mix different things into it.
- Principle of growth – make sure your content scalable, because when you add something on it in future it should build it like that.
Conclusion
Content is the most important part of the product, you should be very careful about the content part in the very beginning of the new project. Information Architecture is the foundation of the product and the structure which we build that needs to be well designed so that we can make our product more usable in terms of user experience.
