Information Architecture-Techniques and Best Practices For Designers

The World Wide Web has an extensive amount of information which is difficult to imagine unstructured, what if it was unstructured, In that case, any human brain wouldn’t be able to identify any single thing. Nowadays peoples are very used to seeing functionality and content of any digital product in a structured and easy to use manner.

However, it doesn’t come unintentionally. Web Designers and developers take the full responsibility, while they are constructing any content and navigation system they firstly think for users perception and ease of using that product.

Today’s blog is fully based on the essence of information architecture and presents the basic points that every designer must know.

 

What is Information Architecture?

Information architecture (IA) is all about organizing and structuring content of the web and mobile applications in such a way so that users would easily understand the functionality of the product and could find each and everything they are looking for without any big effort.

Richard Saul Wurman, An American architect and graphic designer considered to be a founder of the IA field. According to the IAI experts, information architecture is the practice of deciding how to arrange the structure of something to be understandable.  Here are some main components of IA:-

• Organization Schemes and Structures
• Labeling Systems
• Navigation Systems
• Search Systems

The goal of IA is to helps a user to find information, understand their surroundings and complete tasks.

 

How to create an effective information architecture-

An effective IA based on the understanding business objectives and constraints, the content, and the requirements of the target audience that will use the site.

• Context: business goals, culture, technology, resources, funding, constraints, politics
• Content: document and data types, content objectives, existing structure, volume,  governance and ownership
• Users: audience, needs, tasks, experience, information-seeking behaviour

IA and UX design-

IA is an essential skill for the designers because good information architecture is a foundation of efficient user experience. And if it is united with design thinking that the product has the powerful user experience.