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Each yellow rectangle denotes an application, so the processes within each of those boxes aren’t included in this document!Įven without those parts available, the structure is such that we can understand how to navigate the website through the IA alone. This is important because, though Duke’s site appears fairly simple, the IA only goes three levels deep. The legend denotes page and content type, and it signifies variations between colors of shapes. Hierarchy of Shapes, Colors, and Other Visual ElementsĪside from hierarchy, the architecture above does another thing well: It displays every engagement point uniquely as needed through a simple legend and a few key phrases.
Each piece has to be constructed in advance with its own research, time for design, and development. It’s like asking a mechanic to build a car from the top down instead of in parts. When building IA from scratch, unless your website or application is following a standard format, drawing out anything after the top level is very difficult.
It’s a common misconception that IA must be built “from the top down.” That’s almost always more difficult to do unless it’s an existing product, such as in the video above. The most challenging aspect of creating a new information architecture is almost always in constructing it hierarchically. Understanding and Showing Visual Hierarchy In other words, the most important factors to building your IA are where individual components of the architecture are placed (hierarchically), and how they’re labeled and displayed. With a standard flowchart, the shapes follow specific requirements (rectangles are processes, diamonds are decision points, etc.) however, following that nomenclature isn’t a requirement. There are two major requirements for actually constructing IA: organizing it through a visual hierarchy (that is, a hierarchy of features, functions, and behavior) and creating a legend for displaying different types of features, interactions, and flows. The challenge when building IA is in understanding how your app or website actually works from the user’s perspective, and how to organize that information into a readable, legible format. There is no set limit to the size or shape of IA nevertheless, it should encompass the generalized structure of the product so anyone (theoretically) should be able to read it and understand how the product works.Īs part of the UX process, IA design follows very similar patterns to flowcharting: Add shapes and connect them with lines in an organized fashion to a single document. The level of detail is up to the designer, so IA may also include navigation, application functions and behaviors, content, and flows. Information architecture (IA) is, like a blueprint, a visual representation of the product’s infrastructure, features, and hierarchy. What Is Information Architecture, and Why Is It Important? However, developing one isn’t as simple as putting a list of features together and mapping out how they work-let’s investigate the process. And just as blueprints are the most valuable document for an architect to use in the construction of a building, information architecture can be the most powerful tool in a designer’s arsenal. Similar to building architects using a blueprint to construct every part of a house, from physical structures to more complex inner workings like electrical and plumbing, information architecture describes the hierarchy, navigation, features, and interactions of a website or application. Defining every avenue and path that users can take through an app or website, information architecture is much more than just a sitemap to show what page leads where.
Listen to the audio version of this articleĪs a standard part of the UX process, designers create information architecture when building products.
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