Information architecture for the web is the process for describing and classifying information used to help construct user experience paradigms. Just as a building is constructed by architects and finished by interior designers, so, the construction of a web site requires a taxonomy, that is, the science of classification and organization that makes the information work for the user experience, in addition to the design of the user experience, and the design of what it all looks like.

Information Architecture — User Experience

It sounds like they are intimately connected, and they are on the level in which you operate in this class. In the real world, for large sites, these are very separate skills. The Information architect comes to the web site from the side of the information, whereas the user experience designer looks at the information from the user point of view. The designer then cobbles together these two views into a coherent visual design that is marked up and styled using HTML, CSS and Javascript by the front end developer, who works in tandem with the back end developers that create the content management system (CMS), the databases and the server side scripts that make a modern web site work.

There is overlap between information architect and the user experience designer. Information architecture involves planning the site, what information to include on what pages, how many levels in the hierarchy of pages, navigational menu design, what labels to use to name pages, sub-sections and headings, how information should be laid out on a page to make it easiest to find and understand. Much of this is often represented by a taxonomy that in the end results in a hierarchical site map.

Taxonomies

Taxonomy is the branch of science concerned with classification. I know what you are thinking. My portfolio site will only have a dozen pages. Isn’t thinking about a taxonomy overkill? Yes it is, but that does not preclude you from preparing yourself for more complicated projects.

A web site, particularly when implemented on a content management system, where pages can be added with ease, can suffer because of a lack of information architectural planning. Other sites that would benefit from a carefully developed taxonomy are intranets, corporate web sites, e-commerce sites and the sites or large institutions like the New School web site.

A few words on taxonomy. A taxonomy is usually thought of as the tree-type of hierarchy that classifies topics like the biological tree of life, for example, but it can also be an imposed order by type, like the Dewey Decimal System in use by libraries, which has a unique ontological classification that drills down to each particular manuscript in library science.

The taxonomy terms are arranged so that more specific terms fall under more general categories. For your web site, for example, a specific print falls under the category prints, which falls under the category of illustration, which falls under the category of work.

In more complicated sites, there are relationships types that may not be hierarchical, and can be based on location, products, services, membership, utilization or ownership and other relations that you probably have not yet thought about. In these cases, it’s important to clearly define the terms of the taxonomy that relates the types, for that will make for a more consistent user experience.

Information Architecture

In print, the information architecture is mostly linear, with a table of content and an index to provide access to the discrete parts, or in a newspaper, where articles start on the front page and continue on other pages.

The hyperlinks on the web make for a much more hierarchical relationship, where the user can jump anywhere in the inverted tree-like hierarchies that make up most navigational systems. This makes overlapping taxonomies possible, as there can be a number of ways to approach the same information.

The point to take away from this is that being clear about the taxonomy will help users find the information they are seeking.

Whereas taxonomies focus on classifying the information beforehand, there is another movement that feels information should be classified by the people using it, called folksonomy

The Information Architecture Process

Information architecture works out the relation between the content and the navigation. It corresponds directly with the goal of the site, the objectives, the content and the needs of the user. The information architecture can be strictly hierarchical, more organic, or both, but the process starts by writing down and organizing the site objectives.

The information architect lists the content requirements and determines the appropriate page hierarchy for the site, be it top down or bottoms up, and design the navigation to access this hierarchy. Note that the navigation does not need to mirror the hierarchy, and can take the form of a matrix, be organic, or even linear. A complete diagram of the information architecture is created by standardizing the navigation architecture with the organization of the content.

Designing for the User’s Interaction

The information architecture addresses all of the potential users whose interaction with the information is what the site is about. Knowing the target audience and what they need and are interested in can be made into scenarios that map out these ideal user interactions, through process flow charts, site-maps and wireframes can be constructed from that analysis that most represent the site’s objectives and strategy.

You were required to develop a number of personas, and in the second assignment, to organize the website with a number of such personas in mind. Figuring out who the users are and addressing them is a common starting point when developing a website.

For a medical website I had to consider about a dozen distinctly targeted users with very different interests for a medical website for which I did a user experience analyses, and had to figure out how to build an interface that met the expectations of all of the users. The site objectives had to be applied to the different needs and interests of the multiple targeted users.

To communicate this back to the client, I created a schematic for each user and superimposed them to get a sense of how to best approach the information architecture. To accommodate everyone, a number of different strategies were implemented using both primary and secondary navigation.

Process flow-charts not only allowed me to model an ideal user’s interaction to better comprehend their interests and needs, but combining all of these allowed for a high-level overview of the web site’s requirements. This high-level approach, built up from the individual user assessments, is called the architectural approach because it enables one to develop a comprehensive user interface for the system.

Once a system architecture is completed, it is possible to establish a site-map from the process flows, and from there, a wireframe that is true to the site’s objectives and strategy.

With the information architecture in place and user interactions determined, a complete user experience has been determined. That is when the structure of the information architecture, the layout of the information design, the interaction design concepts, and the desired brand identity come together in a responsive visual design.

Implications

Will you break out your first assignment into all of these steps? I would be surprised if you did, but they will be assumed nonetheless, so try to be as clear as possible in each of these activities, and write them down, insofar as you develop them behind the scenes, in your worksheet.