Designing Information Architecture E-Book

Pabini Gabriel-Petit

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In a world that suffers from information overload, how can information architects help people quickly find the exact digital content they need? This is where Designing Information Architecture comes in as your practical guide to creating easy-to-use experiences for digital information spaces—be it websites, applications, or intranets—by creating well-structured information architectures (IAs) and effective navigation and search systems. It shows you how to improve the organization, findability, and usability of digital content using proven IA design methods and strategies.
Designing Information Architecture is an up-to-date resource on IA. Written by Pabini Gabriel-Petit, a recognized expert in user experience (UX) and IA with decades of industry experience, this book offers both expert insights and practical design guidance. It also explores modern, AI-driven approaches to implementing search systems that can help users overcome the challenges of information overload.
Throughout the book, you’ll learn why a well-structured information architecture remains more critical than ever in delivering effective digital information spaces.

Leseprobe

Designing Information Architecture

A practical guide to structuring digital content for findability and easy navigability

Pabini Gabriel-Petit

Designing Information Architecture

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To my husband, Richard. Thank you for making many things possible in my life. Also to the memory of my father and mother.

Pabini Gabriel-Petit

Foreword

My first encounter with the concept of information architecture (IA)—as both a practice and a field of study—took place around 2000, during the bumpy shift from the dotcom boom to the dotcom bust. At that time, I was working at Razorfish—a leading digital agency that helped pioneer the role of the information architect—and living in Germany. With my background in library and information science, I was immediately attracted to IA. It felt so natural—helping businesses grow through better information experiences. This also marked the beginning of my journey into a field that was shaping the way we interact with digital information.

In my studies at Rutgers University, I was exposed to many of the core theories and voices that would become foundational to IA. Models for information-seeking behaviors, which were already central in information science, soon found their place in the applied practice of IA. I was fascinated by the faceted-navigation project that Marti Hearst led at Berkeley, which laid the groundwork for many of the navigation frameworks we still see today. This blending of theory and practice started to gain traction around 2000, giving IA its modern contours.

Inspired by the work of people such as Richard Saul Wurman—who is often credited with coining the term information architecture—I delved more deeply into the field. The release of the now-iconic Information Architecture for the World Wide Web—affectionately called the “Polar Bear Book”—ignited a movement, attracting practitioners from diverse fields. I eagerly absorbed as much content on the subject as I could find, hungry to refine my skills and understanding.

My professional journey provided hands-on experience in designing Web sites and structuring navigation systems for a range of companies. This practical work soon demonstrated the true power of IA: taxonomy, labeling, and navigation are not just aesthetic improvements. They are powerful tools that drive meaningful business outcomes.

This dual perspective from combining academic learning and on-the-ground experience eventually shaped my own book Designing Web Navigation (2007), in which I distilled the principles I had come to rely on in my everyday work. IA is a practical extension of information science, with both disciplines mutually reinforcing one another. Today, IA has achieved such recognition that formal degree programs now teach it, preparing a new generation for the complexities of digital organization.

The rise of IA reflects a critical response to the digital age’s demand for organized, accessible information. As online environments scaled to massive enterprise Web sites, structuring information became a necessity, and IA emerged as the essential toolkit to meet that need—particularly in transactional contexts such as ecommerce sites. After all, people can’t buy what they can’t find. Findability, it turns out, is a huge factor at the front end of just about every commercial endeavor online.

Fast forward to our modern, data-driven era, where artificial intelligence (AI) and big data are reshaping our digital experiences, raising questions such as the following: People can just enter a search term or speak into a microphone and computers will do the rest, right? Isn’t organizing information manually a thing of the past? Do we still even need IA?

The answer to that last question is a resounding yes. We need IA more than ever.

Far beyond being a dotcom-era Silicon Valley trend, IA has proven itself a foundational discipline that is adaptable and resilient within a changing digital landscape. The fact that new books on IA are now being published underscores its enduring relevance.

In today’s world, the volume of information that we encounter is overwhelming. The concept of information overload has evolved from a theory to a daily reality for many. Ironically, one of the cures for too much information is more information—namely, more metadata to control and organize it all. So, IA remains indispensable in helping users match their information needs with resources. The advent of AI and advanced data processing haven’t diminished IA’s relevance but enhanced it. If anything, the critical thinking that IA fosters is more crucial now than ever, providing clarity amid a flood of information.

Structured information will always have its place in information-rich environments—particularly those of high value—even if AI and other tools may do a larger share of the organizing and finding for us. Web sites for companies, online shopping, universities, and governmental departments still need navigation systems, taxonomies, and tagging schemes that are crafted in a human-centered manner. The heart of IA lies in creating clear paths to guide people toward the information they need—something that today’s technologies, powerful as they are, cannot wholly replace.

Designing Information Architecture offers a fresh, updated perspective on IA, presented with a thoughtfulness that reflects many years of practice. Pabini brings to this work not only a wealth of personal insight but also the voices of global experts, enriching the reader’s understanding of IA’s multifaceted nature. And she does this in a very concise manner, making the ideas and concepts readily accessible and creating an indispensable reference for future generations of IAs.

Whether you’re new to designing digital information spaces or a seasoned IA practitioner, you’ll find this book valuable and packed with goodness. It offers both foundational knowledge and new insights that will deepen your appreciation for the field. Begin exploring these pages, and prepare to strengthen your understanding of the durable, dynamic world of IA.

Jim Kalbach

Chief Evangelist at Mural

Author of Mapping Experiences and Designing Web Navigation

Contributors

About the author

With more than 30 years working in user experience at Silicon Valley companies such as Apple, WebEx, Google, Cisco, and many startups, Pabini is currently the principal consultant at Strategic UX, providing UX strategy and design consulting services to product-development companies. She is also the publisher and editor in chief of UXmatters.

Pabini has led UX strategy, design, and user research for Web, mobile, and desktop applications for consumers, small businesses, and enterprises, in diverse product domains. Her past UX leadership roles include head of UX for sales and marketing IT at Intel, senior director of UX and design at Apttus, principal UX architect at BMC Software, VP of user experience at scanR, and manager of user experience at WebEx. As a UX leader, she has facilitated conceptual modeling and ideation sessions; written user stories; defined and prioritized product and usability requirements; designed and established corporate design systems, standards, and guidelines; and integrated lean UX activities into agile-development processes.

Pabini is passionate about creating great user experiences that meet users’ needs and get business results. Working collaboratively with business executives, multidisciplinary product teams, and other UX professionals, Pabini has envisioned and realized holistic UX design solutions for innovative, award-winning products that delighted users, achieved success in the marketplace, and delivered business value. A strategic, systems thinker, Pabini has diverse experience that enables her to synthesize innovative solutions for challenging UX strategy and design problems.

A thought leader in the UX community, Pabini was a founding director of the Interaction Design Association, as well as the founder of UXmatters, a leading publication for UX professionals.

Thank you to the UXmatters authors who helped make this a better book by providing feedback on chapters and contributing figure images—especially Nate Davis, Michael Morgan, and Jim Ross.

About the reviewers

Kat Kmiotek is a quality engineer at Houseful who works on test automation, IaC, and Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery pipelines. She sees engineers as users of her work and cares about making things easy to use. While she focuses on testing and quality, Kat is interested in how good design can improve products for everyone who uses them. Her curiosity about usability heuristics helps her create more user-friendly solutions in her technical work.

Rod Marshall has over 30 years of experience working as an information architect. He tends to work on large, content-heavy CMS/data-driven Web sites or large dynamic Web applications. Rod has worked in several business sectors, particularly online marketplaces, consumer product reviews, personal finance and wealth management, and commercial property portfolio management. As an information architect working in these sectors, Rod has specialized in data modeling, data analysis, reporting, and presentation. The IA discipline of creating taxonomies and nomenclatures has been a huge benefit to him.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part I: Fundamentals of Information Architecture

1

What Is Information Architecture?

Defining information architecture

Goals of information architecture

Making information easy to find

Providing information scent

Supporting browsing

Supporting search

Creating a sense of place

Making content easy to consume

Combatting information overload

Information ecosystems

Users

Content

The business

Context

Creating holistic, cross-channel information ecosystems

The value of information architecture

The value of information architecture to users

The value of information architecture to the business

Who is responsible for information architecture?

Core information-architecture skills

Systems thinking

UX research and user-centered design

Empathy for users

Information organization

IA design skills

Strong language skills

Overview of the information-architecture process

Stakeholder and user research

Information-architecture strategy

Design and usability testing

Implementation and administration

Key components of information architecture

Taxonomies

Metadata

Labeling systems

Organizational structure

Navigation systems

Search systems

Summary

References

Further reading

Books

Articles and papers

2

How People Seek Information

Understanding users’ information-seeking needs

Information-seeking models

Patterns for information-seeking activities

Berrypicking model

Information-search process model

Information foraging

Integrated model of browsing and searching

Pearl-growing model

Sensemaking

Information-seeking strategies and tactics

Supporting searching, browsing, and asking strategies

Taking a holistic look at information-seeking strategies

Information search tactics

Information-seeking behaviors

Known-item information seeking

Exploratory information seeking

Summary

References

Further reading

Books

Articles and papers

3

Design Principles

Designing for human capabilities

Accessibility

Consistency

Findability

Metaphors

Recognition over recall

Reducing cognitive load

Simplicity

User control

Designing digital spaces for wayfinding

Digital wayfinding stages

A retrospective on wayfinding in physical spaces

Design principles for wayfinding

Placemaking principles

Orientation principles

Navigation principles

Labeling principles

Search principles

Quick reference: Wayfinding design principles

Summary

References

Further reading

Books

Articles and papers

4

Structural Patterns and Organization Schemes

Structural patterns

Hierarchy, or taxonomy

Relational database

Hypertext

Linear sequence

Hub and spoke

Matrix

Hybrid structures

Organization schemes

Exact schemes

Ambiguous schemes

Hybrid schemes

LATCH

Summary

References

Further reading: Books

Part II: Foundations of Information-Architecture Strategy

5

UX Research Methods for Information Architecture

Card-sorting methods

Open card sorting

Modified-Delphi card sorting

Closed card sorting

UX research methods that inform structure and labeling

Free-listing

UX research methods for evaluating findability

Reverse card sorting

Card-based classification evaluation

Tree testing

Data analytics

Usage-data analytics

Path analysis

Search-log analytics

Summary

References

Further reading: Books

6

Understanding and Structuring Content

Content-analysis heuristics

Content-analysis methods

Content-owner interviews

Content inventories

Content audits

Content mapping

Competitive content analysis

Content modeling

Types of pages

Advantages of dynamic pages

Key elements of a content model

Creating content models

Examples of content models for specific page types

Summary

References

Further reading

Books

Articles and papers

7

Classifying Information

Principles of information categorization

Key goals of classifying information

Challenges of categorizing information

Metadata

Types of metadata

Metadata schema

Controlled vocabularies

Synonym rings

Authority files

Taxonomies

Ontologies

Semantic networks

Faceted classification

Developing a controlled vocabulary

Social classification

Summary

References

8

Defining an Information-Architecture Strategy

Understanding and aligning with business strategy

Facilitating strategy workshops

Synthesizing UX research findings

Creating personas

Writing usage scenarios

Understanding an organization’s content

Learning about implementation technology

Considering existing versus new technologies

Looking at the big picture

Other IA strategy concerns

Balancing top-down and bottom-up information architecture

Factoring SEO into IA strategy

Implementing and maintaining an information architecture

Envisioning, communicating, and validating your conceptual models

Envisioning and communicating your conceptual models

Validating your conceptual models

Documenting and presenting your IA strategy

Presenting your IA strategy

Summary

References

Part III: Designing Information Architectures for Digital Spaces

9

Labeling Information

Designing effective labeling systems

Narrowing scope

Attributes of effective labels

Accessible

Accurate

Appropriate for the audience

Clear

Concise

Consistent

Differentiated

Inclusive

Legible

Parallel

Persuasive

Readable

Specific

Task Focused

Types of labels

Labels for navigation systems

Labels for contextual hyperlinks or buttons

Labels for groupings of additional information

Labels for structuring content

Enabling browsing and searching the Web

Constructing optimal Web addresses

Choosing effective browser titles

Creating iconic versus textual labels

Translating textual labels

Discovering possible labels for categories

Analyzing existing content

Evaluating any existing labeling system

Conducting competitive analyses

Conducting user research

Conducting an open card sort

Leveraging domain-specific controlled vocabularies or thesauri

Interviewing subject-matter experts

Getting authors to label the content they create

Leveraging search-log analytics

Comparing the usage of similar terms across the Web

Defining optimal labels for categories

Designing labels for navigation systems and pages

Testing labels with users

Summary

References

10

Designing and Mapping an Information Architecture

Evaluating any existing information architecture

Choosing an organizational model

Choosing a structural pattern

Choosing an organization scheme

Categorizing and labeling an information space’s content

Taking a top-down or bottom-up approach to information architecture

Diagramming an information architecture

Creating diagrams that meet your audience’s needs

Creating templates for your IA diagrams and documentation

Documenting your design rationale in annotations

Outlining information architectures

Creating structure maps

Creating user-journey maps

Summary

References

11

Foundations of Navigation Design

Key concerns of navigation design

Understanding and meeting the users’ needs

Supporting various modes of information seeking

Understanding and satisfying business goals and requirements

Creating an effective information architecture

Providing clear labels for navigation links

Employing optimal navigation elements

Designing effective layouts for navigation elements

Key objectives for designing navigation systems

Understand and serve the needs of an information space’s users.

Understand and convey the scope of an information space’s content.

Balance an information space’s structure and, thus, its structural navigation system.

Fulfill the business requirements for an information space.

Build the brand’s credibility

Navigation design guidelines

Design for maximal flexibility and freedom of movement.

Balance the information architecture’s breadth and depth and, thus, the navigation hierarchy.

Prioritize navigation links to an information space’s key content.

Logically group similar links to clarify a navigation system’s structure.

Make the links within groups of links easy for users to distinguish.

Consistently lay out navigation elements across an entire information space or section.

Indicate the user’s current location on an information space or in a section.

Use complementary navigation elements to provide an overview of an entire information space or section.

Types of navigation

Structural navigation

Navigation pages

Associative links

Supplementary navigation

Complementary navigation tools

Web browsers’ navigation capabilities

Summary

References

12

Designing Navigation

Navigation design patterns

Fundamental navigation elements

Desktop navigation patterns

Desktop navigation layouts

Mobile navigation patterns

Mobile navigation layouts

Progressive disclosure

Visualizing navigation design

Laying out the navigation system on pages

Creating wireframes

Creating mockups

Creating prototypes

Specifying navigation-system designs

Presenting your design deliverables

Testing navigation design

Summary

References

13

Designing Search

Challenges of searching an information space

Assessing the need for an internal search system

The value of implementing an internal search system

Optimizing the quality of search results

Determining what to search

Balancing a search algorithm’s precision and recall

Automatically refining search queries

Ordering and ranking search results

Optimizing the search experience

Search user-interface design patterns

The search bar

Presenting search results

Search-results pages

No-results pages

Filtering search results

Sorting search results

Combining sorting and filtering

Some specialized types of search systems

Generative AI search

Semantic search

Faceted search

Advanced search

Summary

References

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface

In today’s digital world, information architecture (IA) touches the lives of everyone who is online—whether at work or in their personal life. Digital information spaces have proliferated across all the platforms that people use today, from Web sites, intranets, and ecommerce stores to information-centric mobile apps and social-media apps. Well-designed IAs make it easier for people to find what they need online, whether they’re at work, looking for entertainment, shopping, or conducting serious research. The goal of every information architect is to remove any obstacles that might prevent people from finding the information they need.

Around the turn of the century, when the design of Web sites predominated, there was a time when some information architects were talking about “big IA.” But we now refer to this broader discipline as user experience (UX) design, which comprehends the design of both information spaces and applications. Although IA is a key component of all UX design, it is just one of the relevant disciplines that UX design comprises. Other key disciplines of UX design include interaction design, which focuses predominantly on the design of highly functional applications that help people get things done rather than the design of information spaces, and visual interface design, which is an essential aspect of all software user interface (UI) design. Increasingly, designers have specialized in one aspect of UX design or another, but it is essential that all designers have broad knowledge of all its disciplines.

Over the last few decades, IA has matured both as a discipline and a professional practice. IA has continually evolved as new platforms and design challenges have arisen. Its greatest recent advancements have come from the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on search experiences. In the near future, AI will likely transform the practice of IA.

Who this book is for

This book is for information architects and, more generally, UX professionals at all levels, their colleagues on the development teams with whom they work to create digital information spaces, and the businesses for which they create them. In short, this book is for all students and practitioners of IA, as well as the many professionals who need to understand IA and the value it provides to developers of digital information spaces.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, What Is Information Architecture?, defines the practice of IA, discusses its key goals, considers information ecosystems, and describes the value of IA to both users and businesses. The chapter also provides an overview of the IA design process and describes the people responsible for creating an IA and the skills they must have, as well as the key components of an IA.

Chapter 2, How People Seek Information, describes users’ information-seeking and sensemaking models, which are helpful in understanding the strategies, tactics, and behaviors that people employ when looking for information. The chapter also discusses some common information-seeking behaviors that are typical when people are looking for specific, known items of information versus those they employ when exploring an information space.

Chapter 3, Design Principles, provides a solid grounding in UX design principles that have their basis in our understanding of and need to support the cognitive and physical capabilities and behaviors of human beings. These broadly applicable design principles offer a firm foundation for user-centered design (UCD). The chapter also explores wayfinding design principles, including placemaking, orientation, navigation, labeling, and search principles.

Chapter 4, Structural Patterns and Organization Schemes, explains the two key components of an organizational model for a digital information space: the structural patterns that define the structural relationships between the groups of related content objects that particular types of digital information spaces comprise and the organization schemes for organizing their content such as exact, ambiguous, and hybrid schemes, as well as their typical applications. The chapter also describes Richard Saul Wurman’s early model for organizing information: LATCH.

Chapter 5, UX Research Methods for Information Architecture, considers various UX research methods—such as types of card sorting—that apply specifically to the design of effective IAs, as well as UX research methods for evaluating the findability of information spaces. The chapter also explores usage-data analytics—for example, Web analytics; path, or clickstream, analysis; and search-log analytics—and how to synthesize insights from UX research to inform information-architecture strategy and design.

Chapter 6, Understanding and Structuring Content, looks at some methods of helping teams to better understand and structure the content that an information space comprises. Methods of understanding an information space’s content include content-analysis heuristics, content-owner interviews; content mapping, inventories, and audits; and competitive analyses. The chapter also considers content modeling—that is, ways of decomposing content into its logical components and elements—which enables the content to support contextual navigation; chunked, personalized, filterable, and sortable content; and content reuse.

Chapter 7, Classifying Information, discusses the principles, key goals, and challenges of classifying information; considers types of metadata and the use of metadata schema to provide the basis for information categorization; and describes an information space’s content objects. The chapter covers various types of controlled vocabularies in depth, including synonym rings, authority files, taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, semantic networks, and faceted classification schemes; considers how to choose preferred, variant, broader, narrower, and related terms; and provides a step-by-step process for developing a controlled vocabulary.

Chapter 8, Defining an Information-Architecture Strategy, considers the concerns of IA strategy, which defines strategic outcomes across four dimensions: business value, user needs, the scope and structure of an information space’s content, and leveraging implementation technologies. Strategic concerns include alignment with business strategy, synthesizing UX research findings, understanding an organization’s content, learning about implementation technologies, and the big IA-strategy picture. The chapter also covers envisioning, communicating, and validating conceptual models, as well as documenting and presenting IA strategy.

Chapter 9, Labeling Information, describes the attributes of effective labeling systems for information spaces’ organizational structure, especially the labels for its global and local navigation systems, but also those that identify and provide structure to its pages. Thus, the chapter focuses primarily on the design of labels and icons for navigation systems, contextual hyperlinks and buttons, and progressive disclosure controls. It also covers the translation of textual labels. Plus, the chapter explores the discovery, definition, and testing of optimal labels for categories, navigation systems, and pages.

Chapter 10, Designing and Mapping an Information Architecture, covers some UX research methods for evaluating an existing information space’s organizational structure and findability. It also describes how to choose an information space’s organizational model, comprising its structural pattern and organizational scheme. The chapter then provides an overview of the process of categorizing and labeling an information space’s content and explores some methods of diagramming and documenting an IA.

Chapter 11, Foundations of Navigation Design, explores the primary concerns of navigation design and the key objectives of designing a navigation system. It also provides some universally applicable navigation design guidelines. The chapter then covers the various types of navigation in depth, including structural navigation, navigation pages, associative links, supplementary navigation, and complementary navigation tools, as well as Web browsers’ navigation capabilities.

Chapter 12, Designing Navigation, provides some navigation design patterns for organizing and representing groups of hyperlinks, including fundamental navigation elements, desktop navigation patterns and layouts, mobile navigation patterns and layouts, and progressive disclosure. The chapter also covers creating, presenting, critiquing, and testing navigation design deliverables such as sketches, wireframes, mockups, prototypes, and navigation design specifications.

Chapter 13, Designing Search, considers some challenges that users encounter in searching information spaces, as well as the need for and value of implementing an internal search system. The chapter then explores the design of usable internal search systems in depth, including how to optimize the quality of search results and improve the overall search experience through the implementation of specific underlying technologies. The chapter also provides search user-interface design patterns and explores some specialized types of search systems, including those that are driven by generative artificial intelligence, personalized search, semantic search, faceted search, parametric search, and advanced search.

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Part I: Fundamentals of Information Architecture

This part provides some fundamentals of information architecture, including design principles, structural patterns, and organizational schemes, and includes the following chapters:

Chapter 1, What Is Information Architecture?Chapter 2, How People Seek InformationChapter 3, Design PrinciplesChapter 4, Structural Patterns and Organization Schemes

1

What Is Information Architecture?

This chapter introduces and provides an overview of the professional practice of information architecture (IA)—one of the design specialties that make up the broader practice of user experience (UX) design. In this chapter, I’ll present some foundational knowledge that you’ll find useful whether you’re learning about information architecture because you plan to pursue a career as an information architect, you need to take on IA activities because there is no information architect on your design or project team, or you want a better understanding of the role of any information architects on your team.

This chapter conveys basic knowledge regarding the purview of information architecture as a professional practice and considers the following key topics:

Defining information architectureGoals of information architectureInformation ecosystemsThe value of information architectureWho is responsible for information architecture?Core IA skillsOverview of the IA processKey components of information architecture

In reading this book, you’ll build on this foundation to gain a deeper understanding of the many facets of the discipline of information architecture.

Defining information architecture

Let’s first consider the meanings of the individual words information and architecture. Information is a broad term that encompasses everything from the sorts of raw factual and numeric data that organizations store in relational and object-oriented databases to the more meaningful—sometimes even insightful—content on Web pages, on pages in mobile apps, in documents of various types, and in images and other media.

In relation to a professional practice, the term architecture originally referred to the planning and design of physical spaces—particularly buildings. But since the advent of computers and software, architecture has also referred to the design and organization of the components of computing and software systems.

Who coined the term information architecture? The prolific author and information designer Richard Saul Wurman wrote the following in his 2001 book Information Anxiety 2:

“When I came up with the concept and the name information architecture in 1975, I thought everybody would join in and call themselves information architects. But nobody did—until now. Suddenly, it’s become a ubiquitous term. … Effective information architects make the complex clear; they make the information understandable to other human beings. If they succeed in doing that, they’re good information architects.” [1]

In 2004, Dirk Knemeyer—a design entrepreneur who has cofounded companies such as GoInvo and Genius Games and currently leads SciStories—interviewed Wurman, asking how he had chosen the term information architecture. Wurman responded with the following:

“The common term then was information design … Information design was epitomized by which map looked the best—not which took care of a lot of parallel systemic parts. That is what I thought architecture did and was a clearer word that had to do with systems that worked and performed. Thought architecture was a better way of describing what I thought was the direction that more people should look into for information, and I thought the explosion of data needed an architecture, needed a series of systems, needed systemic design, a series of performance criteria to measure it.” [2]

Nevertheless, it was Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville who, in 1998, defined information architecture as a practice in their seminal work Information Architecture for the World Wide Web—which the IA community affectionately refers to as the polar bear book because of the bear on its cover. [3] Both Lou and Peter have backgrounds in library and information science (LIS), which forms the foundation of their thinking. Their view of information architecture—with its focus on organization, clear labeling, navigation, and search—differs fundamentally from that of Wurman, and it established the foundation for the profession upon which all information architects have since built.

What exactly is information architecture? Here is a brief definition of the term as I’ll use it in this book:

Information architecture is a design practice that focuses on defining the structure of digital information spaces—for example, Web sites, intranets, social-networking communities on the Web, and information-rich digital products such as Web and mobile applications—by organizing information and supporting findability and usability through well-designed labeling, navigation, and search systems.

While some information architects have expanded their view of information architecture to comprehend physical spaces, the focus of this book is on information architecture for digital information spaces, in service of providing a practical book for people working on digital products and services.

Around the time I launched UXmatters in 2005—when I was giving a lot of thought to the distinctions between information architecture, interaction design, and UX design—I wrote a detailed definition of information architecture for the site’s glossary. That definition previews the scope of the information I’ll cover in this book:

“A UX design discipline that defines the structure of digital information spaces—including Web sites, intranets, online publications, applications, and other digital products—with the goal of supporting findability and usability. Information architecture encompasses the creation of taxonomies of the hierarchical and associative relationships that exist between content objects; controlled vocabularies that effectively communicate the nature of and relationships between content objects; labeling for navigation systems that makes information browsable; metadata, retrieval algorithms, and query syntaxes that produce useful search results; and the content and format of both individual search results and sets of results. Good information architectures make digital information easier to navigate, search, and manage; balance breadth and depth appropriately; and enable users to readily find the information they need. Information-architecture deliverables include content inventories,* wireframes, site maps, and flow diagrams.” [4]

Note—With today’s increased levels of specialization, a content analyst, content manager, or content strategist might now be responsible for creating content inventories.

I wrote that detailed definition of information architecture for UX professionals, who are knowledgeable about its practices. Let’s begin building your understanding to the same level by exploring the basic and advanced concepts that the definition merely highlights. By reading this book, you’ll quickly learn everything you need to know to create an effective information architecture.

Goals of information architecture

The goals of information architecture include the following:

Making information easy to findProviding information scentSupporting browsingSupporting searchCreating a sense of placeMaking content easy to consumeCombatting information overload

Making information easy to find

Findability is the efficiency and effectiveness with which users can find specific content within a digital information space and is essential to usability. How do practitioners of information architecture assist people in finding the information they need? By structuring, grouping or categorizing, and labeling information, they help people make sense of information spaces. Organizing information objects into discrete groups or categories that are meaningful to people and assigning clear labels to them are paramount. The design of usable labeling, navigation, and search systems enables people to easily find the information they need.

Providing information scent

In the late 1990s, Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) published their “information foraging theory,” which frames human information-gathering activities in terms of the ways “adaptive pressures work on users of information that are analogous to ecological pressures on animal food foraging….” In their report, they wrote: “The problems and constraints of [information-foraging] environments can be thought of as forming abstract landscapes of information value and costs, such as the costs of accessing, rendering, and interpreting information-bearing documents.” [5]

A key concept of information foraging is information scent, which enables people to instinctually follow environmental cues in gathering the valuable information they need, while ignoring irrelevant information. These cues include visual and textual signposts that convey semantic meaning to people as they browse for information—proximal cues that let information seekers know whether they’re getting hotter or colder in relation to the information they want, as in a game of Hot and Cold. Obviously, people pursue the paths that promise to be most fruitful.

The information-foraging environments that information architects create can facilitate the effectiveness and efficiency with which users can gather information. Providing the right environmental cues, or signposts, aids users in successfully accomplishing their information-seeking goals. This is especially important for complex information spaces. At the same time, providing information scent enables organizations to capture the most valuable of resources: users’ attention.

Supporting browsing

Information architecture supports browsability by doing the following:

Creating logical structures for information spaces that match users’ mental models and, thus, encourage explorationChunking content onto pages at an optimal level of granularity to prevent what Jared Spool calls pogo-sticking—that is, forcing users to navigate back and forth between pages unnecessarily by decomposing content into chunks at too fine-grained a level [6]Designing usable global, primary navigation systems, comprising links with clear labels, to enable users to gain access to the information they need and show users where they are now and where they can go nextProviding global or local supplementary navigation systems such as site maps and alphabetical indexes to provide alternative means of gaining access to informationPresenting contextual links in a consistent location on pages to support navigation within a pageProviding useful links to related information as supplementary means of navigation, either by embedding them within content or by grouping them in a consistent location on pagesDisplaying clear page titles to ensure that users know where they are—titles that use language that is similar to that of the links that display the pages

Supporting search

A search system is necessary for any digital information space that is sufficiently extensive that a navigation system alone would not adequately support findability. Information architecture plays an important role in ensuring the usefulness and usability of a search system. To better support search, practitioners of information architecture can do the following:

Define descriptive metadata—Using metadata to describe content of any type gives semantic meaning to that content and provides greater precision in searching, enabling search systems to deliver more useful search results in response to users’ queries.Implement a controlled vocabulary and thesaurus—Supporting a domain-specific vocabulary, including variants of terms, and synonyms of search terms increases the likelihood that searching would deliver useful content to users.Provide a usable search user interface—Users should be able to easily type or revise a search query. For a large digital information space such as an ecommerce site, it should be possible to limit the scope of a search to a specific facet of the information within that space.Suggest search strings—Automatically suggesting search strings that would deliver useful results, in response to whatever the user types, helps users to search more efficiently.Display meaningful search results—Effectively displaying the most salient information on search-results pages helps users to accurately identify the content they need.

Creating a sense of place

Increasingly, users are experiencing digital information environments as places—and designers are consciously creating contexts that are conducive to that perception. As Jorge Arango—an architect of physical spaces by training, but an information architect in practice—says in Living in Information, “With the growing pervasiveness of information systems in our daily lives, placemaking has started to emerge as a primary concern in the design of information systems.” [7]

Designing navigable digital information spaces that emulate certain characteristics of real-world places and, thus, create a sense of place, lets you take advantage of users’ knowledge of familiar places to make digital spaces easier to use, convey what users can do there, set the right user expectations, and elicit desired user behaviors.

Making content easy to consume

Information architecture is about making it easier for people to consume content. In addition to supporting navigation and search, doing the following facilitates information consumption:

Applying a consistent organizational structure that reflects the user’s mental model of the content within a digital information spaceOrienting users to ensure that they know where they are and prevent their becoming lost in hyperspaceCreating clear labels for navigation links and page titles that make it clear users have arrived at their intended destinationAppropriately decomposing content into chunks so there is neither too little nor too much content on a pagePersonalizing content, prioritizing content that meets users’ needs, and thus, reducing the amount of information users must peruse to find what they needProviding convenient links to related information

Combatting information overload

Bertram Gross, in his 1964 book The Managing of Organizations, was the first to use the term information overload, which Alvin Toffler popularized in his 1970 book Future Shock. This term describes a state of mind that arises when people receive more information within a short period of time than they are capable of rationalizing for use in their decision-making. [8]

Data on the Web is accruing at an astounding rate. According to a Bernard Marr article on Forbes, “How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read,” people generated 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day in 2019. In just two years, we generated 90 percent of the data that currently exists in the world, and the pace of data creation is only accelerating with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). [9] This is more information than any human being could possibly keep up with and, as Daniel Tunkelang writes in his book Faceted Search, creates a “scarcity of the most valuable resource of all—the user’s attention.” [10]

Because of this burgeoning volume of information, digital information spaces have become increasingly complex, and the danger exists that they could become unusable. However, by effectively structuring and categorizing information and, thus, improving findability, the practice of information architecture provides a bulwark against information overload. Users can find the information they actually need without having to wade through a morass of irrelevant information. This reduces the information anxiety—another term coined by Richard Saul Wurman [11]—and frustration that users would otherwise experience as a result of trying to process too much information, which has become exacerbated as people use more and more devices, information sources, and services.

According to a Pew Research Center report from 2016, information overload is less of a factor for most people than it was a decade earlier. Just 20% felt overloaded, down from 27% in 2006. “The large majority of Americans do not feel that information overload is a problem for them. … 77% say they like having so much information at their fingertips. Two-thirds (67%) say that having more information at their [disposal] actually helps to simplify their lives.” [12]

Information ecosystems

British ecologist Arthur Tansley introduced the concept of an ecosystem in his writings in 1935, using the term to describe “the whole system, ... including not only the organism-complex but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment.” [13] While the term ecosystem originated in the life sciences, some have adapted it for use in information science. Others, including Morville and Rosenfeld in Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, have adopted the term information ecology. [14]

People thrive in information-rich environments. We exist within overlapping information ecosystems at various levels of granularity—ranging from the personal to the Web, a massive, worldwide information ecosystem. Depending on users’ current context, their larger information ecosystem could comprise different, more granular ecosystems. For example, a business information ecosystem might comprise departmental, corporate, organizational, marketplace, and governmental ecosystems.

Despite an information ecosystem potentially having a much greater scope than a typical Web site or mobile app, many of the same approaches to organizing information and designing information architectures still apply. Some ecosystems have emerged organically, while others have been consciously designed—but as they evolve, either the messiness of organic growth or the order of design may predominate at any given moment in time, unless an ecosystem is maintained systematically, with great discipline.

A holistically designed information ecosystem typically comprises users of various types, a business or other organization that serves their needs, and content that the business or the users themselves create to meet those needs. Of course, all information-architecture solutions must serve the unique needs of both their users and the business or organization sponsoring the creation of a digital information space—that is, the needs of a specific information ecosystem. Plus, every designed information ecosystem exists within the broader context of a marketplace or community. Figure 1.1 depicts the elements of a business’s information ecosystem and the information architecture that connects users with that ecosystem, whose elements we'll look at in greater depth next.

Figure 1.1—The elements of an information ecosystem and information architecture

Users

Practitioners of information architecture follow a user-centered design (UCD) process to ensure that the IA solutions they create meet the needs of the users who engage with them. They do user research to understand those users’ information needs, tasks, and information-seeking behaviors, then create personas that represent key user groups, or target audiences. Depending on users’ wants and needs, they might simply consume the content within a digital information space or contribute to it—either by creating user-generated content (UGC) or tagging, voting on, sharing, or linking to content.

Each unique audience has a particular mental model of an information space, based on their existing knowledge and prior experience, and uses a specific vocabulary that should factor into the design of an information architecture.

Content

Digital information spaces are dynamic and their content may evolve constantly. There are complex interrelationships and dependencies between the content elements in a designed information space. The information architect must understand its existing structure and both the scope and types of the existing and planned content to create a sustainable information architecture. These might include Web or mobile pages; documents in various formats; different types of digital media such as images, audio, or video; other digital assets; or databases—even the metadata that enables people to find the content within a digital information space. That metadata could consist of information such as the content’s title, document format, owner, creator, vendor, or groups or categories to which the content belongs.

The business

Commercial Web sites, intranets, and extranets are designed information spaces that exist within the context of a business or organization. A business or organization that sponsors the design and development of such digital information spaces does so to meet its strategic business goals. According to David A. Aaker, business strategy comprises the following:

A product/market investment decisionMarketplace in which a business competesLevel of investmentAllocation of resources across business unitsFunctional strategies, including product strategy, pricing, and market segmentationA foundation for sustainable competitive advantageStrategic assets and competenciesSynergy across business units [15]

An information architect who designs a digital information space needs to understand the strategy of the business sponsoring it—particularly its vision for that information space, the available design and development resources, and any technical constraints that exist—and must work toward the business’s strategic goals. To do this effectively, the information architect must also understand the culture of the business and build strong relationships with stakeholders and all members of the multidisciplinary team responsible for design and development.

An information architecture is a tangible manifestation of a business’s or an organization’s strategy, which conveys meaning to its target audience and differentiates the business or organization in the marketplace.

Context

The context in which a designed, digital information space exists includes its intersections with other digital information spaces. For a business, these might include one or more Web sites, intranets, extranets, ecommerce sites, and mobile apps. Together, these information spaces form the business’s information ecosystem, which itself exists within the context of a broader information ecosystem comprising the business’s marketplace, competitors, sales channels, customers, users, social media, the press, and more.

Creating holistic, cross-channel information ecosystems

As information sources and the devices on which people consume information proliferate, information architects must create holistic, cross-channel information ecosystems that interoperate across devices. For example, if users look for information on their mobile phone, then go to their computer, they should easily be able to resume their information-seeking task there. Working across devices should be a seamless experience.

Any information that is available on one device should be available on all of a user’s devices. However, the ways in which specific platforms display or communicate that information might differ, depending on the size of a device’s screen or its lack of a screen. Nevertheless, the language and organization of the information should be consistent across channels and the information useful regardless of the user’s current context.

The value of information architecture

Information architecture provides value to both the people who use a digital information space and the business sponsoring its design and development. Let’s consider the value proposition that information architecture offers to users andthe business.

The value of information architecture to users

Designed information architectures provide many benefits to the people using digital information spaces. An effective information architecture provides value to users in the following ways:

Improves the user experience (UX)Helps people make sense of information spacesMakes information easier to findReduces the frustration of users’ being unable to find informationImproves the quality of the information people findMinimizes the likelihood that people would find the wrong information or no informationImproves decision-makingFacilitates browsingFacilitates searchSaves users’ timeMakes it easier to identify contentMakes content easier to consumeMakes information easier to managePrevents users from experiencing information overloadReduces the need for documentation, training, and support

The value of information architecture to the business

Designed information architectures can deliver great benefits to the businesses and organizations that sponsor their creation. An effective information architecture provides value to the business in the following ways:

Improves ease of useIncreases employee productivityEnhances customer serviceIncreases customer satisfactionIncreases customer adoptionImproves the business’s understanding of customersIncreases sales on ecommerce sites by ensuring customers can find the products they want and by upselling related products to themReduces the overall costs of information seeking to the businessMinimizes negative business impacts resulting from workers’ lacking accurate, useful informationImproves decision-makingReduces duplication of effortCommunicates and facilitates alignment on business strategyCreates competitive differentiationEngenders trustBuilds brand loyaltyMinimizes employees’ needs for documentation, training, and supportReduces customers’ needs for documentation and supportReduces the overall costs of documentation, training, and supportPrevents unnecessary reimplementation costsMakes information spaces easier to manage and maintainReduces maintenance costs [16]

Who is responsible for information architecture?

Ideally, a highly trained and experienced information architect should be responsible for a digital information space’s information architecture. A large organization with a high level of design maturity and a complex information ecosystem would likely employ a team of information architects. But with high design maturity, even a small organization might employ an information architect or, more likely, would work with an IA consultant. However, in a very small organization or one with a low level of design maturity, some other professional might have to take responsibility for information architecture. In such a case, it is essential that the person responsible for information architecture has the necessary mindset, IA knowledge and skills, and sufficient experience to be successful.

Likely candidates for other roles taking responsibility for information architecture include UX designers, content strategists, usability professionals, information designers, library scientists, business analysts, product managers, developers, marketers, and technical writers.

In large organizations, people in more specialized UX roles might take on responsibility for specific IA activities—for example, a content analyst. In contrast, within smaller companies, an information architect might also be responsible for content strategy.

Core information-architecture skills

“Effective information architects make the complex clear; they make the information understandable to other human beings.”—Richard Saul Wurman [17]

Practitioners of information architecture must develop a deep understanding of both the target audience for a digital information space—including the language they use and their mental models for organizing the information of its domain—and the goals of the business sponsoring its development. They must also comprehend the full scope of the content that information space comprises and be capable of doing very detailed work in organizing that information. Finally, they must have the ability to synthesize all of this information into a holistic IA solution that meets users’ needs.

Accomplishing these goals requires a broad skillset. Now, let’s consider some essential attributes, knowledge, and skills that an information architect must have to take on the responsibility of creating the information architecture for a digital information space.

Systems thinking

What exactly is systems thinking? According to The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, by Peter M. Senge and his coauthors, it is “a way of thinking about, and a language for describing and understanding, the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems.” In describing strategies for systems thinking, they say: “Although systems thinking is seen by many as a powerful problem-solving tool, … it is more powerful as a language, augmenting and changing the ordinary ways we think and talk about complex issues.” [18]

Systems thinkers are able to think abstractly, address complex problems, appreciate the interrelationships between the various elements of a system, and approach problem-solving holistically. Being a systems thinker is especially important for an information architect who is designing complex or cross-channel information ecosystems.

UX research and user-centered design

Of course, all UX professionals should possess UX research and user-centered design (UCD) skills. The practice of information architecture benefits particularly from the following UX research and UCD activities:

Content analysisStakeholder researchUser researchDeveloping personasBuilding mental modelsCard sortingTree testing

Empathy for users

Empathy is an essential quality for information architects—and all UX professionals. Empathy for users enables an information architect to understand their motivations and accurately perceive their needs and emotions, then use that understanding to create better solutions for them. Being empathetic lets an information architect look at things from different people’s perspectives and internalize what they learn about the target users of a digital information space. [19]

Information organization

Effective practitioners of information architecture can perceive, understand, and communicate the relationships between the information elements within a digital information space, organize information in ways that make sense to users, and devise holistic IA solutions.

IA design skills

Designing an information architecture requires the following knowledge and skills:

A deep understanding of design principles that are pertinent to the design of an information architectureLabeling designDesigning and mapping information architecturesNavigation designSearch design

Strong language skills

Designing an information architecture requires excellent language skills—in the language of the target audience for a digital information space. Both the hidden underpinnings of an information architecture and the visible elements that users experience rely on the use of language. An information architect must organize content into groups or categories, define metadata for content, choose optimal labels for navigation links, and design search systems. All of these design activities require working with language.

Overview of the information-architecture process

The design of an information architecture occurs within the broader context of the UX design process, which I explored in depth in my UXmatters column On Good Behavior “Design Is a Process, Not a Methodology.” [21] In this section, I’ll highlight the aspects of the design process that play the largest role in ensuring the creation of an optimal information architecture.

Stakeholder and user research

Stakeholder research involves interviewing the business leaders who have sponsored and are defining the strategy for an IA project, project team members who are leading the implementation of that strategy, and others who have a stake in the project’s outcome, including customers. This research ensures that those responsible for designing an information architecture understand the business needs driving the project, as well as the desired outcomes.

User research consists of a variety of generative-research techniques—including user interviews, contextual inquiries, user observations, field studies, various open card-sorting methods, tree testing, and surveys—and enables practitioners of information architecture to understand the needs, vocabulary, mental models, and information-seeking behaviors of existing or prospective users. [20] On the basis of the findings from user research, the UX team can define personas that represent the various types of users who make up the target audience for a digital information space.

Stakeholder and user research occur during a project’s Discovery phase. In Chapter 5, UX Research Methods for Information Architecture, you’ll learn about some specific UX research methods that are useful in designing information architectures.

Information-architecture strategy

A project’s information-architecture strategy derives from an organization’s business strategy and the stakeholder and user research that the UX team has conducted. Thus, the IA strategy is an output of the project’s Discovery phase.

Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, and Jorge Arango, the authors of Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond, define information-architecture strategy as follows:

“An information architecture strategy is a high-level conceptual framework for structuring and organizing an information environment. It provides the firm sense of direction and scope necessary to proceed with confidence into the design and implementation phases. It also facilitates discussion and helps get people on the same page before moving into the more expensive design phase.” [22]

An information-architecture strategy provides preliminary design guidance on which a team can align—regarding the definition of a taxonomy and metadata; the optimal structure for a scalable information space that can accommodate the addition of new content over time; the organization of content; the design of labeling, navigation, and search systems; and the eventual implementation and administration of an information architecture. Chapter 8, Defining an Information-Architecture Strategy, explores IA strategy in depth.

Design and usability testing

The goal of the Design phase is to realize the IA strategy; iteratively design, test, and deliver an IA solution that provides value to both users and the business. Designing an information architecture comprehends creating the structure of a digital information space and determining the organization of its content, which you’ll learn about in Chapter 6, Understanding and Structuring Content; the definition of a taxonomy and metadata, in Chapter 7, Classifying Information; designing labeling systems, in Chapter 9, Labeling Information; designing and mapping information architectures, in Chapter 10, Designing and Mapping an Information Architecture; designing navigation systems, in Chapter 11, Foundations of Navigation Design, and Chapter 12, Designing Navigation; and designing search systems, in Chapter 13, Designing Search.

Usability testing enables a team to evaluate the quality of a designed information architecture, identify areas for improvement through iterative design, and ultimately, validate a design solution.

Implementation and administration

The users of an information architecture include the content-management (CM) team, which is responsible for the analysis, collection, management, and publishing of content. In a small organization, there might be a CM team of one; in a large enterprise, different people, or multiple people, might be responsible for each of the roles that Table 1.1 outlines. According to Bob Boiko, the primary goal of content management “is to break information away from its presentation and instead focus on its structure….” [23] Information architects have a similar goal. Achieving this goal requires a well-defined process and clear policies.

Role

Implementation Responsibilities

Maintenance Responsibilities

Content manager

Content management, including the planning and implementation of CM initiatives and technology acquisitions

Content management, including governance

Business analysts

Creating a business strategy or aligning CM initiatives with business strategy, building upon existing efforts, fostering support for CM initiatives, setting goals, and devising a CM strategy

Establishing a governing body and ensuring the CM team remains aligned with the business strategy

Information architects

Content analysis, which includes gathering content requirements; designing a logical, holistic structure, or content model, for digital content; creating a metatorial framework, or categorization scheme, for organizing content; defining metadata, and applying metadata to content

Governing the application of a metatorial framework to the content in a digital information space; ensuring content conversions have correctly identified, chunked, and tagged content components; applying metadata to content; maintaining a metatorial guide, and training others on the guide’s use

Software developers

Template, content-management system (CMS), and application development

Template and CMS development

Content creators

Writing, graphic design, media production, and editing

Managing acquisitions, writing, graphic design, media production, and editing

Table 1.1—Key roles on a content-management team*

Note—The information in Table 1.1 derives from Chapter 11 of Bob Boiko’s Content Management Bible. [24]

Key components of information architecture

Let’s briefly consider the following key components of the practice of information architecture:

TaxonomiesMetadataLabeling systemsOrganizational structureNavigation systemsSearch systems

Refer to Figure 1.1, earlier in this chapter, for a diagram depicting these key components.

Taxonomies

A taxonomy provides a systematic classification of the content within a digital information space and supports its organization into a hierarchy of predefined, but evolving, categories, or classes, of information. You’ll learn how to define an information-classification system in Chapter 7, Classifying Information.

Metadata

Metadata is a type of data that describes other data—such as specific Web or mobile pages, documents, content elements, or digital assets. Descriptive metadata facilitates identifying and finding particular instances of information. Chapter 7, Classifying Information, also covers how to define metadata.

Labeling systems

Effective labels enable users to seek and identify the information they need. Choosing what domain-specific language to use consistently throughout a digital information space and designing an optimal labeling system are the subjects of Chapter 9, Labeling Information.

Organizational structure

The organization