Each meeting I attend, before we talk about development, I always bring up information architecture. Aaaaaand that’s when the myriad of facial expressions ensue. These expressions range from blank stares, head tilts, furrowed brows and of course the squint!
Information Architecture Process Diagram
Here is a informal definition, Information architecture is the science of figuring out what you want your site to do and then constructing a blueprint before you dive in and put the thing together. It’s more important than you might think!!!
From the team at web monkey, wikipedia and a list of other experts in their field I have collected a series of references and tutorials to help get a grasp on this funny faced fact, Information Architecture is key to a successful user experience and user interface.
First we must define your site’s goals, shedding light on the all-important art of collecting clients’ or co-workers’ opinions and assembling them in a coherent, weighted order of importance. He also shares his scheme for documenting everything so that all parties can keep up.
The next step is figuring out who the heck your audiences are going to be. Once that’s out of the way, you can start organizing your future site into pages of content and functions that the site will need to have.
Information Architecture
The semantics of user experience. (Nice, huh?) The art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, online communities, and software to support usability and findability. An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape and especially to the web. Figuring out what users need and making it easy for them to achieve their objectives. Narratives of experience. Designing user flow. Pathways of desire. Wireframes, use cases, scenarios, persona development.
Wikipedia:
Information architecture (IA) is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. Among these activities are library systems, Content Management Systems, web development, user interactions, database development, programming, technical writing, enterprise architecture, and critical system software design. Information architecture has somewhat different meanings in these different branches of IS or IT architecture. Most definitions have common qualities: a structural design of shared environments, methods of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, and online communities, and ways of bringing the principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
Historically the term “information architect” is attributed to Richard Saul Wurman. Wurman sees architecture as “used in the words architect of foreign policy. I mean architect as in the creating of systemic, structural, and orderly principles to make something work–the thoughtful making of either artifact, or idea, or policy that informs because it is clear.”[1]
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