Designing Information Architecture
Description
- Get a practical introduction to IA in the broader context of UX research and design
- Gain expert insights from industry leaders on IA's evolution, techniques, and applications
- Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook
Book DescriptionIn 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.What you will learn - Information-seeking models, strategies, tactics, and behaviors
- Principles for designing IAs that support human cognitive and visual capabilities
- Wayfinding principles for placemaking, orientation, navigation, labeling, and search
- Useful structural patterns and information-organization schemes
- UX research methods and analytics for information architecture
- Content analysis, modeling, and mapping methods
- Categorizing content and creating controlled vocabularies
- Designing and mapping information architectures
- Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver optimal search results
Who this book is forThis complete reference is for both experienced and aspiring information architects and UX design professionals who are looking to create effective information architectures for digital information spaces, including Web sites, applications, and intranets. It is also a valuable resource for members of product teams-especially developers, product managers, and other UX professionals who collaborate closely with information architects-and other stakeholders who want to understand and support the information-architecture workflow.
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Persons
Pabini Gabriel-Petit is the founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of UXMatters. With more than 20 years working in User Experience at companies such as Google, Cisco, WebEx, and Apple, among others, Pabini now provides UX strategy and design consulting services through her Silicon Valley company, Strategic UX. She is passionate about creating great user experiences that meet users' needs and get business results. A thought leader in the UX community, Pabini was a Founding Director of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA).
Content
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...
