The Art of Information Architecture, part 2

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by Aaron West

Gather Information

The more information you can gather, the better. Gather as much as you can, even if it is significantly more than you will need. What isn't as powerful or effective can always be discarded later.

Once you have as much information as you can possibly gather (which usually ends up being a large, messy stack of papers), you're on your way to the organizational process.

Organize the Information

Divide the information into groups of similar themes. Give each group a name that encompasses everything in the stack.

Here is a sample diagram for a typical small business site:

What if you have a larger site with hundreds of pages of information? For this I'll use W3Nation as an example. We currently have over 700 pages on the site. When we created the site, we knew it would (eventually) hold a lot of content, which would accumulate at a fast pace. For this reason, we divided everything into 8 groups, and then divided those 8 groups into 2 groups. We then added a third group for information about the site (About Us, Privacy Statement, Contact Us, etc.)

See a sample diagram of the two groups, which serves as the infrastructure of the site today (opens in a new window)

The goal of organizing the content is to avoid unnecessary deep links. Ideally, users should be able to find any piece of content on your site with no more than 3 clicks.

So now that you have all this information, what do you do with it?

Find a Balance that Communicates Your Goals

Make sure that all the information is equally balanced. In order to do this you must weigh each group against each other. You won't arrive at an equal balance at first. You'll most likely find that many of your groups, or stacks, have a good bit more information than others.

From here you find the lowest common denominator - the stack with the least amount of information. Sift through the materials to make sure everything is consistent with the goals you set forth at the beginning of the process.

Now go through the next largest stack. Look for the most pertinent information that communicates your goals. If all things are equal, go with the highest quality of information. The objective here is to delete - not add. Follow this same procedure for all stacks/groups.

Along the way you might find that some groups have plenty of information, much of which is so pertinent to your goals that you feel would be unwise to delete. This will happen more often than not, and is usually cause to backtrack to the Organizational phase. Divide the larger group into subgroups. Then balance that information.

This happened during the planning stage of W3Nation. We had plenty of content in some areas, specifically columns and tutorials. We then divided the columns up by author and the tutorials by subject. As we add new content we aim to add new topics. We waited to launch the forums, and when we did they were separated from the rest of the site entirely. This will likely happen to you.

Once all the information is balanced, you have a site. If you're a professional, make sure you communicate this plan in a detailed manner to your client/boss. It would be a good idea for freelance designers to get a signature.

Now we're ready to design, right?

Almost, but not yet.

The Art of Information Architecture

Find a Design that Presents Your Goals