On the Floor

Information Architecture is a term that gets thrown around by web designers. We like thinking about it, talking about it, and building it into your projects, and it sounds cool. But what is it? Basically, it's how to organize your information. A website is usually a meeting of the minds between you and your designer. Let's have better mind-meetings! Here's how: visualizing your own information architecture.

Before we start, here's a few things to think on. If you break it right down, information architecture is all about hierarchies. We're looking at the information you have for us - whether it's on an older site, a Word doc, in an e-mail - and figure out how it should all be related. What are the most important parts? What's the content that users are most likely to want? The answers to these questions will be expressed in site structure, visuals, typography and so on.

Let's get going - you'll need a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.

Step 1 - Let's Draw Clumps

Let's think about a website. There's the design, and then there's content, right? Nope, sorry. The content is the design. The design is the content. Lots of design with no content is like a cake that's 90% frosting: kind of gross, no nutritional value. Building the content is the most important part of any project, and it's also the core of building an information architecture.

So: clumps. Think about what should go on the homepage. Don't try to draw a page layout - we're just making a simple list right now. There should probably be contact information, and a tagline (if you have one!) and some paragraphs about your products or services. What else? Maybe some photographs or customer testimonials. Done! That's your homepage clump.

Let's make a couple more - let's say you want a Contact page, and an About Us page. Let's make a couple clumps for those, too. Maybe you want to talk about your employees - another clump.

Step 2 - Reach Out and Touch Someone

So you've figured out what kinds of content should go on each page. That's great! But how does it all fit together? Websites aren't just pages hanging out - they like making connections. Let's drawn some lines between our clumps. Hmm - Employees seems like maybe it belongs to About Us. Let's link it up that way.

Hey, it's like some kind of website or something. Yup, it's really that easy. By breaking your content apart, you can get a better idea of what works together, what needs its own page, and the relative importance of each piece.

If you're working with web designers who live and breathe information architecture, two things will happen. One, they'll praise you as the rare gem that you are for undertaking this task; and two, they'll be able to use this information to build a better website.

It's always beneficial to think about your information like this - as connected resources. Your website isn't a brochure that lives on the internet - it's a method for starting a discussion with your customers. By spending a little time on organization, you can make that discussion better.