If you are a UX designer or want, be one, then information architecture is a must-know for you. Today, I’m going to share detailed points on information architecture with all practical steps used in UX design.
What is Information Architecture?
Information architecture is basically defined as the practice of organizing, structuring, and labeling content in a way that helps users find information. It helps in completing tasks easily and efficiently. Think of information architecture as the skeleton of your product. It is basically a strategic structure that stands firm behind navigation, menus, and content layout.
In simple words, IA (Information Architecture) doesn’t come as visual design, yet it helps to create a visual structure and interaction design by providing a logical and usable organization of design elements.
Practical Steps Used in UX Design for Information Architecture
Step 1 – Understanding your users
For UX design first step has always been the research. Therefore, in this blog too, we will first start with understanding what our customers/users require and how we can work on it.
How to do it: –
- Interview or survey: To understand a user, the basic step that we can implement is to organize an interview, such as virtual or offline, otherwise conduct a survey.
- Learn their interest: Through a survey or interview, we can learn what type of content they prefer.
- Create buyer persona: After completing the first two tasks, we will create personas based on customers’ preferences.
Here is an example to help you understand this step:
If you want to create a food delivery app, then first you need to know that if people look for food based on:
- Restaurant name
- Food type
- Price
This will help you understand the way users think.
Step 2 – List all the content
Now you have gathered all the information. So, you will list all the contents together before organizing them so that in the later steps no item will be missing.
What you do:
- Make a list of all the pages, content, or items
- Categories similar items such as Japanese Cuisine: Sushi, Dorayaki, Natto, Ramen, etc.
Example:
If you have an educational institute, then your list might include
- Courses
- Admission info
- Faculty profile
- Fees
- Student login, etc.
Step 3 – Organize the content you gathered
After understanding your customers, you have gathered the data on what features your customers want more. Now start organizing your data and build the skeleton of your product.
In this step, we will use card sorting.
Note: Card sorting is a useful method that helps UX designers to let users group information into different categories that make sense to them. Information comes in the form of a card in this method. Under this process, users arrange the items in the app just like a creator.
How you can do it:
- Group the related items
- Use card sorting (you will ask users’ opinions to group the items)
- Make categories to separate different items and subcategories inside them to contain similar items.
Example:
In the education institute website
- Courses > UX/UI courses > UX/UI Diploma Standard
- Admission info > Inquiry > Registration > Payment > Admission
Step 4 – Creating a structured plan of the website
You have organized all the dates till here. Now you will create a systematic and organized structure of the menus and labels you want in your website, such as home, help, etc.
Basically, you must create a visual map of your site to see how it all connects.
How to do it:
- Make a sitemap (like a family tree of all pages)
- Create wireframes: Make simple sketches of the screen and layouts.
Example:
In an education institute app, your sitemap will contain this:
Home > Admission > Course > UX/UI Diploma > Registration
Step 5 – Send it to people to test it
In this step, you will send your product to the users and tell them to search for different items, so you will get to know that the structure you planned and created is easy for people to understand.
How to do it:
- Ask users to search for things or terms, such as on an education website, and ask them to search for the admission process.
- Use tree testing: Tree Testing is a simple usability test where users are shown a text-only version of your site/app structure (like a menu tree) and asked to find specific items. In simple words, tree testing tests if the user can find the things they searched for.
- And this is also the part where, after testing, you can fix what is missing in your product.
Example:
Suppose a student is searching for Fee Payment on an education website but is not able to locate it. Then the proper solution would be to change the position at the bottom of the home page or place it with the admission category.
Why use Information Architecture?
1. Help the user to find things easily
This is the basic and most important work of IA. Suppose you are searching for chocolate in the supermarket and you search the entire food section, but at last find out that it was placed in the sports section. This would be terrifying.
Hence, as said, a good IA puts things where the users expect it-so they don’t get lost.
2. Improves User Experience
When the items are well organized, users feel confident and the task is completed faster, so they will return easily.
Like a customer is purchasing things online, and the application is working smoothly, and the user can find the item they want easily. Then they will be more likely to return to the application for future transactions.
3. Reduces User Error and Frustration
If a user cannot find something they searched for on the website, then they will likely get frustrated. Therefore, a good IA helps the designer to create clear labels, grouping of related content, and create logical navigations and wireframes.
4. IA also helps with future content additions
As your apps and website grow in the future, it is more likely that you will want to add new content to the already created design. However, a good IA makes this process easier than it seems. That is because with a solid Information architecture, you already know where the new content belongs, and it makes the process hassle-free.
Conclusion on Information Architecture in UX Design
At last, I conclude in this blog that Information architecture is the part in UX Design that is important than the UI. If the UI is not in the interest of the user, you can change it any time; however, an IA is the skeleton of the design. If even a small item is missing in this, then you will again have to start from the Research to testing. Therefore, use the above-mentioned steps and create the base of your product, as it is said, “A good IA is what makes everything work together seamlessly.”
About Author
This blog is crafted by Aditi, one of our UX design master course students. She is studying UI UX under the guidance of Ravi Sir via online mode. Aditi has worked on various UI UX projects and gathered lots of knowledge and experience practically. Through this blog, she tried sharing a bit of her knowledge.
