What is Information Architecture?
Information architecture is the practice of deciding how to arrange the parts of something to be understandable.
Information Architecture is the back bone or blueprint in laying out a road map for which information go where. It is the arrangement of information that distinguish its discipline from interaction design. IA would come first like the blueprint come first before the house.
Great IA boosts the user experience to the next level, however; interaction design could never aid IA. The great example is Craigslist.com with a minimal interaction design and yet the user experience is excellent. It is obvious that IA make the ease of use possible. In contrast, CCA website has an awesome interface and interaction design and yet it has the worst IA. I tried to look for information for new student card and I was stuck on the information page. There was no information go to from there. It was a frustrated experience and that’s how you can turn your customer out of the door.
Reference
“What Is Information Architecture?” What is Information Architecture? | IA Institute. Accessed November 24, 2020. https://www.iainstitute.org/what-is-ia.
Couldn’t agree more about Workday – try having to use it for administration purposes – nothing is organize – there is no IA and terrible IXD too. I have pain from this experience but am forced to use it for the job – thanks for calling this out.
HAHA, I love your statement! Craigslist is one of the basic, but there was never a problem when I used it.
I agree with you that the CCA website definitely needs the improvement of information design.
It’s so funny that you mention the CCA website because I feel like I always complain about it!! Workday has such a minimal and beautiful interface, but the experience is less than ideal to say the least.
I totally agree. My experience with Workday is not much better either. I was filling out the form and needed to choose a degree from the preset, which turned out to be a list of countries. I went no where, so I just gave up to save myself time.
I agree that creating an IA for a product/app helps increase the ease of use for it.
Craigslist seems so old-fashioned, yet we still use it! I used it to find my apartment I live in right now. It is so fascinating how it still works so well for a lot of us.