Information architects work with “the intention to inform“, trying to find a good balance among content, users, and context of use. Often times, information architects need to deal with a large amount of data. But just as R.S>. Wurman said: “I call things information only if they inform me, not if they are just collections of data, of stuff. ”
Piles of data have no initiative to serve people in an informative way, just as you won’t call thousands of words on the floor a dictionary. Information can only be beneficial if someone organizes it in some ways that make sense for our brain to search, follow-through, and navigate.
In my own practice, since I’m fairly a newbie in this realm, I started my design with a simple structure and make sure there are not too many layers of hierarchy. For example, if I’m designing an app, I make sure there will be no more than 3 layers of hierarchy, and the rest information shows up as pop-up windows so that the users have a clear mind at which layer they are currently in and the way to get back around this tiny screen space.
I start on the UI design, I will first draw a sitemap with all the screens represented as boxes. Each square represents one individual screen (In some cases, I will even do a thumbnail of that screen). Pop-up windows don’t count. After diagraming my IA out, I can immediately find out which branch is not balanced out so I can adjust.
I found this technique quite useful to all interaction designers. A lot of the time, small teams do not have a dedicated Information architect. So it’s our job as interaction designers to set up this hierarchy in the right way at the very beginning.
Both Interaction designers and Information architects serve the need of human beings. We shape our design so that it better accommodate the way the brain works, creating a smoother user experience.
Aw, I should’ve used a sitemap to explain too! That’s a good idea.
I agree with what Elaine said. I like how you mention the importance of understanding and information-processing!
I really like this line: “Information can only be beneficial if someone organizes it in some ways that make sense for our brain to search, follow-through, and navigate.”, its so true! As designers, we must ensure that we provide our users with meaningful experiences, and that requires understanding it!!
Interesting to see your take on how IA and how you use it for your designs; identifying long, confusing paths and transforming them into shorter, simplified ones.
I think site map and IA are good tools to help interaction designers, I agree with you. I am very happy to see that you visualize the difference between the two diagrams
It’s interesting to know how you structure out the hierarchy and site map. I might try your method next time!
I really like your visual method for balancing hierarchy thats super interesting! I’ve been an online shopper for a long time now so I have seen my fair share of disorganzied websites. Ikea is really hard to navigate sometimes and so is wayfair (although recently its been a little bit better)