An Introduction To Information Architecture
Information Architecture (IA) is the specialism of crafting a website structure that allows users and search engines to understand and discover information, as well as understand their relative location on the website.
An information architect looks at various aspects of the website and has a role to play in the formation of sitemaps (XML and HTML), URL and subfolder hierarchies, categories, the various website menu navigations, metadata and the internal linking structure.
Various stakeholders influence a website’s information architecture over the course of a web build, but it’s important that users remain at the heart of the IA.
No matter what the purpose of the website, Google’s recent update to the search quality guidelines, as well as core algorithm updates aimed targeting websites that don’t offer a good user experience.
The key questions to ask when developing a user-friendly architecture, we have to factor in more than just the user. How we lay out the website structurally, how we build structural internal links can also affect the internal link flow, as well as how search engines crawl and identify pages.
We need to ask ourselves how information is presented back to the user, how the information helps a user and, if the content contains links to other sections of the website, how they benefit the user.
The practice of information architecture as we know it can trace its routes back to the days before personal computers, the Maganavox Odyssey and the first mobile phone. Drawing on theories found in library science and modern architecture.
Library science has a number of definitions, but the most commonly accepted is that library science is a study of how to categorise, catalogue and locate resources. Bibliothecography led to the creation of classification systems such as the Dewey Decimal System, Universal Decimal Classification and the Colon Classification.
Some of the first references to library sciences can be traced back to 1627, in a text written by French scholar Gabriel Naudé.
In the modern digital world, library sciences has been used to define many modern database and server systems using principals of cataloguing, archival and retrieval. Cataloguing and archival methodologies are important to information architects. Cataloguing is the process of establishing a system of identifying content for future retrieval and archiving refers to the process of creating a database that can store content, that in the future may need to be edited or removed without destabilising the integrity of the database itself.
Both cataloguing and archiving are key factors in curating a positive user experience, by creating strong information architecture; users can identify and retrieve content that highly satisfies their needs.
This means keeping your archive secure and maintained. In the traditional sense, this meant employing a librarian to maintain the archive and keep order. In the modern, digital sense, this means keeping the database secure and free from outside intrusions (such as malicious SQL injections), or from allowing people who aren’t attuned to the necessity of maintaining order and structure from creating pages randomly on a website.
Modern information architecture was devised by Richard Saul Wurman, a graphic designer and architect by trade, and as you might know him, the founder of the TED conference.
Much like the architecture of a building, information architecture can take on many different forms, as demonstrated by the internal link structure visualisations earlier in this article. There is no one single right way or wrong way to design or build an organisation system, as long as functions.
Wurman hypothesised that information architecture should be structured in the same way that a building is devised, with a solid foundation that be built upon.
Information architecture requires the input of SEO, UX, visual designers, developers and users themselves (beta testers).
