Information architecture for findability vs. content management
Some thoughts on balancing business and user needs with information architecture
Published October 17, 2020
On a recent project at work, a colleague organized content by type to create a sitemap. It’s not uncommon to organize content by similarity. You might organize apples with oranges and broccoli with cauliflower.
Although the grouping made logical sense, it wouldn’t help target users find the content they needed when they looked for it in the way they looked.
For most content and functionality, the organizing principle appears to be “type”. However, type is a red herring. We organize produce not by type but for how people will find it. Tomatoes neighbor vegetables instead of fruit.
Understanding type is still important. In most orgs, content type drives strategy, maintenance, production, and most importantly, budget for that content. But it shouldn’t drive navigation.
If you organize content by how people will find it, then your user model should include what they look for (a) and what they need to find (b).
Navigation needs to deliver A and then connect the user to B. If you deliver A, then your navigation succeeds. If you deliver B, then the user succeeds.
Start user navigation paths with the trigger: what event triggers the user to begin looking?
Next, where and how will they look? Where should that path take them? And where do you want them to finish navigating.
For planning around my personal site, one trigger I’ve identified is an interest in a UX-related topic. This could be something like wireframes or workshops. Paths might be to search the web or to ask a colleague.
If they search the web, I want to have a page that appears in search results they can visit. This could be a blog post, or more likely, a dedicated resource page. Most important, I believe they need to get to the dedicated resource page, so the blog post leads them there. The blog post is A. The resource page is B.
The balance between the org’s needs and the user’s needs explains why you need to organize content by both type and user path, and you should expect those organization schemes will have different structures.
Anyway...
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Check I.A. resources for more thinking about information architecture.
For product managers, engineers, visual designers, and students looking for a quick on-ramp into the world of user experience: Information Architecture: Blueprints for the web.
