Information architecture day-to-day: the methods and tools that make design work

“Information Architect” isn't really a title anymore. People call themselves anything from Product Designer to UX Designer or Content Strategist, but information architecture work still lays the foundation for much of product and system design.

So what does information architecture work look like on a day-to-day basis?

Information architecture is the basis for many of the design activities you do every day including things like organizing content, designing navigation, and reviewing the UX of products and services.

Information architecture when you restructure website content

A healthcare organization wants to redesign their website and adjust how they organize content to improve user experience and search engine visibility. "How should we organize content and functionality?" is a core I.A. question.

With an existing site there are two areas you need to explore before you restructure a site's content. 

First, how is the content organized now? This requires you inventory their current content and audit how it's organized. A content inventory and content audit can be done manually or with automated tools like Screaming Frog.

The second area to explore: what do stakeholders need the content to do? To understand stakeholder requirements, interview key stakeholders and ask them how they use the site today. This reveals what the content does for the stakeholder, something you want to preserve as you create the new organization.

Combined with what you know about what your users need, you now have the information to reorganize the content. You can show the new site organization using a mind map or a sitemap.

Information architecture when you design navigation

An e-commerce site wants to redesign their navigation to improve findability and, ultimately, conversions. Navigation is another core I.A. question.

You might have an idea for how the navigation needs to change, but how do you make sure the new navigation is better than the old navigation? Before you launch it into the world? Conduct a tree test.

For a tree test, you put your proposed navigation structure into an outline using a tool like Lyssna or Optimal Workshop and ask representative users to find something in the nav. For each task you give the user, you get to see where they clicked in the nav to find what they were looking for. This tells you where they look as well as whether or not they eventually find it.

This data helps you adjust navigation labels and structure, so the navigation you launch on the site has a better chance of being successful. And it's fast and cheap research to run.

Information architecture when you audit a website

A university knows they need to improve their website, and they're not sure where to start, so they ask you to conduct an audit of the current experience.

An audit doesn't sound very I.A. However, it's how you do the audit that uses I.A. skills. Identify your target user personas, and for each persona, identify the tasks they would like to accomplish on the website.

For each task, map out the flow the user follows to complete that task. What steps do they take through the website to go from starting to finishing a task? At each of these steps, note how you can improve the user experience.

Bottom line: build your I.A. skills

I call myself a digital strategist, but the above scenarios are similar to the type of work I do on a weekly basis working with organizations of all sizes across the United States. Regardless of how my title has changed over the years, information architecture is still a core part of the strategy and design work that I do every day.

Because information architecture impacts how people connect with design spaces, it helps make product and service experiences more coherent, more intuitive, and easier to learn. And that's a benefit you can bring to any design work.

If you're looking to learn more about content audits, tree tests, navigation design, and user flows, I'd recommend picking up an information architecture book where you can get a deeper look into some of the methods and processes than you'd get reading a blog post.

Two great places to start:

Everyday Information Architecture by Lisa Maria Marquis covers a bunch of standard information architecture tools that will help your day-to-day design work.

How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert offers universal approaches to working with any chunk of stuff, essentially "any mess".

Although information architecture is a useful skill that makes all design better, it's an easy set of tools to miss in your design toolbox. Pick up a few information architecture tools to make your products and services more coherent, more useful, and more usable.