Information Architecture: Emmarnie S. Estoque

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
EMMARNIE S. ESTOQUE
Imagine this situation: You visit a website and spend
time looking for the information you need. You click one
link, then another, and again, and again… But you come
up empty – you can’t find anything useful. Whether you’re
a product owner or designer, you don’t want your website
to be a maze with nothing but frustrating blind alleys.
Information architecture helps to avoid this. It
handles the chaos, creating a clear structure for a
website, an app, or a program.
WHAT IS INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE?
Information architecture (IA) is the science of structuring

content as it is applied to news websites or blogs, online stores,
booking apps, downloadable software, etc.
The goal of information architecture is to classify the content
in a clear and understandable way and arrange it according to
relations between the content pieces, allowing users to find
what they need with less effort. Not applied solely when
creating a product from scratch, IA is used in redesign.
Information architecture is a part of interaction
design that considers content, context, and users. This
means that user needs, business goals, and different
types of content must be taken into account while
structuring a product’s information. Usually,
information architecture design falls under the care
of UX and UI designers or an information architect.
Peter Morville, the co-author of Information
Architecture for the World Wide Web, explains the role of
an information architect as a person who bridges users and
content by designing search and navigation, embodying the
abstract ideas into prototypes, units, and disciplines to turn
the concepts into something understandable.
Regardless of the title, a person who works on
information architecture must start with the rules that help
to achieve the goal of IA.
THE FIVE STEPS OF INFORMATION
ARCHITECTURE DEVELOPMENT
1. CONDUCT CUSTOMER RESEARCH
The aim of this stage is to learn about a user’s needs. You

must work with a customer profile and the results of
customer and stakeholder interviews. The data revealed at
this stage will allow you create a user persona profile, list
business requirements, and get an idea of what a user wants.
Because these tasks belong to a UX designer or business
analyst, you need the results of their activities.
2. UPDATE AND REVIEW THE CONTENT
When you know what a user wants, you can update the
content of an existing website and list it. The main activities
to perform at this stage are content inventory and content
audit. Let’s look at them.
CONTENT INVENTORY:
The goal of this activity is to create a list of information

elements on all the pages of a website and classify them by
topic and sub-topic. This includes the following items:
• Headings and subheadings
• Texts
• Media files (images, video, audio)
• Documents (doc, pdf, ppt)
• URL-links of the pages
CONTENT AUDIT:
Well, you have the content list. Now, scrap the least
important items, update some pieces of content, and
rearrange them for the next steps. This activity is applicable
both to new products and to app or website redesigns.
3. APPLY CARD SORTING FOR CONTENT
CLASSIFICATION
All types of content must be classified and have proper
names that won’t confuse a user. You need a taxonomy to do
it.
Taxonomy is another word for classification. In the case
of IA, it’s an attempt to group different unstructured pieces
of information and give them descriptions.
THREE TYPES OF CARD SORTING CARD
SORTING:
1. Open – for free labeling. This approach allows you to

understand how the users think in terms of
classification. Open type is used to design new
products.
2. Closed – with pre-designed categories. This method of
card sorting is usually applied in redesign. With a given
pre-defined categories from a content inventory list, you
sort the content according to them.
THREE TYPES OF CARD SORTING CARD
SORTING:
3. Hybrid – unites elements of both types, or starts with

an open type, moving to the closed type to follow user
logic.
You can conduct card sorting in groups or as a personal
interview, or remotely via IA tools
like UserZoom, usabiliTEST, xSort, and Optimal Sort.
The cards can be digital or physical, i.e. written on pieces

of paper. When creating cards, use the results of content
inventory. Separate topics have to be on separate index cards.
As a result, you’ll see the approximate structure of a product
and proceed with the first prototypes. But first, the categories
must be labeled and defined in a navigation system.
4. BUILD A WEBSITE HIERARCHY FOR USER-
FRIENDLY NAVIGATION
Every website or an app needs a solid navigation system
that helps a user find what they need. As soon as you have
the results of card sorting activities, you will understand
how to embody and classify the content in reality.
5. CREATE A UI PROTOTYPE FOR FUTURE
DEVELOPMENT
Although a sitemap is the first prototype in information
architecture development, you still have to create advanced
prototypes by wireframing and data modeling.
5. CREATE A UI PROTOTYPE FOR FUTURE
DEVELOPMENT
THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF INFORMATION
ARCHITECTURE
These eight principles were defined by Dan Brown, a co-

founder of EightShapes design company. An information
architect should stick to them to build a product:
EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF INFORMATION
ARCHITECTURE
1. Principle of objects – a content is a living thing with its
lifecycle, behaviors, and attributes.
2. Principle of choices – the pages of a product should
offer a number of meaningful choices to users.
3. Principle of disclosure – the users mustn’t be
overloaded with information; show only enough
information to help them understand what kinds of
information they’ll find as they dig deeper.
4. Principle of exemplars – the best way to describe the
content categories is to show examples of the contents.
5. Principle of front doors – assume at least half of the
website’s visitors will come through some page other
than the home page.
6. Principle of multiple classification – offer users several
different classification schemes to browse the site’s
content.
7. Principle of focused navigation – don’t mix different
categories in your navigation scheme.
8. Principle of growth – assume the content you have
today is a small fraction of the content you will have
tomorrow.
EXAMPLES OF INFORMATION
ARCHITECTURE
BBC WEATHER
GLOBAL SEED NETWORK
SPOTIFY
SPOTIFY
REFERENCE/S:
1. https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/uxdesign/how-to-create-
information-architecture-for-web-design/

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INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Information architecture (IA) is the science of structuring

The aim of this stage is to learn about a user’s needs. You

The goal of this activity is to create a list of information

1. Open – for free labeling. This approach allows you to

3. Hybrid – unites elements of both types, or starts with

The cards can be digital or physical, i.e. written on pieces

These eight principles were defined by Dan Brown, a co-

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