Information Architecture guide for UX designers

if you want to build a house you call an architect the architecture applies not only to traditional buildings but also to information space similar to buildings digital products require a solid foundation understanding the basic principles of good information architecture is essential for any designer who wants to create user-centered products in today's video we will discuss what information architecture is and what steps we need to take to design a good information architecture information architecture is a discipline that focuses on organizing information within digital products information architecture arms to structure a content in a system to help

the user succeed information architecture focuses on helping users answer the question where can I find the information I'm looking for information architecture is a foundation of your product design how you organize information will impact how people interact with your product when information isn't organized efficiently users can annoyed and stop using your product especially true for websites visitors have a short attention span and when information isn't organized effectively they get annoyed and leave designers sometimes use the word information architecture as a synonym for navigation that's incorrect because information architecture and navigation are two separate Concepts here

you can see a diagram of elements of user experience created by JC James Garrett the diagram shows five elements of user experience and you see that information architecture is one of them so it's easy to see that information architecture creates a foundation for interface design and navigation design information architecture connects three elements user a person who is looking for specific information product design aims to keep the user front and center and make it intuitive for them to interact with the product you need to know who uses your system and what goals they have content content

is information itself content is information you have in the system in different formats text videos audio Etc content is the main reason why people visit websites or use apps our goal when we show information is not all overwhelm users we achieve this goal by limiting the amount of content we provide at one time we need to learn what kind of information is available in our system and how relevant this information for our users context context is how people find information we need to understand why people are engaging with the content and how they do it

it's important to remember that there are different routes through which users can enter your website for example people might land on a page via menu option or using a search people also have different motifs for using your website and different ways for interpreting the same information let's discuss how to design information architecture step by step first we need to understand users goals in product design it's essential to understand who are you designing for people look for information in different ways and different people look for different kinds of information you need to understand what users are

trying to achieve using your product you need to find the answer to the questions such as who will be using a product what are they going to do and what they want to achieve great product design starts with solid user research researching what users needs and wants are is critical for creating an effective information architecture through research information Architects can learn how the target audience think when they interact with the product and this will help them organize information in a way that meets the user's needs you need to create personas and understand the mental models

of your users mental model describe how users perceive your product and what they expect to see how users think will impact how they process information what expectations they have about the product you need to structure the information based on the mental models show exactly what users expect to see at places where they expect to see it next you need to understand how information architecture should help the company achieve business goals it's better to conduct brainstorming session with the stakeholders to set clear business objectives you need to identify primary and secondary business goals [Music] after you

define user and business goals it's time to conduct competitor analysis information architecture design should be based on expectations that your users have about your product analysis of similar products available on the market will give you a clear idea of what your customers expect take a look at what your competitors are doing and conduct SWOT analysis your goal is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the content organizations that your competitors have it will help you to identify the opportunities that you can explore next you need to Define your content information Architects should have a good

understanding of the content that the product offers if you are redesigning an existing product you should conduct content inventory first here you can see a Content inventory spreadsheet for websites it typically includes page ID page level in hierarchy URL content type keywords and meta description collect all content that your product has and then conduct content audit decide what you want to keep and remove based on users and business goals then you need to categorize and prioritize content you need to decide what content should go on the website categorize content and group similar content together to

create logical chunks tools like analytics hard sorting and contextual inquiries will help you learn how to structure content let's focus on the practice of card sorting this exercise will help you group content according to the user's expectations it will help you envision the pages you want to add to your website and content sections on individual pages the great thing about card sorting is that it's help you understand how your users naturally group items together and it's relatively simple exercise suppose you're designing an e-commerce website that sells Electronics you write items on cards Define certain categories

and ask these best participants to sort Cards into the categories test participants Will Group items according to the categories but it's also possible to leave categories open-ended so participants can create their own categories that make sense to them after that you need to create a site map based on account and groups you've established in the previous step you can create a site map or a visual representation of the content available on your website or in your app the site map contains parent and child pages in helps us to see the hierarchy of the content and

structure of the overall website or app what leads to what the hierarchy shows how information is structured layered typically with a major category such as a parent page at the top and related subcategories such as child Pages try to think a site map as a skeletal of your design a sitemap shouldn't be fancy you can create it using the tabs like in this example this format works well when you need to communicate the structure to other people label your content labels will help people Orient themselves on your website label can be a page name the

name of a category of products or a section name labels tells users what they can expect when they choose a particular option for example when a user see a category with enable MacBooks they think that when they click this category they will navigate a page with MacBooks you want to ensure that labels are clear and concise so the users can understand their meaning at glance next you need to outline the navigation system and user flows a navigation system will help you understand how users will navigate from point A to point B it will make it

evident how content on your product is interlinked and how users will navigate from one page to another navigation systems will include include menus breadcrumbs and internal links your goal this step is to establish all possible spot ways users can take to navigate a particular page next you need prototype your user flow the goal of creating a prototype is to define a visual hierarchy of content on individual pages and see how different pages work together visual hierarchy defines the order in which users will explore the content on individual Pages you need to ensure that the visual

hierarchy you have helps users achieve their goal and in the same time increases your conversion rate usually Architects create clickable wireframes that have a limited number of graphical elements because it's enough to demonstrate the hierarchy of information and navigation last but not least you need to validate your design you need to conduct his ability testing to ensure your users can go through your system to complete their tasks prepare a set of tasks invite people who represent your target audience and let them complete the tasks using your design for example if you design an e-commerce website

the task can be a final laptop that you like and buy it you also need to Define metrics for each task you want to perform testing will also help you to identify places where users need more information to make an informed decision information architecture creates a foundation for efficient user experience well-designed information architecture equals good user experience content is the heart of every app and website well organized and well-structured content helps users interact with the product which leads to Great user experience if you like this video please subscribe and click on the Bell icon so

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