What is Information Architecture?

In an ongoing effort to help you, my loyal followers, to experience my passion and dedication in the field of IA/UX, I feel that the best way to express my knowledge is to share it...remember, sharing is caring! At this point, you must be wondering, what is Information Architecture (IA)? If not, too bad, I'm going to tell you anyways! =P

I've read many blogs, tutorials, wikis, and best practices published by well-known and experienced individuals. To summarize these thoughts into my own words,

IA is a technique or process of logically organizing, designing, and managing a collection of data for the purpose of serving the needs of select user groups, while supporting their ability to interact with a website and/or software product, and find relevant information efficiently and effectively.

Webmonkey.com has an excellent Information Architecture Tutorial that aims to help IAs follow a more structured process/approach in an attempt to reduce project time and money, and maximize client satisfaction. To provide you with a higher level summary, here are some key steps that you should be thinking about when you are designing a website:

1. Define Your Site's Goals - Ask lots of questions, and document these goals in order of importance. What is the mission or purpose of the organization? What are the short- and long-term goals of the site? Who are the intended audiences? Why will people come to your site? Why are you building this website?
2. Define the User Experience - Identify your audience by creating personas, scenarios, and user stories. These help with visualizing the audience. Why will people come to your site? Are you selling a product? Do you have a unique service? Why will people come to the site the very first time? Will they come back?
3. Identify Content and Functional Requirements - Organize, group, and label your site into pages of content and functions by gathering the pieces for creating the structure and organization of the site. What pieces of content does the site need? What sorts of functionality will be required?
4. Define the Site's Structure and Navigation - Identify how you want the site's content to be organized, and create a navigational site map. How will users use the site? How will they get from one place to another? How do you prevent them from getting lost?
5. Create the Visual Design - Based on the above four steps, create/sketch the visual design by taking the site's structure and mapping the layout. Wireframing is a excellent technique to help mockup the different pages.
   

The great thing that I love about IA is the fact that there is a LOT of room for creativity! Yes there are standards, best practices, tools and techniques that definitely help make your job easier, but these can be taught. However, what differentiates great IAs is their ability to think outside the box, WAY outside. I strongly believe that any idea can become a great idea, and by creating this blog, my hope is that I will be able to channel my energy, and bust open my creative (somewhat dormant) side!

Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image, recently published a blog article called Six Ways To Find Business Inspiration. In his article, he quotes the great Albert Einstein, who said:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."

That quote says it all...