Information Architecture — as Dictated By…Us
“Is a dolphin a fish or a mammal?”
“Are tomatoes fruits or vegetables?”
“Is the T-REX a carnivore or an herbivore?”
What do these questions have in common?
Answer: The answers to these questions are all types of groups the object belongs to.
Think back to grade school when you learned about the animal kingdom. We learned that lions and tigers belong to the feline family just like your house cat does.
We also learned that while dolphins live in the water 100% of the time, they’re not considered fish — they’re considered to be mammals do to characteristics like being warm-blooded and breathing through lungs rather than gills.
What about when we learned about food and nutrition? We learned that carrots and broccoli are considered vegetables while tomatoes are considered to be fruit.
So who determines what belongs to what group? Well — we do. Just as UX designers work on creating/developing products that fulfill both needs and wants through intuitive design and familiarity of functions and features, there are people who work tirelessly to categorize and re-categorize all types of objects based not just on common features and behaviors, but also on social needs, expectations, and norms.
Remember the term “Hella”? It’s now considered as a real word in the dictionary. Based on its use within society over a number of years, the decision to move “hella from the “slang” category to the “real words” category was almost bound to happen sooner or later.
The word “hella” is now accessible to anyone who’d like to expand on their every vocabulary.
Wait..WE Did That?
Yep! Like it or not, almost everything around us pretty much exists because of us. Think of the advances in technology and just how far its gone as far as the types of products that are now available to us. It’s much like the phrase, “There’s an app for that!”
Information architecture is the design of information (or content).
Think of the last time you shopped online. Let’s say you were looking for a skirt at your favorite retailer. How was the online store laid out? Did you find what you wanted easily? How did you get to what you were looking for? Did you click through categories? Did you use the search function?
Let’s say you’ve found your item. Ever notice that you’re provided with a little hierarchy tree that shows you were the item lives on the website?
Abercrombie & Fitch website: www.abercrombie.com ;Womens > Tops > Fashion Tops
Classifications and categories exist because as more and more products became available, we needed to find a way to design information that was understood across multiple demographics (and sometimes psychographics).
Information architecture addresses the following:
- Is it findable? — How easy is it to locate the same item on different sites? Are they part of the same categories?
- Is it accessible? — How easy is it to find the item? How many clicks/swipes until you get to your desired content? Can the content be viewed on different devices?
- Is it easily perceptible? — How easy is it to understand what I’m looking at?
- Is it relevant and/or reliable? — How up-to-date is the provided information? Are people still using this word/product?
- Is it valuable? — How much do we need (and want) this product?
and more!
You’d think that questions like these are easy to answer, but they’re not. Think about your audience.
Takes a parent and their child for example. How often do we hear discrepancies in what the parent thinks is necessary versus what their child thinks is necessary? How often does a product address the needs of both the parent and child?
What about a product that appeases to all teenage girls — the “girly-girl” and the “tomboy”? I frequently toggle between these two worlds and it’s not often I find a product that meets the needs of both my personalities.
It’s questions like these that make art of information architecture ever-changing. The needs and wants of one might not necessarily be the same as the next person, but being able to bring them together by using common verbiage, symbols, products, etc. is what makes one able to understand and relate to the other.
Without IA (information architecture), each website would be a challenge as we would need to reacquaint ourselves with the structure and verbiage the site uses to communicate with users. IA allows us to make quick assessments about where content lives based on things like familiarity. Without some level of familiarity, change can be a very scary thing. Luckily, there are people who exist to make change just a bit less scary :)
Sources:
Abercrombie & Fitch website: www.abercrombie.com
Designlab lectures:
- Intro to Information Architecture
- IA Heuristics