Information architecture: keeping users in focus
Here are some steps you can take to organise information in a way that best serves users.
By David McComb
David is a content strategist, content designer and highly experienced Scroll consultant.
Why content designers love information architecture (IA)
Of the many jobs that fall to a content designer, developing a website’s information architecture (IA) can be the most rewarding.
Rather than focusing on a specific piece of content, IA development is an opportunity to work across an entire website, and reorganise information in a way that best serves the needs of users.
Also, as working on an IA will quickly make you an expert in a website’s content, it’s an effective way to win the support of stakeholders as they can see you’ve taken the time and care to understand what their website does and the content it offers.
But whether you’re developing the IA of an existing website for a potential reshuffle – or are making plans for a major content migration – there are effective steps you can take to:
understand the website’s function and its users
reorder information to be user-centric
communicate your recommendations to stakeholders
Make time for research
Knowing where to start when analysing an existing IA is daunting – especially when sites have been allowed to spiral out of control and there are hundreds of outdated pages to cycle through.
But while it can be a tedious and time-consuming process, giving yourself time to explore and absorb your client’s content is an obvious first step.
As an outsider, you’ll get a broad understanding of the topics and information types involved. You won’t have the subject knowledge to understand everything you read, but you’ll get a clearer picture of your client’s business and the challenges ahead.
Taking time to sketch out the current IA using Miro (opens new tab) or a similar tool is also a helpful way to understand what you’re up against.
When cycling through pages you can quickly become ‘browse blind’, and lose track of how pages are connected as you click through a hot mess of links.
But sketching out the current IA will help you visualise how the information is organised, and spot areas where there may be a glut of outdated pages to axe.
A sketch of the current IA is also a satisfying reference point when a new IA takes shape, and will clearly demonstrate the impact of the improvements you recommend.
Practically speaking, it’s best to discuss this stage of the process with your project manager, and agree how much time you need to get to grips with the website.
You won’t have much to show for your time spent surfing in terms of deliverables. But if you communicate the value of this process to colleagues, they’ll understand the head-start it gives you.
Understand your users
Time and budget constraints mean you probably won’t be able to spend much time with website users when work begins on IA development.
But there are simple strategies you can use to understand the information that’s most important to users and why they come to the site.
First, connect with your client’s digital team to see what data you can get your hands on.
Basic stats on which website pages are most visited will quickly reveal the content that users need most, and help you stay focused if stakeholders try to amplify the importance of low-ranking content strands.
Diving into Google Analytics will take you even deeper, and is an opportunity to collect valuable insights about your users.
Data such as top sources of traffic, user behaviour during sessions and bounce rates will show you how real people interact with the existing site, and provide powerful evidence you can use when making IA recommendations.
With data under your belt, ask if there is anyone you can speak to inside your client’s organisation who can explain the primary needs of users, but doesn’t have an axe to grind as part of the IA project.
This can often be people who work ‘in the field’, and understand the needs of users as they are in the frontline when something goes wrong.
In a recent IA project I worked on, I found that speaking to the person who manages the day-to-day work of council parking attendants was more productive than hearing the long-term business goals of the department head.
Time and budget permitting, you could also consider running a card sorting exercise using Optimal Workshop (opens new tab) or similar, to see how users would catagorise information on the site.
Personally, I’d choose to run a card sort later in the process, after initial testing of IAs, as you can use this information to hone your recommendations.
But no matter where it comes in the process, a card sort will help you get a handle on where users expect to find information on the site.
Meet the stakeholders
As a content designer your loyalty is to website users, so the greatest challenge can be balancing user needs with your client’s business goals.
Also, as your client’s organisation is likely to be split into multiple departments – each of which wants an animated banner on the homepage and a dedicated microsite – it’s important to understand the challenges you’ll face when pushing an IA that best serves users.
As an outsider it can be confusing to make sense of these competing voices, so it’s important to find allies who can help you interpret the noise and understand who the website’s users really are.
Lean on your team leader for a comprehensive list of your client’s goals, so that you can stay focused and not waste time exploring demands that are outside the project scope.
Also spend time with the person spearheading the IA project inside your client’s organisation to understand how the business is structured. You need to know:
what departments are involved in the IA project
which key stakeholders must be engaged at the project outset
which teams can be involved later in the IA development
You can’t speak to everyone with a vested interest in the website – that would be weeks of work.
But as your first step will be to develop the broad brushstrokes of a new IA – not the fine detail – carefully choose the most important stakeholders to interview, and don’t lose sight of users as you’re bombarded with information.
Take a step back
Now that you understand how your client’s website is structured and any internal pressures you may face when recommending a new IA, it’s time to put all that noise aside.
Now it’s all about the users.
With your understanding of the content and what is most important to users, put yourself in their shoes and think about the best way to organise the information.
Ignore your client’s departmental structure. Don’t worry about potential objections to shifting content around. Think about what users need and how they can find it as quickly as possible.
You don’t need mountains of data or a detailed content audit to do this. You’re a content designer, and have an instinct for how information can be restructured to benefit users.
Spend time experimenting with different ways to structure the information. You’ll aim to test new IAs before anything goes live, so don’t be afraid to be radical if you can see ways to make life easier for users.
Crucially, this process will give you something tangible to share and communicate your ideas. Even if some stakeholders aren’t comfortable with your recommendations, at least it starts a conversation.
And as many stakeholders don’t actually know what they want until they see what they don’t want, presenting a series of different approaches is a surefire way to get the ball rolling.
Mess around in Miro
When I moved from print publishing into content design, old habits died hard and I struggled with InDesign for months when sketching out IAs.
Using InDesign was fiddly as hell, and I often wasted hours trying to make boxes line up rather than generating materials to share.
I was late to the party, but I eventually discovered Miro.
Of course, other similar tools are available, but I find Miro a fast and intuitive way to experiment with different ways to structure information, and the outputs are a visually engaging and effective way to communicate your recommendations.
Miro is also useful as you can work ‘in the open’, making it a good way for colleagues to stay up to date with your progress… and see what it is that a content designer does all day.
Present a top-level IA
After all your sketching and pondering on the needs of users, the next stage is to present your draft workings to stakeholders.
But be careful what you share.
If you’re working on a large website project, a detailed IA can be overwhelming, and there’s also the danger that teams may get obsessed with small details and lose sight of the bigger picture.
A good strategy is to first present a ‘top level’ IA that only includes the major content areas, so that stakeholders can quickly see your approach and raise any concerns about how content has been categorised.
As always, take any feedback with a pinch of salt. Every department is hard-wired to find ways to make their work more prominent, whether it helps users or not.
But collaborating with clients and using their experience to iterate different approaches to the IA can also be a satisfying experience, and in many cases seals the relationship between contractor and client as they can see how hard you’ve worked to understand their business.
Test with users
Although resources for testing may be limited depending on the project, this is an ideal time to test your workings with users.
Creating pages to test IAs can be a quick process. You don’t need to carefully craft content – only the elements that help users to find the information they need.
If you write a clear brief, an interaction designer can collaborate with you to swiftly prepare different approaches to test with users.
The testing process is invaluable as it will reveal any holes or misunderstandings in your draft IAs, and shows what happens to your grand ideas when they’re exposed to real people.
Champion a content audit
With user testing in the bag, you’ll have clear evidence to use when collaborating with stakeholders to reiterate the IA.
But if you need a meticulous IA that becomes a detailed road map for a reshuffle – and which highlights any content that should be retained, updated or deleted – you need a content audit.
Any content designer can pull together a draft IA for discussion and early testing. But it’s impossible to develop a detailed IA if you don’t have a clear record of what content exists, and which pages can be removed as they’re only extra clutter for users to sift through.
Communicate to colleagues and stakeholders the value of a content audit, and the positive impact this will have for users down the line.
For guidance on how to define the goals and scope of a content audit, Angela Moore’s content audit blog is the best place to start.
More testing and iterate, iterate, iterate
With your research and a content audit in hand, you have everything you need to develop a robust IA.
As always, testing the final IA as it takes shape is vital, and letting users loose on your evolving designs will help you tweak the structure before launch.
Obviously, work on a website’s IA never ends, and there will be endless changes to accommodate new information and serve the evolving needs of users.
But by using some of the strategies presented here, you’ll help to build a firm foundation for future development that always has users at the heart of the experience.
Final words
Like all things digital, there’s no defined process for developing the perfect IA. It all depends on the team you’re working with, the resources available, and how comfortable your stakeholders are with change.
But as IA development draws heavily on a content designer’s digital skills and powers of negotiation, it’s a challenging and fulfilling experience.
The process may leave you feeling frustrated and frazzled at times – but knowing that you’ve made life easier for users, and that the impact of your work will potentially be felt for years to come, is worth the pain.
Need help to sort out your website’s information architecture? Get in touch with Scroll.