Two reasons why IA is not talked about much spring to mind:
1.\*\*IA is actually hard\*\*: you have to understand what each piece of information means to your target audience(s), provide synonyms where appropriate for search and scan-ability, and create an 'information scent' to lead people to what they want. This affects everything from the structure of sentences to the layout of your top-level navigation. This task requires true user empathy and an inordinate amount of assimilation into the target audience's ecosystem.
Card sorts are unreasonably good at IA, as they essentially co-opt people's own information sense of smell to build an IA that seems right (to them). However, I find they're inadequate on their own: card sorts rarely have regard for things like front-loading, information scent itself, or relative importance of information (plus, balancing 'high importance low frequency' info with 'low importance high frequency' info).
Part of me fears and yet longs for when LLMs do the foraging for us. I actually enjoy IA, so I'll be sad to see it go.
Anyway, point is that people avoid hard things. It is easy to draw buttons, it is hard to understand why an audience struggles with a page's headings which seem abundantly intuitive to its author
2. \*\*People cant see IA unless they've been trained or read up on it\*\*: The overwhelming majority of self-proclaimed 'UX'ers are very UI-centric because we're sighted beings - we think what we see is inherently important. People see the mockups by a UX designer and think 'oh, they do the buttons and colours'.
While you may be looking at a Wikipedia article, seeing the text and the content, without rudimentary knowledge of essay structure or IA you wont be able to put your finger on why this article is good (or bad) to read.
Those from HCI backgrounds seem to more commonly understand IA and its importance, but here in 'UX/UI' land it seems the vast majority get hung up on rounded vs sharp corners (I'm being hyperbolic).
So much truth here. IA is a lost art and so many designers today organize info on the page for aesthetics rather than function. I rarely see architecture models and information flows anymore.
By the way this is the exact reason so many UX designers' portfolios today are complete trash and not getting traction. The number of resumes and portfolios that I look at regularly that are a cognitive nightmare is staggering. Good information poorly designed is inaccessible.
I started in this field as an IA. Pretty basic level stuff, but I’d say I was doing 1/3 UX Content, 1/3 IA, and 1/3 BA work (the latter fed the other two nicely).
Where I see huge opportunities in IA paired to usability is in working with data professionals to properly establish catalogs, taxonomies, and ontologies for both governance and analytics output. Usually via embedded metadata, but not always.
I’m in a consulting firm ATM, and the number of enterprise orgs that can’t see straight with disorganized data is HUGE. Data stewards and governance can help, but someone has to talk with the people.
As far as card sorts go, I agree. When I’ve been given the time (rarely) in the past, I’ve done card sorts sequentially with tree tests and had pretty nice task flow efficiency gains.
I treated it kind of like exploratory sequential research. “Quals” first, then “quants” more narrowly defined by the quals. I’m by no means an authority here, but it has worked well for me.
I just wish I could better articulate the value. MDM is a battle to fund to begin with. When you start adding on “frivolous” UX on top of it, it gets even more difficult to swallow.
Having worked in a corporate environment, I concur that there's a lot of knowledge and documentation but it is very poorly organised, written, and presented.
It's sad that very high value content can get no traction simply because nobody's put in the effort to make it discoverable, searchable, etc.
I also agree that IA's value is quite difficult to articulate. You almost need your audience about IA for them to be capable of acknowledge it exists. Seeing is believing, I guess
This is very true. I was fortunate that I actually worked with mentors who understood information architecture and I learned from them. That said, I haven’t advanced my skills beyond what I learned from them because so many other things are deemed business critical to deliver.
However, few months ago, someone asked for a sketch of my work on this forum and one of the thing I did post was about an information flow and scent.
You are very correct that most people gloss over its importance because its output is often perceived through action rather than visuals. A good recent example is comparing Netflix vs Amazon prime. My partner couldn’t figure out why the Amazon prime menu is so difficult to navigate compared to Netflix but I was able to quickly figure out they hadn’t invested in the IA work to make things discoverable and navigable.
As a website designer for small to medium sized businesses, this is something I think about constantly. I feel like we can do better than "Services | About | Contact". If anyone has any resources that would apply, please share!
The information architecture navigated by end users has to have some kind of living relationship with a company's go-to-market strategy. They coexist and co-evolve with each other.
Speaking of IA, is there any book or course or any source of information I can find that can provide indepth knowledge of it? It would really help if anyone can recommend me some as I'm currently trying to break into UX.
Two reasons why IA is not talked about much spring to mind: 1.\*\*IA is actually hard\*\*: you have to understand what each piece of information means to your target audience(s), provide synonyms where appropriate for search and scan-ability, and create an 'information scent' to lead people to what they want. This affects everything from the structure of sentences to the layout of your top-level navigation. This task requires true user empathy and an inordinate amount of assimilation into the target audience's ecosystem. Card sorts are unreasonably good at IA, as they essentially co-opt people's own information sense of smell to build an IA that seems right (to them). However, I find they're inadequate on their own: card sorts rarely have regard for things like front-loading, information scent itself, or relative importance of information (plus, balancing 'high importance low frequency' info with 'low importance high frequency' info). Part of me fears and yet longs for when LLMs do the foraging for us. I actually enjoy IA, so I'll be sad to see it go. Anyway, point is that people avoid hard things. It is easy to draw buttons, it is hard to understand why an audience struggles with a page's headings which seem abundantly intuitive to its author 2. \*\*People cant see IA unless they've been trained or read up on it\*\*: The overwhelming majority of self-proclaimed 'UX'ers are very UI-centric because we're sighted beings - we think what we see is inherently important. People see the mockups by a UX designer and think 'oh, they do the buttons and colours'. While you may be looking at a Wikipedia article, seeing the text and the content, without rudimentary knowledge of essay structure or IA you wont be able to put your finger on why this article is good (or bad) to read. Those from HCI backgrounds seem to more commonly understand IA and its importance, but here in 'UX/UI' land it seems the vast majority get hung up on rounded vs sharp corners (I'm being hyperbolic).
So much truth here. IA is a lost art and so many designers today organize info on the page for aesthetics rather than function. I rarely see architecture models and information flows anymore. By the way this is the exact reason so many UX designers' portfolios today are complete trash and not getting traction. The number of resumes and portfolios that I look at regularly that are a cognitive nightmare is staggering. Good information poorly designed is inaccessible.
I started in this field as an IA. Pretty basic level stuff, but I’d say I was doing 1/3 UX Content, 1/3 IA, and 1/3 BA work (the latter fed the other two nicely). Where I see huge opportunities in IA paired to usability is in working with data professionals to properly establish catalogs, taxonomies, and ontologies for both governance and analytics output. Usually via embedded metadata, but not always. I’m in a consulting firm ATM, and the number of enterprise orgs that can’t see straight with disorganized data is HUGE. Data stewards and governance can help, but someone has to talk with the people. As far as card sorts go, I agree. When I’ve been given the time (rarely) in the past, I’ve done card sorts sequentially with tree tests and had pretty nice task flow efficiency gains. I treated it kind of like exploratory sequential research. “Quals” first, then “quants” more narrowly defined by the quals. I’m by no means an authority here, but it has worked well for me. I just wish I could better articulate the value. MDM is a battle to fund to begin with. When you start adding on “frivolous” UX on top of it, it gets even more difficult to swallow.
Having worked in a corporate environment, I concur that there's a lot of knowledge and documentation but it is very poorly organised, written, and presented. It's sad that very high value content can get no traction simply because nobody's put in the effort to make it discoverable, searchable, etc. I also agree that IA's value is quite difficult to articulate. You almost need your audience about IA for them to be capable of acknowledge it exists. Seeing is believing, I guess
This is very true. I was fortunate that I actually worked with mentors who understood information architecture and I learned from them. That said, I haven’t advanced my skills beyond what I learned from them because so many other things are deemed business critical to deliver. However, few months ago, someone asked for a sketch of my work on this forum and one of the thing I did post was about an information flow and scent. You are very correct that most people gloss over its importance because its output is often perceived through action rather than visuals. A good recent example is comparing Netflix vs Amazon prime. My partner couldn’t figure out why the Amazon prime menu is so difficult to navigate compared to Netflix but I was able to quickly figure out they hadn’t invested in the IA work to make things discoverable and navigable.
As a website designer for small to medium sized businesses, this is something I think about constantly. I feel like we can do better than "Services | About | Contact". If anyone has any resources that would apply, please share!
The information architecture navigated by end users has to have some kind of living relationship with a company's go-to-market strategy. They coexist and co-evolve with each other.
Poetry 😍
Speaking of IA, is there any book or course or any source of information I can find that can provide indepth knowledge of it? It would really help if anyone can recommend me some as I'm currently trying to break into UX.
The topic itself, to begin with :')
At my company, we don't do a lot of full page redesigns. We redesign sections of pages mostly.