Although it’s tempting to skip ahead to the look and feel of a design, the importance of first defining an Information Architecture (IA) can’t be overstated. Often we find that an existing system has been built as a monolithic solution that jumble the raw plumbing of the system up with the business process and the user interface. Unfortunately this leads to a brittle solution that can’t evolve with new user interfaces, new underlying systems or new business realities. We define IA as everything you can define about a solution without specifying the underlying system (the raw plumbing of a system) or specifying the particular user interface that will be employed. By thinking about the architecture of how information is used, how it flows, how it fits within the user’s world we can help you capture the only real part of the solution that you can truly own. The outcome of a comprehensive IA program is a systematic description of the information content of a given product, service, or environment. This type of detailed understanding and documentation of your company’s business process is the first step toward taming the complexity of a design to make even the most intricate solutions functional, transparent and user-friendly.
In addition to enhancing function for the user, the IA process also forces clarity upward into the user interface and downward into the system architecture, thereby simplifying design development and implementation. In other words, the IA creates a common ground between designers and developers by bridging the gap between the user interface and underlying systems or technologies. A well-defined IA can not only help you expand the function of your designs, it can also inform consistent experiences and paths for the evolution of future designs across many variants within a family of products, services or environments.