What is Information Architecture?
Finding is the new doing
Information Architecture has a fancy name and to many is a new and growing task in big organizations which work with a gazillion pieces of content like Google, Facebook, or Amazon. But in reality the architecture of information is old as information itself. Along our history we can see that with every improvement in communication, an improvement in information architecture has followed it to deal with the higher volume of information. Information architecture is the structuring of information so a person (or computer) can easily find what they are looking for. Without it we would be lost in an ocean of information.
Everyday examples of information architecture could be the index of a book, the organization by subject of a library, or even maps, among many others. Imagine if 500 years ago the europeans that first arrived in the American continent, instead of making maps and using cartography, they had written directions and locations only using written words. It would have been awfully difficult if not impossible for others to arrive to the Americas again.
In other words Information Architecture is the structure on how content is organized and presented to a user. Or as the Information Architecture Institute explains: “Information architecture is about helping people understand their surroundings and find what they’re looking for, in the real world as well as online.”
In the modern digital world, Information Architecture is present in everything that contains information like websites, applications, software, intranets, etc. But who is in charge of it? Are there Information Architects out there? Information Architecture has rarely been a job title, though this has been changing in the last years with the appearance and growth of big web based information providers such as web browsers, social media companies, e-commerce platforms, online banks, etc.
But even though Information Architecture is fairly new as a job title, the task it is not, and has been shared by designers, developers, marketers, and anybody who has participated in the development of an information interface. People who call themselves Information Architects will have experience in all or some of following areas: consumer behavior, consumer and business research, design, marketing, content strategy, user experience, user interface, analytics, search optimization, and other related tasks.
Information Architecture uses research as its main tool and can involve tasks like being up to date on academic publications on human/computer interaction and analyzing existing industry and design standards. As an example, Martin Belam of the British newspaper ‘The Guardian’ tells that they have invited newspaper readers to try their new iPhone app. They filmed them to test whether they understood and made use of the functionality that the newsgroup intended.
Information Architecture at a micro level can mean studying which categories to offer in a e-commerce site to improve easy findability of products; Or in a larger scale could be changing the general placement of information in a site in accordance on how the target users are expected to find it. And in a strategic level, it might be deciding the way a brand experience should be presented to a user to improve effectiveness of communication among the different channels of interaction.
Information Architecture plays a major role on the successful delivery of communication, if information cannot be found, it’s worthless. It helps users and organizations in making information easily findable and accessible.
Every service and product provided is based on information communicated to a target user, and since new information it’s created continuously, finding the correct piece of content is becoming a harder task. The organizations that understand this the better are the ones that are going to adapt to today’s multi-connected and highly informed world.
Gaspar Lobato Grinberg
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