Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
comments: 0"Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things"; What does that suggest to you? Most likely not an article about effective information architecture or the title of a book written by George Lakoff unless you are an information architect. Nevertheless, in this article we will discuss a number of principles from information architecture (IA) and methods to ensure an effective flow of information. In particular, we will pause to consider the intranet as an infamous information killer.
Categories and assumptions
In his book, the cognitive linguist George Lakoff explores the principles behind categorization and the resulting assumptions that people make. Lakoff argues that when reading the title, many people assume that ‘women’, ‘fire’ and ‘dangerous things’ all have something in common. Something that appeals to many feminists, and which others reject completely for the very same reason. But these things don’t necessarily have anything in common. People make different assumptions based on the metaphors, associations and points of view that certain images evoke.
An interaction designer, or anyone who creates a navigation structure or tags information, has to deal with these kinds of assumptions. How do you ensure that your product range or information best reaches a diverse target audience? What choices do you make and what are their consequences?
The basics of information architecture
Effective information architecture enables people to navigate through a system or process in a logical way, convincing them that they are a step closer to the information they are seeking. It concerns a combination of the organization and labelling of information, as well as search and navigation systems in websites and intranets. The information has to be presented in a way that supports usability and findability.
The diagram below is often used in information architecture and contains features that play a role in effective IA: knowledge of organizational objectives, content and the user. The information architect’s task is to discover where these various areas overlap. That’s where conflicting elements can be found, and that’s where things often go wrong in practice.
Information architecture is at the interface between business, content and user
Frequently occurring problems in making information accessible
This is especially tricky with respect to intranet systems. The following problems occur in practice:
- Employees are often a highly heterogeneous group of people and therefore likely to make different kinds of assumptions. These differences can be geographically or culturally determined, but they can also be based on situation, knowledge, experience, profession or branch of business. The information offered is often insufficiently geared to these factors.
- Frequently, information is supplied entirely from the perspective of the organization. An organization’s structure often constitutes the leading principle, generally unnoticed, and overlooks the user.
- There is a fear to delete or limit information. As a result, intranet systems are virtually uncontrollable and don’t result in an optimal user experience (see Morville’s user experience honeycomb).
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In making information accessible, organizations concentrate on creating a navigation structure. But what about tagging information for a search engine to increase findability, structuring information within pages or offering related information?
An ineffective accessibility of information results not only in employees who are frustrated, not up to date or not committed to the company. Think, for example, of the costs involved in finding information (time and frustration) or not finding information (wrong decisions, searching for alternative sources of information). But in addition, there are development and maintenance costs.
How to create optimal information architecture
The solution to this can also be viewed in light of the IA diagram:
Business/Context
1. Ensure that there is a detailed strategy that clearly reflects the organization’s objectives and which forms a solid basis for the decision-making process. If you know there’s an opportunity for far-reaching personalization, you will make different choices than when this is not the case. If your ambition is to use your intranet as a primary information channel, then you will design it differently than when it needs to be an interactive tool with advanced document-sharing options.
2. Based on the strategy, develop a number of user tasks or scenarios and use them as criteria for evaluating quality during and after the development process.
3. Ensure that you have established a good team: responsibility for content is key, not to mention a web designer and IT manager. The designer can help develop prototypes, and the IT expert can offer advice at an early stage about specific possibilities.
Users
4. Conduct user research during the design stage: allow users to draw up the ideal navigation structure for a part or parts that they consider important and identify priorities. This can be achieved by means of card-sorting sessions, live in small groups or individually online. Make sure the results are well analyzed and proceed from there.
Online card-sorting
5. Create sufficient variation in your user group: an IT expert will see ‘SAP’ in a different light than a business consultant or an HR employee. They make different associations and will probably want to see different categories.
6. Let users test prototypes, preferably clickable demos: design contributes to the ease with which information can be found. Use eye-tracking to discover what users are looking at. Observe how they navigate through a site. What is their search strategy: do they use navigation or a search engine?
Content
7. With complex intranet systems, it’s wise to create a diagram or flow chart with the most important user scenarios. This enables you to make clear choices at a very early stage.
8. Create a navigation structure that has a logical structure for users, including terms they are familiar with and information they want. Ensure that the structure is sufficiently layered: not everyone wants to see everything in detail. Beware of having too many levels: this doesn’t increase the ability for users to orientate themselves.
9. Design templates that classify the most important pages. Only then can you judge whether the structure you have devised will really have the desired effect.
10. Don’t forget meta-data. This has a positive effect on the search engine, and user experience shows that a well-functioning search engine scores high. In addition, it is wise to make cross links in order to provide related information. This also increases user-friendliness.
For effective information architecture, it is especially important to thoroughly take stock of user wishes and associations. Moreover, ensure that these are in tune with the requirements from a business and content point of view.