Usability Via Information Architecture

April 21, 2004 | 7 Comments

I’ve come to find that a good way to gather data about your users is to involve them in your Information Architecture process. I realize that Information Architecture can seem a bit daunting to many Web designers and Web developers but at its most basic it’s something you probably practice on a day-to-day basis.

If you’ve ever created a site map, done card sorting exercises or been involved in a meeting with stakeholders about “navigation” and “labels”, you’ve been practicing IA. These kinds of exercises, and many more, are a necessary part of building Web sites and applications.

Unfortunately these exercises are often conducted in-house, with only the Web team and the various stakeholders involved. But what about the users?

If you take the time to involve your users from the beginning, you can not only help better lay the ground work for your site, but gather some useful user data in that process and provide a framework to help advocate for your users in the future.

I think it’s best to illustrate this with an example.

An IA Problem

I’ve been recently involved in some meetings with our Foundation and Guild (the folks who get people to donate) down at the hospital. Turns out they need to get a whole bunch of information up on the Web.

We had originally envisioned expanding upon our philanthropy section of the hospital’s main external Web site to accommodate this, but quickly realized that the shear size and scope of the information they wanted to publish was too large for our (otherwise fairly scaleable) IA to support.

They needed a separate Web site.

We started the process by setting goals for the site. This was followed by a content inventory and some card sorting exercises with the various (there are quite a few) stakeholders involved. It became apparent that the labels and structure they were coming up with were very organizationally focused — in the few spots they could even agree on it. Sounding familiar?

All of this is very typical and was to be expected. We had internal and organizational goals laid out for this site, but we lacked user involvement at this point. We’d also come to an impasse of sorts with our IA.

So, where do we go from here?

Enter The Users

It was decided that we should touch base with our audiences. To that end we arranged some card sorting and findability sessions with a few small groups of users that represent our target audiences. This allows us to:

• Connect with our users in a fun and interesting way
• Label our content in “user” terms, as opposed to “organizational” terms
• Help settle internal IA disputes
• Get away from the “org chart” IA
• Begin to gather some good user data

And, maybe most importantly:

• Provide a starting point to sell our stakeholders on usability and user-centered design

These kinds of IA exercises are fairly easy to set up and do, can be run by almost anyone who has an interest in learning how to do it and can provide some great information. They work as an excellent base to begin contact with your users and provide an excellent bridge between the user and the stakeholder.

In fact, many of you may have already been doing these kinds of things, like we were, with internal audiences. I still feel those sessions are valuable, but they become even more valuable when coupled with user sessions.

IA and usability go hand in hand, and in this case, you can use one to help facilitate the other.

For more on “entry level” IA techniques see the following:

• Information Architecure for Everyone
• Card Sorting — A Definitive Guide

Filed under: IA and Usability