The Easier Way to Create IA: Establish Information Priority

Picture this: you’re in the room with the client, or with your stakeholders, and in your best UX expert voice, you say, “The next thing we need to do is spend some time creating an Information Architecture (IA) for this (app/site/system)."

The words are barely out of your mouth and you can see — and feel — the wall go up. Eyes roll, heads shake: Come on, can we just get to design already??

In my experience, that reaction happens for two reasons:

1. The stakeholders feel like they already know what the IA should be, so they see no reason to revisit it. They’ve already given you a list of navigation items, so what’s the point of this?

2. The stakeholders are misunderstanding what “Information Architecture” really means, and as such they see it as yet another obstacle that keeps them from getting this thing done already.

In either case, there’s a very obvious misunderstanding about (1) what IA really is and (2) why it’s important to work it out. I’d like to share my tried-and-true method for clearing that up, while getting everyone on the same page — quickly, efficiently and easily.

In this video, I’m going to give you a quick example of how we go about establishing Information Priority, which is a step in determining Information Architecture.

I use that term (Information Priority) specifically because it communicates something very different to the people in the room. It tells them that this isn’t designer-speak or high-minded theory. I explain that the purpose of the Information Priority exercise is threefold:

1. It shines a light on the fact that what the people in the room think is important and what users or customers think is important are often not the same thing.

2. It forces everyone in the room to step outside their preconceptions and inherent biases and put themselves in the shoes of users and customers — what do they expect to see, what do they expect it to be called and what order do they want to see it in?

3. It’s the quickest way I know to develop a clear, simple model for IA, saving everyone a tremendous amount of time, debate and headache.

The other purpose the exercise services is a political one: it makes everyone in the room feel like they’re being heard. It goes a long way in calming fears, assuring folks that the categories they believe to be most critical are included in the IA.

This is a very simple example from a project I worked on with a client, but it works equally well (if not better) for large, complex sites and systems. Check out the video and think about what you’ve worked on in the past (or are working on now) that this can be applied to.

More where that came from: https://www.ux365academy.com