An Exercise in Information Architecture

One of the most challenging activities I see web professionals work through is coming up with the right  Information Architecture. The process ranges from pulling navigation out of thin air (the process I think most commonly used) to incredibly ellaborate and expensive studies with plenty of Ph.d.'s and one-way glass.

The following process is one I have found strikes the delicate balance between simple and arduous. This is best used as a brainstorming exercise with key stakeholders to ensure the business and marketing requirements lead the discussion.

It all startes with identifing your audiences. This usually includes consumers but could also include dealers, distributors, and media professionals. Each of these audiences will have specific needs and thought processes.

Once we find our audience, its time to identify user missions for each audience. So for instance, a consumer's missions may include trying to find a product, getting copies of past invoices, or locating a dealer. A dealer may want to download sales collatoral, learn about upcoming marketing campaigns, or access technical product specifications. If you have the time and resources, you can even find individuals that represent each audience and straight ask them what they are looking for and what they would find value in (careful here, many times they don't really know, so don't take their responses as definitive).

Now that we understand their missions, its time to break down what functionality and peices of content are needed to accomplish them. The functionality will help drive your software development requirements or a product selection if you are planing on using a content mangement system. The content identified will become your content inventory.

This inventory will need to be organized, usually into something resembling a heirarchial structure. This is where your sitemaps and navigation schemes will fall out.

While the process of organizing this information is beyond this entry, a very common approach is to use a 'card sort'. This is where you logically group pieces of content and feature is into intuitive collections. There are several online tools that will help you through this process include Websort.

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