When we’re creating an information architecture, we don’t just use it to build our navigation menus. There are so many other parts of the interface that can benefit from an informed approach to how users perceive the content space as well.
That’s because the information architecture isn’t just for navigation, it’s also for orientation, wayfinding, and discovery.
Orientation
When you first visit a site or start using an app, you need to get an overview and see the whole picture so you can work out what’s on offer and how information is structured.
That’s typically the job of the following interface elements:
- Home page content, category pages
- Mega menus
- Footer areas (if they include typical items such as corporate and press links)
- Site Maps (if done well)
I’ve purposefully missed out one interface element here, and that is introductory slides/animations or overlays. These attempts at teaching people how a site or app works are most often excuses for poor in-interface discovery. They appear at a time in the process when users’ focus is on other tasks, so they aren’t actually very useful to help explain the information architecture.
Navigation
After you’ve worked out what a site or app is about, it’s time to choose a destination and then get there. This is where what we typically think of as navigation – menu systems – are most useful.
Of course, it’s not just traditional menus that perform this role. There are several interface elements that are primarily designed for navigation.
- Menus (including hierarchical menus, category/subcategory click-throughs, etc.)
- Tabbed interfaces
- Lists, tables (in-page menus, basically)
- Search with Filters (This isn’t strictly navigation, but is often used that way by site visitors. Officially, this is “winnowing” behavior)
Sites with large quantities of content may also benefit from structuring category and sub-category pages to follow their primary navigation system so that users can click through within the content area of these pages to drill down in the navigation menu while benefitting from the extra context that these category pages offer.
Wayfinding
When you’re on your way to your destination, or after you’ve completed your task, you’ll be presented with sets of choices at key moments or junctions in the flow.
Think of wayfinding as “you are here, and these are the places you can get to next.” The interface components most often associated with wayfinding are:
- Breadcrumbs, page headings, other in-page “you are here” style content
- Inductive UI and wizard-like interfaces (these streamline wayfinding to one task at a time, followed by a chance to choose from a list of subsequent related tasks – for example consumer tax preparation software)
- Content (often forgotten as a form of navigation, but good content will be hyperlink-rich)
- Related links/you may also like/people also bought style suggestions
Wayfinding is also useful for people who enter a site somewhere deep within the content. Being able to quickly work out where they are, and how to get to the place they want to be, is key to their satisfaction with the site.
Discovery
Often, visitors to your site or app won’t know what they don’t know. In other words, they’ll be looking for something without knowing what it is exactly they want.
You can help them in this discovery process by providing information that describes other features and destinations that might be of interest:
- Category pages
- Search results pages
- Content (this requires a conscious effort to write for discovery)
- Related links/you may also like/people also bought style suggestions
- Assistance text/KB articles (but don’t rely on these because they are most often a last resort, and only for a certain tenacious subset of your users)
IA is more than just navigation
If you’re developing or re-working your information architecture, remember to budget time to consciously consider all the places in the interface that your visitors and users will expect to find clues.
Those elements are spread throughout the interface, and will be necessary at different points in your users’ journey. And it’s not just the site’s design, but also the style you choose to use when you write in-page content, that helps determine whether people can find their way to where they need to be.
By thinking about orientation, navigation, wayfinding, and discovery you’re more likely to guide users to the content and outcomes that they want, which in turn makes them more likely to be satisfied with the service you offer.
To learn more about creating an information architecture, see my LinkedIn course UX Foundations: Information Architecture.
I talk about the structure of content in the Navigation, Site Layout, and Category and Landing Pages sections of my User Experience for Web Design course.