#08 - Information architecture

Sent the June 30th

Issue Artwork by Nicholas Lokasasmita

Article written by

Juan Jesús Millo

Importance of information architecture

Information architecture helps us more than we think, many designers and engineers see it as a small part of the whole experience but it goes much further, it is very underrated itself.

Information architecture helps us to reduce and limit the complexities of a problem, to organize information coherently, to define information, properties and their relationships, and to establish hierarchies and different points of view.

Dan Klyn (2009) created a framework to ensure that this architecture was useful, relevant and authentic using taxonomies, ontologies and choreographies.

Ontology in information architecture

Ontology is about meaning, what that thing means, what it implies. If we talk about a horse for example, what does it mean? an animal horse? or a power horse? a steam horse? Here the context plays a very important role, and if we don't have it, we will have to play a little with creating either a more propitious environment or playing with the meaning and its lexicon. If we choose the animal horse, which horse? which breed?‍

Taxonomy in information architecture

Taxonomy refers to the structure between the last ones, to achieve either an objective within the context, or to reinforce the global context. This reinforces the integrity of the taxonomic structure, as long as it is both precise and scalable to change. If this horse is a thoroughbred (ontology), what is its taxonomy? We can refer to Herbivorous Animals or Breeds native to England, or Race Horses. Who said that context is not that important?

Taxonomy also considers classification and hierarchy; one is used to group data and the second to classify and rank according to their properties.

Choreography in information architecture

And finally, we have choreography, which are the interactions between ontologies and taxonomies, fitting them together and creating a single unit, the navigation experience. It is totally invisible if it is executed well, extremely satisfactory if it is optimized and strange and rare when it is executed badly.

The choreography is very much linked to the needs of the people who use your navigation, you can follow good practices, but you have to rely on its flow and understand it in order to create an optimal navigation interaction.

Are the interactions between the different taxonomic hierarchies well executed? It is not the same to first start with Animals > Horses what Horses > Animals.

Where are the other taxonomies in relation to this one, are they close or do you have to leave the context to access them? Information architecture is not just about creating a navigation menu.

A bad definition of ontologies creates a poor taxonomy, creating a choreography without rhythm.

Articles & Ideas

Introducing Spotify’s New Design Principles‍

Spotify has new design principles, and we're excited to share them with you! In this article, we'll look at how we distilled what's important to us Spotify Design ‍

3 Persona Types: Lightweight, Qualitative, and Statistical‍

Personas used in UX work are a quick, empathy-inducing shorthand for our users’ context, motivations, needs, and approaches to using our products. Page Laubheimer ‍

Sample Size Recommendations for Benchmark Studies‍

One of the primary goals of measuring the user experience is to see whether design efforts actually make a quantifiable difference over time. Jeff Sauro, PhD and Jim Lewis, PhD ‍

The Zendesk Triple Diamond‍

As designers, we don’t hold a monopoly on thinking about the humans who use and buy our software. Mike Chen ‍

Aesthetics and form need to hold hands‍

Let’s quickly ponder another question: why is a pretty post office different from a gorgeous art gallery? Mads Soegaard ‍

Using the 30–60–90 Framework for Design Critique‍

A design critique is a means for a designer to update stakeholders, and peers, on their progress. Kayla J Heffernan ‍

Selection controls — UI component series‍

Making choices never was more satisfying. A detailed look at checkboxes, radio buttons, and toggles design. Taras Bakusevych ‍

UI cheat sheet: list vs grids‍

Grids or lists? That is the question we will look at in this cheat sheet. Tess Gadd ‍

Menus, Metaphors and Materials: Milestones of User Interface Design‍

Why It Is Important to Understand and Appreciate Historic User Interface Designs. Boris Müller and Frank Rausch

Products

Amazon Honeycode‍

You need to manage your tasks, your projects, and your team. Now you can build an app to achieve your goals with Amazon Honeycode. No programming required.‍