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How I use Information Architecture

Information Architecture is the most important practice in web development to the management of a project. IA is the art of creating and managing the documentation that describes the project. Creating that documentation also means creating the site itself, which ties into the strategy used to accomplish the goals for which the project is slated to achieve.

I know all of this.

Yet.

I still am not happy with the use of IA in my projects. I feel like it is the least understood part of the web development industry, right up there with analytics. And, don’t get me wrong, I spend a lot of time thinking about IA, IA documents, and documentation flow throughout the development process. My biggest challenge is getting everyone on the team to see the IA as the backbone of the project and to treat the creation and adherence to the IA as tantamount to the project’s success. It would be pretty shitty of me to leave that blame on the shoulders of my team members. I take the most responsibility for the success or failure of IA within a project. Sometimes I am successful, and sometimes I’m not. When I am successful, the project flows like this:

I begin by finding clients using my business development practice.
After I find a good client match, I scope their project using my intake questions as a guide.
If the project involves the development of a website, then I’ll identify what type(s) of website they need.
Once I understand their needs, I’m ready to establish an agreement and write up the proposal.
Finally, I take te project through my project management and development process .

Nothing ever goes that smoothly, but it really helps to have a process to keep as much of the project on track as possible.

Specific things I’m doing with IA

One of the biggest areas I’m working on is to stop seeing websites in terms of pages. For example, I’ve been trying to move away from the sitemap and wireframe model that has been the foundation of web design for over a decade. The reason I say “trying”, is because many developers and most clients are not comfortable outside of the sitemap and wireframe model. However, as the Rich Web spreads, we’ll need to think more in terms of states and flow, compared to pages and box models. For rich media sites instead of a sitemap, I’ve been trying a storyboards. I’ve also been looking into UML for better data representations, but I’m still fairly shallow with that research.

I have been happy with moving away from wireframes in favor of page description diagrams (PDD). in order to move away from the “page” concept, I’ve been referring to them as content description diagrams (CDD). I prefer them over wireframes because it allows me to make important decisions about the relationships of the data without committing to a visual layout. I still end up making sketches during my design process that resemble a wireframe, but I don’t share them with the client. Many times a design has looked good as a series of boxes on a page, but has turned out wrong when the “real” content and imagery were put into said boxes. Personally, I don’t feel it helps to get sign off on an abstract IA doc like a wireframe. The CDD, on the other hand, has proven to be very successful at transmitting the elements that need to be on the page, their relationships to each other, and the priorities for the content cluster (or page).

I wish I used a content checklist more. The CDD essentially works like a content checklist, but it often doesn’t have the type of granular detail you need to mindlessly manage a project. Not to mention that many new things come up between the CDD and content development, which a proper content checklist would help manage.

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