Information Architecture
How information is organized, labeled, and navigated so people can find what they need.
Information architecture is the structural design of shared information: how it is grouped, what things are called, how navigation works, and how search behaves. It is distinct from visual design and from content, and it is usually the thing people mean when they say a site is confusing.
Its core activities are organization (how items group), labeling (what those groups are called), navigation (how people move), and search (how people find directly). Labeling is the hardest and most consequential — a category named in the organization's vocabulary rather than the audience's is invisible to the people it was built for. See Naming and Plain Language.
Two ideas do a lot of work. Findability is the property that a person can get to a thing; understandability is the property that they know what it is when they arrive. A structure can have one without the other.
At scale the interesting problems become taxonomic: whether structure should be a hierarchy, a set of facets, or a graph of relationships. Content systems that model structural role separately from subject matter can recombine the same material for different audiences, which is exactly the modeling that a fixed hierarchy prevents. See Taxonomy and Knowledge Graph.
See also9
Headless CMS
A content system exposing structured data through an API, with presentation left entirely to consumers.
Data & Content12 connections
Rent Strike
Tenants collectively withholding rent to force negotiation with a landlord or policymaker.
Meaning & Society9 connections
Search Engine Optimization
Making content discoverable through search, most of which is ordinary quality work.
Data & Content29 connections
Structured Data
Machine-readable markup describing what a page is about, in a shared vocabulary.
Data & Content14 connections
Linguistic Relativity
The hypothesis that language shapes thought, and the evidence that has narrowed it considerably.
Meaning & Society17 connections
Hamburger Menu
The three-line icon that hides a site's or app's navigation behind a tap, a fix for small screens that saves space at the price of making whatever it hides less likely to be found.
Design & Interface10 connections
Sitemap
A list of a website's pages, either drawn for people as a map of its structure or published as an XML file that tells search engines what exists and when it last changed.
Data & Content10 connections
Breadcrumb
The short row of links near the top of a page that shows where it sits in a site's hierarchy, such as Home › Shoes › Running, letting people orient themselves and step back up a level in one click.
Design & Interface10 connections
Dropdown Menu
A control that hides a list of options until it's opened, saving space at the cost of hiding choices, which ranges from desktop menu bars to the web's notoriously hard-to-style select element and the sprawling mega menus of retail sites.
Design & Interface17 connections
Linked from17
- BacklinkMeaning & Society
The automatically-derived list of pages linking to the current one.
- BreadcrumbDesign & Interface
The short row of links near the top of a page that shows where it sits in a site's hierarchy, such as Home › Shoes › Running, letting people orient themselves and step back up a level in one click.
- Collective ActionMeaning & Society
Coordinated action toward a shared goal, and the free-rider problem that makes it hard.
- Dropdown MenuDesign & Interface
A control that hides a list of options until it's opened, saving space at the cost of hiding choices, which ranges from desktop menu bars to the web's notoriously hard-to-style select element and the sprawling mega menus of retail sites.
- Environmental StorytellingPlay & Games
Narrative carried by placed objects and world state rather than dialogue, completed by the audience's inference.
- Hamburger MenuDesign & Interface
The three-line icon that hides a site's or app's navigation behind a tap, a fix for small screens that saves space at the price of making whatever it hides less likely to be found.
- Headless CMSData & Content
A content system exposing structured data through an API, with presentation left entirely to consumers.
- Knowledge GraphMeaning & Society
Information modeled as entities and the typed relationships between them.
- LegibilityMeaning & Society
Making a system countable and administrable, at the cost of the local knowledge that made it work.
- Linguistic RelativityMeaning & Society
The hypothesis that language shapes thought, and the evidence that has narrowed it considerably.
- NamingMethod
Choosing identifiers so the code states its own meaning without commentary.
- Plain LanguageMeaning & Society
Writing so that the intended reader can find, understand, and use the information the first time.
- Rent StrikeMeaning & Society
Tenants collectively withholding rent to force negotiation with a landlord or policymaker.
- Search Engine OptimizationData & Content
Making content discoverable through search, most of which is ordinary quality work.
- SitemapData & Content
A list of a website's pages, either drawn for people as a map of its structure or published as an XML file that tells search engines what exists and when it last changed.
- Structured DataData & Content
Machine-readable markup describing what a page is about, in a shared vocabulary.
- TaxonomyMeaning & Society
A controlled vocabulary for classifying things, and the choice between hierarchy, facets, and free tagging.