Posted on 5 February 2008 by Jack No Comments

Separating Information Architecture from Design

In our travels we frequently find that our clients proceed directly from project initiation to design. This is not an ideal approach. In fact, it’s the best way to spend a lot of money without achieving the best possible results.

Design and Architecture: Different Competencies

Designers are skilled in visual communication – their primary focus is on how a page looks, how the brand is communicated, how harmoniously the page elements work together. What they don’t generally do is engage with the actual content in such a way that they are easily able to work through issues of content grouping and labelling, the “voice” of the page, calls to action, consistency of interaction across content types and so forth.

If a project goes straight from initiation to design, what happens when content issues inevitably arise is that they have to be resolved in the design phase. And the designer, in all likelihood, does not have the right suite of skills to arrive at the best solutions.

The major concerns of Information Architecture, on the other hand, are categorisation or content grouping, labelling and language, consistency of navigation and interaction. Information Architecture is the skeleton or structure over which the cladding of visual design is laid. Imagine building a house, and then deciding you want to change the placement of the hallway once all the walls have been painted and the carpet laid. You’d never dream of it!

IA is a boon for developers too

Not only does a well-defined IA mean the designers can concentrate on the design, it also ensures that the developers don’t have to spend a lot of project management time (which gets passed back to the client) going back and forth to the designers asking questions about how the designer expected a particular page element would work. Chances are the designer hasn’t thought that far.

Information Architecture should also extend into the business rules and functional specifications for all of the website’s elements. By the time the project reaches the developers, the issues have already been thought through, and not only that, they’ve been documented.

All building requires planning and comprehensive documentation

Essentially, what is true of building houses is also true of websites. If the blueprints are good (and good means comprehensive as well as elegant), then the rest will follow smoothly. Smooth projects are streamlined projects. And streamlined projects take less time and less money.