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Information Architecture Design

One approach used to design information architecture is:

This approach puts all information relevant to an audience type or task in one place and avoids the user having to be familiar with the University's organisational structure to navigate through the site. Information is grouped according to how it is used, not by who provides it.

This approach will deliver a site that is generally easy to use. As time and resources at the University are limited, this approach is being advocated. Please note that it is not the only way to solve an information architecture problem.

Know your goals

Before you start designing a website you should decide what the goals of the site will be. Websites built for the sake of it rarely survive. There should be well-defined goals that drive the development of the site. Think about what you want your website to do or achieve. Often these goals are related to tasks your department or area is already carrying out.

  • do you want to promote a course?
  • move some of your business functions to the web?
  • do you want to reduce the number of phone calls for information your department receives?
  • do you want to provide a communication or shared work-space for staff?
  • do you want to promote your research or increase your intake of research students?
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Know your audience

Who is your site for? Possible audiences of university sites may include one or more of the following (and this list is not exhaustive):

  • current students
  • prospective students
  • current staff
  • prospective staff
  • alumni
  • business
  • general public
  • journalists/media
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Identify what your audiences need

Once you have identified your audience(s), now decide what your audience needs from your site. Questions to ask include:

  • What type of information do you provide for your audiences, both on and off the web?
  • What type of interactions do you have with your audiences?

Remember that it is quite likely that different audiences will require radically varying information. Your site design should address these differences in audience requirements and not rely on categorisation according to who provides the information.

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Decide whether to organise the information according to audience type or task

Some university sites serve a very broad audience with different information needs. Conversely, some sites may have a broad or narrow audience, all trying to acheive the same, or similar things.

Two examples:

  • Main University website
    The audience of the main university website is incredibly broad, from high school students exploring potential degrees to journalists looking for stories. Hence the design of the site is role-based. All information for a particular audience is located in one spot. The audience is not required to track back and forth across the site looking for information that logically goes together.
  • Financial services website
    A new financial services site is being developed that focusses on the tasks that the audience is trying to achieve. The audience for this site is very broad but the reasons the different parts of the audience will visit the site are relatively narrow. All information for a particular task is located in one section of the site.

A task based organisation focusses on helping a user complete a task. It may include information about how to perform the task, relevant forms and online tools and contact points should the user get into real trouble. The model for such an architecture is how people acheive tasks in the real world.

A role based organisation focusses on audience groups and all the information they may need. Although within the roles tasks can be focussed on, it is important to locate all tasks for one particular audience within one area.

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Arrange information into logical categories

Once you have decided on an overall strategy for your achitecture you can then look at the content in detail and decide where each piece should go. As above, guides for this classification are often real-world scenarios. For example, a high school student is exploring degrees offered at the University. What kind of information might they need?

  • courses on offer
  • UAI cut-offs for each course
  • Prerequisites
  • Fee information
  • Application directions and forms, if relevant
  • A contact for follow-up, if appropriate
  • Scholarship information

The responsibility for different parts of this list lies in different organisational areas. The prospective student doesn't know that though. They just want to find a course, decide if they want to / can apply and do so.

Often, what web designers (or the University organisation chart) see as logical is not logical to the audience. The key to creating logical categories that make sense to your audience is to put yourself in their shoes.

Some other points to remember are:

  • Each category should be exclusive (or as close to as possible).
    A user should not look at a list of categories and be unsure if a piece of information sits in one or more categories. There should be obvious paths to the information. The user should know which road to take without having to think about it too much.
  • Name categories in language your audience understands.
    If your audience calls it the 'internet' and you call it 'network services' name the category 'internet'.
  • Top-level categories need to strike a fine balance between precision and vagueness.
    Too precise and you will have too many categories, too vague and the audience will not know where to start.
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Prioritise the information

After deciding upon your categories you may notice that they do seem to 'fit' together in a logical manner. Sometimes though the priority of some information may supersede the neat architecture that your categories make up. As well as structuring the information according to the type of audience and/or the task being achieved, the usage or demand of the information may have an influence on where the information is presented in the site.

All peices of information should have a 'home'. This is a place where the information sits logically and neatly into the architecture. Access to this information can be from different places to the actual path to the 'home'. That is, the path can be 'short-cut' to make information more accessible. User paths are not necessarily the same as the site information architecture.

How can this be addressed? Page design can provide short-cuts to and allow for adjustments to the priority of information. The index pages of large sections can be used as a place to 'showcase' information according to need. Often information is more in demand at certain times in the year.

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