Enervision Media - Information Architecture

Information Architecture

What is Information Architecture?

Information architecture (IA) is the structural design of content for a Website or interactive product. This can be at a high level as well as a micro-level. There are generally several different ways content can be structured for any one site – each information architecture will have a different impact on the users’ perceptions and their abilities to navigate the content.

What are the Benefits of an Information Architecture Redesign?

Most IA projects are conducted as redesigns of existing sites or applications. An IA redesign can help solve a number of problems you may be facing:

Your Problem	Benefits of an IA Redesign
Many or most of your users are having trouble finding information on your site.	Provides a user-centered approach to navigation.
Your Help Desk or Webmaster is reporting many of the same issues from customers or users.	Resolves the reported issues.
Training time is too long on your your Web Service.	Provides user-friendly prompting and guidance to minimize the need for training.
Your site structure is cumbersome for developers to build on.	Incorporates future goals into the content design requirements, thus allowing for future extensibility.
You’re unclear how to resolve the needs of different stakeholders and users.	Balances business goals, technical constraints and user needs into a unified structure.

What's the Process?

Our information architecture design process will include:

•	Background research to understand business goals, plans for the future, and current or future constraints.
•	An in-depth analysis of the existing and planned content and functionality.
•	Development of prospective user profiles, and usage scenarios.
•	Modeling of alternative taxonomies for the content.
•	Formal or informal user research to test the concepts.
•	Documentation to aid the design and development team.

What are the Deliverables?

Larger IA projects may require multiple deliverables over the course of the project, by work stage. Smaller IA projects many require only a few drafts each of high level site maps, flowcharts, and associated wireframes.

For More Information

For more information or to get a quote for Information Architecture services, please Contact Us.