Information architecture. You’ve probably heard the term, but have you ever really thought about what it is? It is a discipline focused on the designing and organizing information for the digital space. The idea is to figure out what users need and make it easy for them to achieve their objectives.
It is great to design a beautiful cutting edge site, but if it’s not usable then it’s not successful. I’m sure you’ve been on a site like this – you know, the kind with a beautiful interactive, animated landing page. But once the novelty wears off and you try to figure out where to go next, you have no idea what to click. That is a site that misses the mark in my mind. The goal should be to combine both the pop of the design with a highly usable and navigable site.
The only way to have a successful and usable site, is to draft up a blueprint and plan out the site well before you lay the first brick. There needs to be a planning and analysis process in place from the start. Once you have thought about and planned for most scenarios, then you can begin building. As opposed to trying to create a Jackson Pollack version of a website that looks interesting, but once the user snaps out of their haze, they have no idea what to do next.
You aren’t always going to have all of the answers before you undertake a project. New requirements come up and curveballs are thrown all the time out of no where. Having a solid plan provides a good foundation and will help you better adapt to the changing environment versus building a site by the seat of your pants and going with what feels good.
