A Primer on Information Architecture – Part 2 Mohamad Haj Hasan

Information Architecture Components

In order to successfully and clearly structure information on a web page, one must be aware of
the different information architecture components:

1. Organization systems

These are the different ways that information is grouped, categorized and presented to
different types of users (e.g. by topic, by audience, by chronology, etc). Websites usually
fulfill multiple, and sometimes different, information needs to the same user base.
Organization systems refer to the way that information is structured to cater to this wide user
base. Organizational systems are also known as taxonomies, hierarchies and folksonomies
(e.g. user-generated tag clouds).

2. Navigation systems

This refers to the ways in which users are able to move through a website to access
different sets of information. This system needs to be logical, user-friendly and very intuitive.
Things like major tabs, mouse-over sub-tabs, “jump quickly to” dropdowns, etc. are all part
of navigation systems.

3. Search systems

Simply put, this is the system that allows user search via free-text search or to logically filter
information on the site in order to get to the intended piece of content.

4. Labeling systems

These are the meaningful categories, descriptions, labels, tags as well as general language
used to describe certain pieces of information or content on your website in a way that is
clear to all your user base.

5. Feedback systems

This system is built on user (human) input into the site, and is essentially the ratings,
comments, featured content and general feedback on specific pieces of information that
help users determine the context as well as the importance of the content.

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A Primer on Information Architecture – Part 2 Mohamad Haj Hasan

Figure 1. Information Architecture Components

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A Primer on Information Architecture – Part 2 Mohamad Haj Hasan

Building an Information Architecture

Top-down Information Architecture

Top-down information architecture is very important on the home page and the major
navigational sections of your website (i.e. “landing pages”). It is a way to build a web page’s
information architecture by making sure that you answer the following user questions:

1. Where am I?

2. I know what I am looking for; how do I search for it?

3. How do I get around this site (i.e. move to other pages)?

4. What is important and unique about this organization or site?

5. What is available to do / use on this site?

6. What is happening at this organization (news, blog)?

7. Do they want my opinion or feedback about their site or business?

8. What are the company’s contact details?

9. How can I contact a human?

Bottom-up Information Architecture

Bottom-up information architecture refers to the way that the content itself is structured,
sequenced, tagged and labeled in the lower-levels of your site. Since this information
architecture may sometimes be embedded within the content itself, it must enable the answer to
the following questions to “rise” to the surface:

1. Where am I?

2. What is here?

3. Where can I go from here?

Bottom-up information architecture is very important because of the way in which many users
will land on your website. Not all your users will enter “through the front door” and land on the
home page or a landing page. Instead, they may come to lower-level pages from search
engines, social networking sites, ads, blogs, etc. and therefore it is critical to anticipate this type
of use and make sure that the structure and display of the content in lower-level pages is clear
for users to be able to navigate your entire site from any page they land on1.

1
A great way to better understand this bottom-up architecture and “stress test” your site can be found on:
http://instone.org/navstress.

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A Primer on Information Architecture – Part 2 Mohamad Haj Hasan

Invisible Information Architecture

This refers to the back-end of how information is displayed to the user. For example: what
pages you index to return results for a certain search, what algorithm you are using to display
the results, what ranking system you are using to decide the order of search results, how you
provide recommendations (e.g. Amazon), how you feature certain content (whether manually or
automatically), and so on.

FYI: A Different Approach to Categorizing Information Architecture Components

Information architecture is not an exact science. Therefore there are different ways of
categorizing the components that go into building an information architecture other than the
general systems mentioned previously (i.e. organization, navigation, search and labeling).

Browsing Aids

These are the components in a website that walk users through your site link-by-link, tab-by-tab,
menu-by-menu, without the need for users to articulate their information query. They are the
predetermined ways and tools of navigating a website, and include:

• Categorization and grouping of information into general relevant sets (essentially the
organization system of the site).

• Major tab or major menu navigation that helps users understand where they are and
where they can generally go.

• Minor tab or local menu navigation that helps users understand where they are within a
certain portion or section of a site.

• Sitemaps that help users visualize the entire site structure in a condensed overview of
links.

• Site indices that provide users with alphabetized lists of links to the content of the site.

• Site wizards that lead people through a sequence of set-up steps.

• Contextual navigation within the content itself that logically leads users to other relevant
pieces of information (e.g. Wikipedia).

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A Primer on Information Architecture – Part 2 Mohamad Haj Hasan

Searching Aids

These are the components in a website that allow users to enter query searches and return a
set of customized results to their question. They are predominantly related to free-text search
and include:

• The search interface for inputting the query and generating the results, with links to
information on how to improve your search (i.e. advanced search).

• The query language itself, including all Boolean operators.

• The way in which queries are built and enhanced, such as spell-check (e.g. Google’s
“did you mean”), synonym search and word stemming.

• Retrieval algorithms, which are the secret sauce that deliver the relevant results (e.g.
Google’s Page Rank).

• Search zoning that enables you to narrow down your search within specific sections of
the site.

• The display of search results, including snippets, sorting and ranking of results.

Content and Tasks

As mentioned before, there is an information architecture embedded within the content and the
tasks (on lower-level pages) that are the actual ultimate destinations of users on the site, they
include:

• Content headings, which are labels for the content that follows.

• The labels of the embedded links within the content that accurately represent the pages
they are linking to.

• Logical units, or chunks, that divide content (e.g. sections, paragraphs, indented text,
ordered lists, unordered lists, etc.)

• Identifiers that help the user know where they are in the information system such as a
logo identifying the site, or breadcrumbs explaining where the user is within the site.

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