Gauging your IA success

Salvador Dalí once said, "Have no fear of perfection—you'll never reach it."

As defeating as this quote may sound, your objective as a UX practitioner is not to reach perfection, but to create design that is meaningful, understandable, useful, and engaging. To gauge your success in these areas, ask yourself these important questions:

• Is the information presented coordinated in such a way that it is quickly and easily understandable?

• It content presented and written at a level that your specific readers can understand?

• How great is the effort for users to cooperate with your design? Will they want to willingly or begrudgingly? Have you tested this with real users to know for sure?

• Is the right amount of information being presented? Too much information? Too little? Have you spent enough time editing the content and sharing it with potential users to make sure it is easily readable and understandable?

• Can content be edited to avoid numerous pages when a summary might be sufficient...