Chapter 4. Foundations of Good IA
One of the often overlooked and undervalued skills of the UX practitioner is Information Architecture, or IA. IA is to content and functionality what wireframes are to visual design. IA is the skeleton that informs visual design and dictates what information the user will see and interact with. IA is how information is organized and prioritized, and IA helps customers/users navigate through their experience.
In this chapter, we will:
- Focus on the fundamentals of IA to better understand how good IA guides customers/users to a desired outcome.
- Introduce The Four Cs of IA—a checklist of sorts to help validate your IA work.
- Learn from example the presence of IA in our everyday lives and how that translates online to inform and improve UX design.
Recognizing IA as an important aspect of your work as a UX practitioner and understanding how and why it works will improve your user's experience and the quality and success of your UX design work...
