Why information architecture

You've got a lot of stuff you want to put on the web, and that you think people might want to look at.

You could just stick it all on a single page. That's the simplest way. But if there's a lot of information, it will take too long to load and people won't be able to find what they want easily. Also, not all the information may be relevant to what I need, and it will take a lot of work to filter it out.

So we need to:

  • Split our stuff up, and
  • Provide ways for people to find their way through it to get what they want.

That's information architecture.

Important decisions start here.

Contents

Information Architecture models
Some common patterns for web site information architecture
Information Architecture 101
Information Architecture for web sites 101
Navigation models for web sites
Navigation models for web sites