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Information Architecture Articles & Videos

  • How to Handle Category Outliers in Your IA

    Users’ mental models of concept categories are far less strict than you might expect. Consider keeping small numbers of outlier pages within their larger parent category, rather than creating unnecessary subcategories.

  • Local Navigation Is a Valuable Orientation and Wayfinding Aid

    Local navigation indicates to users where they are and what other content is nearby in an information hierarchy.

  • Left-Side Vertical Navigation on Desktop: Scalable, Responsive, and Easy to Scan

    Vertical navigation is a good fit for broad or growing IAs, but takes up more space than horizontal navigation. Ensure that it is left-aligned, keyword front-loaded, and visible.

  • How to Interpret Dendrograms from Card Sorting to Improve Information Architecture

    Card sorting is great for designing or evaluating an information architecture (IA), but can be hard to interpret. Dendrograms visualize the data which can help you make the necessary decisions which are rarely clear-cut but require tradeoffs.

  • Findability vs. Discoverability

    Locating features or content on a website or in an app happen in two different ways: finding (users look for the item) and discovering (users come across the item). Both are important, but require different user research techniques to evaluate.

  • Privacy Policies and Terms of Use: 5 Common Mistakes

    Policy pages often fail to follow basic usability guidelines: they are not readable, lack high-level summaries and inside-policy navigation, have poor formatting, and are not available in expected places.

  • How to Organize COVID-19 Information on Your Intranet

    Interviews with intranet designers and case-study analyses show that designers are positioning COVID-19 content on intranets all in one place and are making it easy to find and consume.

  • Stop Counting Clicks: The 3 Click Rule is Nonsense

    Users want to do the least amount of work possible to get to a desired web page. However, "work" is the sum of difficulty presented by each click and not the number of clicks in itself. Here are some tips for making a path easier to navigate.

  • Tree Testing to Evaluate Information Architecture Categories

    Tree testing is a supplement to card sorting as a user research method for assessing the categories in an information architecture (especially a website IA and its proposed or existing navigation menu structure).

  • Better Labels for Website Links: the 4 Ss for Encouraging Clicks

    4 guidelines for writing the link texts on websites to ensure users click the right options. Links should be Specific, Sincere, Substantial, and Succinct.

  • Footers Are Underrated

    There's a footer at the bottom of every web page, but the design of this utilitarian page element is often overlooked, making the website perform below its potential. In our usability studies, users often turn to page footers for important information and tasks, making them an integral part of the overall experience of a site.

  • The 3-Click Rule for Navigation Is False

    While it is important to keep key information easily accessible, the 3-click rule is an arbitrary rule of thumb that is not backed by data.

  • Simple Design Is Relative

    Simplicity depends on the capacity of the information channel and what's simple for one device, can be primitive or intricate for another, since screens are information channels with a limited capacity. When you're designing for multiple devices, don't go by common cliches like "simple is good."

  • How Many Items in a Navigation Menu?

    A key question in information architecture (IA) is to decide the number of items in navigation menus (including global menus and local menus). 4 main factors determine the answer, but it's not 7, despite a common myth.

  • Unbridged Knowledge Gaps Hurt UX

    Many websites fail to provide the right information for research-based tasks, requiring unnecessary effort for users to piece together various information sources manually.

  • Footers 101: Design Patterns and When to Use Each

    Footers can be found at the bottom of almost every web page, and often take many forms, depending on the type of content on a website. Regardless of the form they take, their presence is critical (and highly underrated).

  • Breadcrumbs: 11 Design Guidelines for Desktop and Mobile

    Support wayfinding by including breadcrumbs that reflect the information hierarchy of your site. On mobile, avoid using breadcrumbs that are too tiny or wrap on multiple lines.

  • Intranet Design After a Merger or Acquisition

    Building an intranet for a newly expanded organization calls for empathy, balance, and often some resistance toward upper management.

  • Why You Need a Home Link

    Websites which provide a "home" link on every page make it easy for new visitors and users who are lost to get oriented.

  • Open vs. Closed Card Sorting

    There are two types of card sorting, which measure different aspects of users' mental models for information architecture.

  • How to Interpret Dendrograms from Card Sorting to Improve Information Architecture

    Card sorting is great for designing or evaluating an information architecture (IA), but can be hard to interpret. Dendrograms visualize the data which can help you make the necessary decisions which are rarely clear-cut but require tradeoffs.

  • Findability vs. Discoverability

    Locating features or content on a website or in an app happen in two different ways: finding (users look for the item) and discovering (users come across the item). Both are important, but require different user research techniques to evaluate.

  • Stop Counting Clicks: The 3 Click Rule is Nonsense

    Users want to do the least amount of work possible to get to a desired web page. However, "work" is the sum of difficulty presented by each click and not the number of clicks in itself. Here are some tips for making a path easier to navigate.

  • Tree Testing to Evaluate Information Architecture Categories

    Tree testing is a supplement to card sorting as a user research method for assessing the categories in an information architecture (especially a website IA and its proposed or existing navigation menu structure).

  • Better Labels for Website Links: the 4 Ss for Encouraging Clicks

    4 guidelines for writing the link texts on websites to ensure users click the right options. Links should be Specific, Sincere, Substantial, and Succinct.

  • Footers Are Underrated

    There's a footer at the bottom of every web page, but the design of this utilitarian page element is often overlooked, making the website perform below its potential. In our usability studies, users often turn to page footers for important information and tasks, making them an integral part of the overall experience of a site.

  • Simple Design Is Relative

    Simplicity depends on the capacity of the information channel and what's simple for one device, can be primitive or intricate for another, since screens are information channels with a limited capacity. When you're designing for multiple devices, don't go by common cliches like "simple is good."

  • How Many Items in a Navigation Menu?

    A key question in information architecture (IA) is to decide the number of items in navigation menus (including global menus and local menus). 4 main factors determine the answer, but it's not 7, despite a common myth.

  • Why You Need a Home Link

    Websites which provide a "home" link on every page make it easy for new visitors and users who are lost to get oriented.

  • Open vs. Closed Card Sorting

    There are two types of card sorting, which measure different aspects of users' mental models for information architecture.

  • How to Avoid Bias in Card Sorting

    The items included in card sort studies affect results. Avoid bias by choosing items that proportionately represent your offerings.

  • Card Sorting: How to Best Organize Product Offerings

    Card sorting helps you understand how to organize offerings so people who know what you have and where to find it. Even afternoon tea requires thoughtful organization and presentation.

  • Do We Still Need Information Architecture (IA) When Users Can Just Search?

    Find out why information architecture is more critical than ever, despite improvements in search engines.

  • Top 3 IA Questions about Navigation Menus

    The number and order of navigation categories, and use of hover menus for touchscreens are frequently asked questions that arise when organizing information on a website or application.

  • Quicklinks: Bad Label or Indicative of Usability Issues

    A Quicklinks UI component often surfaces as a poor fix for addressing findability and discoverability issues on intranets. Acting as a catch-all for different types of links causes a separate set of issues. And Quicklinks is always a vague label.

  • Low Findability and Discoverability: Four Testing Methods to Identify the Causes

    Use IA- and UI-focused user research to determine if low findability and discoverability are caused by site information architecture or navigation design.

  • The Difference Between Information Architecture (IA) and Navigation

    IA is the information backbone of the site; navigation refers to those elements in the UI that allow users to reach specific information on the site.

  • Avoid Format-Based Primary Navigation

    Format-based navigation, such as links to Videos, at the top levels of a website’s information architecture lacks sufficient context and information scent for topic-focused users.

  • Bad Intranet Navigation Labels: 3 Workarounds

    Many intranets are saddled with poorly understood labels. If you can't change them, add context to make these labels more transparent to users.

  • Intranet Information Architecture (IA) Trends

    Intranets are improving findability and discoverability by organizing content by task, using mega-menus, offering wayfinding cues, and providing shortcuts.

  • Infinite Scrolling Is Not for Every Website

    Endless scrolling saves people from having to attend to the mechanics of pagination in browsing tasks, but is not a good choice for websites that support goal-oriented finding tasks.

  • Avoid Category Names That Suck

    Categories and hypertext act as signs and should give people a strong indication of what will happen before they click the link. People avoid clicking unknown items, or even worse, ignore them altogether.

  • Flat vs. Deep Website Hierarchies

    Information can be organized in either flat or deep hierarchies; both have their advantages and pitfalls.

  • Explicitly State the Difference Between Options

    When the key difference(s) between UI choices are implied or buried, users often select the wrong option or miscomprehend the features.

  • Mini-IA: Structuring the Information About a Concept

    In a miniature information architecture, coverage of a single topic is chunked into units that are connected through simple navigation.

  • Alphabetical Sorting Must (Mostly) Die

    Ordinal sequences, logical structuring, time lines, or prioritization by importance or frequency are usually better than A-Z listings for presenting options to users.

  • Card Sorting: Pushing Users Beyond Terminology Matches

    It's easy to bias study participants, whether in user testing or in card sorting, if they focus on matching stimulus words instead of working on the underlying problem.

  • Investor Relations (IR) on Corporate Websites

    Individual investors are intimidated by overly complex IR sites and need simple summaries of financial data. Both individual and professional investors want the company's own story and investment vision.

  • Top 10 Information Architecture (IA) Mistakes

    Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with search and across subsites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, and clumsy UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need.

  • IA Task Failures Remain Costly

    Task success is up substantially compared with usability statistics from 2004. Bad information architecture causes most of the remaining user failures.

  • Apple's Flatland Aesthetic, Part 1: The Mac (at asktog.com)

    Appleland is becoming progressively flatter and, at the same time, less usable. Properly-designed interfaces scale, so that they support the new user as well as the expert.

  • Site Map Usability

    New user testing of site maps shows that they are still useful as a secondary navigation aide, and that they're much easier to use than they were during our research 7 years ago.

  • Intranet Information Architecture (IA) Methods

    In analyzing 56 intranets, we found many common top-level categories, labels, and navigation designs, but ultimately, the diversity was too great to recommend a single IA.