Rethinking information architecture as a strategic tool for complex organizations
When we use the term “information architecture,” what comes to mind? Maybe we think of sitemaps, navigation on a website, and greyscale wireframes. Information architecture looks like very two dimensional deliverables and it’s easy to underestimate their full potential.
Additionally, IA often lives in the domain of the UX or design teams, disconnected from strategy, marketing, and technology. The IA reflects the needs of the user, but not the needs of the stakeholders or business. Because of this, there’s a constant struggle between the business trying to realize its needs in the content structure and the UX team trying to meet the user needs.
Instead, information architecture can be a tool that helps align different parts of the organization to how it communicates its subject matter, depth, and complexity. It can be a tool that supports users in understanding what they need to understand to do what they need to do. That’s a generic statement! This article reviews how information architecture can support content strategy and business goals.
NB: We can use this approach for any kind of content project, whether it’s a website, intranet, service portal, or knowledge base. When I use the term “website,” I’m referring to any type of site.
What do I mean by “information architecture?”
When I use the term “information architecture,” I’m referring to all the components that go into the content structure. All of these things are downstream from the content strategy vision itself:
Site map
Navigation
Wireframes
Content types
Metadata models
Content models
Taxonomy, thesauri, controlled lists
I would use the domain model upstream from the content strategy, as a product of the discovery process. I’m putting this project process here for clarity, so we can all know what a content strategy project looks like, for me.
Using IA in a strategic capacity
Now that we’ve established what falls under information architecture and where it fits in the lifecycle of a project, let’s talk about how to approach the information architecture activities and deliverables from a strategic point of view. For this example, we’ll use the site map. All the other IA deliverables would go through the same kind of review and revision process.
In the Discovery phase, we spent time onboarding stakeholders into the project, interviewing them, and getting them aligned to the purpose of the project and what their involvement would be. We’ve been sharing our findings as we’ve gone through the user research, and we had them review the domain model.
We’ve told them about the content strategy, took their feedback, and updated the content strategy and roadmap accordingly. Now we’re into the site map where we lay out how all the pages will fit together. At this point, we again go out to stakeholders to ask for their input. These stakeholders are the subject matter experts, the marketing team, IT team, support team, any team that is affected by the structure and has content on the site.
Because we’ve pulled (maybe dragged) them along for the ride throughout the whole project, they know how we’ve arrived at the site map and how we are trying to meet business and user needs with the structure. We can explain how the site map becomes the navigation and how it supports findability, clarity, and trust with the user.
By asking for their review and input, we are using the site map to strategically gather their input before the site is built. It is a lot faster and cheaper to adjust a two dimensional site map than it is to restructure pages on a website.
If you want to know what a site map looks like, you can read Information architecture deliverable: Site map (with pictures). You might also want to read Site map vs navigation vs taxonomy: What’s the difference?
IA Needs Cross-Functional Ownership
If you’ve successfully navigated your information architecture phase and deliverables, you’ll now have a content structure that needs to be governed by a cross-functional team. Why does it need to be crossfunctional? Here are some examples:
Once you establish a metadata model, other teams can start to rely on it for their integrations or reporting. They can build maps between the fields in the content management system and fields in their application. They need to know when things change.
The UX team does some more user research with findings that affect the content structure, whether it's the site map or the content models. Others need to review these changes, just like they reviewed the first version of the information architecture deliverables.
Teams can set up templates they use for writing content, based on the content models and the taxonomy. If the content models and taxonomy change, they need to know.
Changes within the organization might affect the taxonomy and the site map. For example, you might be adding or removing a new area of content. Maybe you’re adding a new product. The sales, marketing, and subject matter experts all need input into the taxonomy and content types.
Changes within the organization might affect the domain model, which can affect the site map, taxonomy, and metadata, as well as downstream reporting and dashboards.
To sum it up, your content products and IA are too important to be owned and maintained by just one team. The content structure impacts all the departments that have some kind of input or need something from the website.
When you have cross-functional ownership, you’ll need a RACI to establish the responsibilities and required feedback of the different teams and departments.
How to tell that your IA isn’t strategic
Despite the best intentions of all people involved, here are some key signs that your organization isn’t strategic with content yet.
Different teams create the same content, or slightly similar content
Users complain that they can’t find what they’re looking for
The navigation follows your org chart, not the user needs
There are no content models and different teams produce the same types of content that have very different pieces of information
The taxonomy is not well structured, has duplicate terms, and doesn’t support browse and filtering
The IA was a “set it and forget it” project. You made the site map, the content models, and the taxonomy, and it hasn’t been updated since.
I’ve seen these issues in most organizations that I work with. It’s normal to have these problems, but it doesn’t help you achieve your organizational goals. You can take these issues as signs that your IA needs some TLC.
What strategic information architecture looks like
Strategic content structure has a few qualities. You can self-evaluate if your IA has these attributes:
User research had a big role in informing the structure, the topics, and the tasks. The IA was tested and continues to be tested with users.
Stakeholders have continual input into the structure.
You have a domain model and this model informs the structure.
Different systems (not just your CMS) use the same structure. They have used the domain model, the metadata, and the taxonomy.
Your organization has strategic goals or priorities and your site structure directly supports these goals or priorities.
Search, browse, filtering, related content, personalization, analytics, and reporting are supported with the metadata and taxonomy.
Essentially, your strategic IA creates the connections in your digital ecosystem.
Evaluate your current approach to strategic IA
There are a few steps you can start to move down the road to be more strategic with your IA, whether it’s in your CMS or another system. You don’t need to buy a new CMS, or redesign the whole website, or do a major overhaul (at least not yet). But you do need to define the problem.
Sometimes I’ll hear clients say, “We don’t want to evaluate our old content. We just want to start over again. There’s nothing good in our current content. We haven’t done any research, but we know what’s not working. We just want to move forward.”
You probably know this Einstein quote, "If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions."
To change what we’re doing in the future, we need to know what we’re doing now. You need to know what issues you have with the content and its structure, what stakeholders aren’t getting out of the structure, and what problems users are having. You need to know what your content structure governance is and what the processes are (even if they’re ad hoc!). This way, you know where to start from and can come up with the appropriate solution.
Additionally, investigating the current state is a way to support change management and build relationships with other stakeholders. As with individuals, an organization must be able to look critically at itself and identify unproductive behaviours in order to improve.
Evaluating your current situation isn’t easy. If it was easy, you would have done it already. Remember, we often tend to procrastinate when we don’t understand how to do the work. This article and the below steps should give you an idea of what work to do, then you can identify who can do the work.
Start with these steps to evaluate and identify the problems you have.
Audit your current information structure for alignment with user tasks and business priorities
If you don’t know your user tasks, do user research
If you don’t know your business priorities, do stakeholder engagement
Convene a cross-functional group to map shared concepts into a domain model
If your team is struggling with information complexity, strategic information architecture might be the approach you need.
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