Card sorting, or the activity of putting a bunch of terms in front of users and getting them to sort them into groups, has long been a favourite information architecture activity. As a practitioner, I've had more or less success with it over the years. Recently, it's become a tool in the arsenal for stakeholder and employee engagement.
Content types and taxonomy are all part of a site's content model. A content model defines all the content types, metadata, and relationships between different content on a site.
Metadata are the workhorses of a content management system. Simply put, metadata tell your CMS platform what your content is about and let you do things with your content.
On projects, we're often asked, "What's the difference between a site map and taxonomy?" This article explains their differences.
Search is a ubiquitous term we use freely and imprecisely. By understanding the different types of search and user behaviours around search, we can design better content structure to support better search.
Using search terms as part of a content audit can give insight into the structure of your site. You can analyze these search terms to inform your taxonomy and future content efforts, and to evaluate the findability of content on your site.
While doing a content audit, analytics are a great way to dig into what's happening with content on your site.
A website content audit gives you a both a great overview and in-depth knowledge of the current state of your website content.
Learn of some challenges we faced on a large website overhaul.
Once you understand what information architecture (IA) is, you may wonder why exactly it is that you need it, in order to have a successful site.
Common website usability problems are symptoms and signs of poor information architecture. Information architecture (IA) aims to connect users with the content that they are looking for, in a seamless and intuitive manner.
We frequently hear clients say, "Our website search is terrible. People tell us it sucks. We need to fix it." There are a few areas where we can look to fix search problems.
Faced with a design mandate, this government organization needed to do research before designing the solution to ensure the solution was appropriate for its audiences. We helped this organization go through interviews, analysis, journey mapping, and information architecture work.
On the surface, audience based navigation seems to make sense. After a few attempts at audience based navigation, here are our lessons learned. and quickly learned a few things (after an immense amount of frustration).
Maybe the website isn't well organized. Maybe users don't take the time to look through the website. Maybe users have had bad experiences in the past and can't be bothered to look on the website. Rest assured there are you can improve content findability with better website information architecture.
Purdys contacted Key Pointe because sections of their website weren’t delivering needed results for their fundraising and group purchase programs. We reviewed these areas and provided recommendations to Purdys.
Here's a roundup of the articles and presentation for Diagnosing and Solving Content Problems from the 2014 Intelligent Content Conference.
When looking to improve the findability on your website or intranet or in your CMS or DAM, there are a few areas where you can look to diagnose and solve findability problems. To find these problems, you can do an expert review and user testing. This second part in a two-part series focuses on solving findability problems.
When looking to improve the findability on your website or intranet or in your CMS or DAM, there are a few areas where you can look to diagnose and solve findability problems. To find these problems, you can do an expert review and user testing. This first part in a two-part series focuses on diagnosing findability problems.
When improving a website or intranet (or any content product), you can focus on findability with an IA review and assessment and with card sorting and task testing. This article focuses on how to improve findability through card sorting.
Working with a content strategist, we took Rocky View through a user-centred design process, then created a new information architecture and content strategy. During our research, it became clear that Rocky View served a diverse and geographically dispersed community which needed geographically appropriate information.
A large, U.S. based financial services company was moving to a new enterprise content management system (eCMS) and needed a taxonomy to better find information. We collaborated with attorneys and financial services experts to create a taxonomy for the client.
In information architecture, there are a few deliverables meant to communicate the information design to all the stakeholders. Here's a brief overview of what can be delivered on an IA project and why these things are important.
This portfolio item details the work done for a technology standards client.