Week 2 - Organization in Information Architecture

Organizing information might be one of the biggest challenges to any Information Architect (IA). IAs thrive to organize information such that visitors to the various websites they design seek whatever they want efficiently and within a reasonable amount of time.

Within organizations, the challenges IAs might face are not only limited to the classification of the information into various groups and sub-groups or categories and sub-categories, but the actual internal political and socio-cultural environment within the organization itself. We all know politics exists in every organization and preferences on what department or unit features on the home page of the company’s website or intranet might be a major limitation to the actual information designers and architects.

The initial process of sorting out categories, sub-categories, groups, sub-groups, departments and units within departments can be a major brain-storming exercise. Usability Card Sorting can come in very handy in this initial design process in which actual end-users of the site can be put into adequate use to help in the conception design. This technique might prove to be a major plus in your overall arhitecture.

Organizing information within websites and intranets is one of the principal functions an IA performs and a major factor in determining the success or failure of an intranet or website design project. Information within websites and intranets can be organized in either Flat or Deep hierarchies. Each of these hierarchies has its pros and cons, and deciding which to choose for your design might not only depend on the architects’ view point but by history, culture and other existing systems within an organization.

The concept of Organization schemes and Organization structures within Organization systems permit users to navigate deep within or across hierarchies on a daily basis. The organization schemes can be exact (alphabetical, chronological or geographical), or ambiguous (topic, task, audience, metaphor or hybrids. Organization structures, even though more of a perception with a virtual, rather than physical physiognomy, do play a primordial role in website design. These can either use a top-down approach (hierarchy), in a simple model or taxonomy, or might be of a database model (bottom-up approach).

With the world becoming a single online village today, Social Classification of information within websites and intranets is of growing popularity. Collaborative categorization in the form of free tagging might be simple, but has proven to be a very powerful tool with major successes like Flickr in which users tag objects with one or more key words. These public tags serve as pivots for social navigation.

For me, in order to be able to create a cohesive organization system to be used to build an enterprise website or intranet, the designer should coordinate and include all of the above organizational systems, structures and models and be flexible enough to know when and how to apply and deploy which, depending on the context or environment within which they find themselves.