This paper explores the topic of Information Architecture and the important role it plays in developing successful mobile interfaces. Referencing experts in User Experience from organizations such as Nielsen Norman Group and the Interaction Design Foundation, this paper examines how Information Architecture, while distinct from other components of User Interface design, is a crucial part of the design process. The paper also uses real-world examples to explain the positive impact Information Architecture can have on users and app designers. Lastly, the paper considers how new realities in 2020 are driving demand for mobile apps that people can rely upon.
 

Introduction

 

Today, mobile applications have become a vital part of our everyday lives. From online shopping to financial services, smartphone users expect to encounter responsive web page design and intuitive applications. However, designs in the mobile era are not always foolproof, leaving users frustrated with either the application itself or their own mobile literacy. The route of this frustration often stems from inadequate site organization and hierarchy—a concept called Information Architecture (IA).

 

Recall the Iowa Caucus app failure of January 2020. Iowa’s democrats designed a new smartphone app to collect voting results. The goal of the app was to inform the party of the results more efficiently and improve accessibility for the voting public (Fessler, 2020). Yet, rather than improving efficiency or accessibility, the app overwhelmed users. A confusing user interface made the app difficult to use, and, as a result, many errors could not be resolved. The app, which was designed in just two months, was faulted by the community for inadequate testing and rushed development. However, these shortcomings were not the root of the problem—a lack of IA was. 

 

As an integral part of User Experience (UX) Design, IA provides the backbone of all user interface designs. In simpler terms, IA connects people to what they are looking for. Without proper IA, people are left feeling confused and helpless when navigating online platforms. In terms of the Iowa Caucus app, a lack of consideration for IA had a major impact on voter confidence and result reporting. 

 

However, despite these failures, people continue to use smartphones as a way of navigating their day-to-day lives more effortlessly. As a result, businesses and institutions must capitalize on IA to prevent design failures that could be detrimental to product success, company revenue, or even statewide elections. 

 

Understanding IA

 

The key to understanding IA is acknowledging its place within the design process. When deciding how applications and websites display their content to users, designers cannot simply create user interfaces and wireframes that look modern or cutting-edge. Before prototyping, designers must consider the organizations underlying “structure and nomenclature that define the relationships between the site’s content and functionality” (Cardello, 2014). In other words, designers cannot build a structure without understanding what information must fit inside.

To consider site content and functionality, the first step involves finding out what data will need to be held on each page and then determining the relationships between those pages. Just like a family tree, designers must map all page relationships starting with the home page. This process is often referred to as classification and hierarchy, labeling and tagging, and navigation and wayfinding. Together, IA forms the first crucial step in ensuring users can find what they need. 

 

IA and Navigation Design

 

The goal of site and application navigation is to also connect users to what they are looking for, which leads some to confuse IA for navigation design. While they ultimately have the same goal, navigation design refers to “elements on the user interface that allow users to reach specific site information”(Davis, 2011). In contrast, IA takes a step back and functions as the backbone of the entire site or application. Rather than being a part of the on-screen user interface, IA considers all types of information (Davis, 2011).

 

The activities that surround IA and navigation design help to explain their differences. For example, IA is documented in spreadsheets and diagrams while navigation design is documented in wireframes, layouts, and prototypes (Cardello, 2014). IA uses more basic, less design-focused, documentation to perform content inventory and audits—the process of examining a website to locate existing site content and evaluating the content’s usefulness, accuracy, tone, and overall effectiveness (Cardello, 2014). Following, designers conduct information grouping to find user-centered relationships between content and taxonomy development in order to find appropriate naming conventions. As a final step, architects consider what metadata can be used to aid discovery, an activity called descriptive information creation (Cardello, 2014).

 

On the other hand, navigation design involves more detailed user interface considerations such as usage priority, placement, and pattern (Cardello, 2014). These activities consider user dependence, which pages should be present and where navigation should be placed, as well as what designs best support findability and discoverability (Cardello, 2014).

 

So what happens if you design navigation before IA? While the order of these steps may seem interchangeable, developing a navigation design before considering IA will result in an application that does properly facilitate the presentation of the client’s information. Jen Cardello from Nielsen Norman Group provides a clear example of what could happen: 

 

Let’s assume that a design team decides to use a typical inverted-L style navigation (one top navigation bar and a left rail) because they like the way it looks. An inverted-L can accommodate sites that are no more than 4 tiers deep. Unfortunately, later in the project they conduct a site inventory and discover that many sections of the site will be more than 4 tiers deep. Now they must either go back and design a new navigation structure or try to cram all the content into 4 tiers.

 

Cardello’s example illustrates just why data must inform design. Without proper IA, designers and developers will have to work much harder to inform users. As the company produces more information, adaptations to insufficient site structures become increasingly difficult for developers and costly for site owners. And in some cases, like for the Iowa Caucus Democrats, institutions don’t always get a second chance to make things right.

 

IA Methodologies

 

To establish IA, designers use both Library Science and Cognitive Psychology to inform site and app structure. Library Science involves the art of categorizing and cataloging. Categorizing involves defining things by similarity while cataloging involves “creating metadata and assigning it to content in order to find it again in the future” (Babich, 2017). Both these processes are invaluable for IA as they help to determine a more universally accepted structure.

 

Cognitive Psychology, the study of how the human mind works, is used to better understand how humans will interact with the interface, and serves as the root of many experience design concepts. These concepts include Gestalt principles, mental modes, recognition patterns, cognitive load, and visual hierarchy (Babich, 2017). 

 

To examine how people tend to group similar visual elements, Gestalt principles explain figure, similarity, closure, proximity, continuation, and symmetry play a role in human perception (Chapman, 2018). Understanding mental modes, which are the preconceived assumptions people make about interacting with an interface, helps designers find ways to make navigation easier by placing content in places where users expect it will be.  Similarly, recognition patterns show how users often expect to see certain features with a certain kind of product. Designers must understand these patterns to avoid confusing the user. 

 

In addition, cognitive load helps to inform how much information should be placed on a given page. Understanding that people can only process so much information at a time, designers can prevent the display of overwhelming amounts of information. Last, visual hierarchy, considers how well users will be able to read through the content. To improve readability, designers must research scanning patterns (the way in which people skim through a page) to avoid frustrating and inefficient layouts (Babich, 2017).

 

The Value of IA in Mobile App Design

 

As humans begin to reply on mobile apps for more of their day-to-day activities, the pressure to create reliable interfaces is increasing. People of all ages are becoming more comfortable navigating through life accompanied solely by their smartphone. Mobile applications are replacing remotes, car keys, bank tellers, and many other physical products and services, driving more demand for efficient and user-friendly interfaces. To create apps that truly work for people, companies must invest in IA in order to prevent users from experiencing negative emotions and self-blame. 

 

By conducting proper research, designers can understand how to make content more findable for users—improving the user experience and overall satisfaction for consumers. One method used to help design IA is called card sorting. In card sorting experiments, participants are asked to group words in categories that seem logical that them (Sherwin, 2018). Participants can also be told to label these groups. By understanding what real people consider to be a logical hierarchical structure, designers can tailor products to users more successfully. 

 

Tailored designs help to prevent negative emotions which are a byproduct of friction—when a user flow is disrupted (Wong, 2020). As Cognitive Psychology informs, users have preconceived expectations for the look and feel of interfaces, as well as how they will use an interface. When users cannot find what they are looking for, the user flow is disrupted and negative emotions are likely to creep in. Improper naming conventions can also lead to similar disruptions. The use of company jargon may seem applicable to employees. However, if you are designing a customer-facing app, “tech-speak” and jargon will only create more negative emotions (Wong, 2020). Again, this is where IA research like card sorting helps companies avoid simple, but costly, mistakes. 

 

Don Norman, the author of The Design of Everyday Things, stated, “Negative affect can make it harder to do even easy tasks: positive affect can make it easier to do difficult tasks”. With mobile apps, often the intention is to make difficult tasks easier. For example, Venmo’s app makes the dreaded process of splitting a bill, calculating what is owed, and asking your friends for money exponentially simpler. However, when difficult tasks cannot be completed due to poor IA, humans not only experience negative emotion but also self-blame. Norman (2013) suggests that when people fail to achieve the intended outcome of an interface, they are quick to blame themselves—even when the outcome is clearly the result of a poorly designed user interface. Understanding this phenomenon makes it even more crucial for companies to use IA to improve the emotional design of their apps. 

 

As explained by Nick Babich (2017), “Bad Information Architecture is like a maze—it forces users to complete a journey to find the required information. When users can’t find what they are looking for right from the start there’s a huge possibility that people will abandon a product”. Forgoing adequate IA puts companies at risk of losing users altogether. Alternatively, investing in IA helps make products more usable, and people more focused on what they want to accomplish. 

 

IA in 2020

 

In 2020, people across the globe have felt of effects of political turmoil, national polarization, environmental disasters, and a global pandemic. With so much uncertainty, mobile apps are being used in more ways than ever. For example, amid the Coronavirus pandemic, Poland is making quarantined residents prove that they are following stay-at-home guidelines by taking selfies using a Home Quarantine App (O’Kane, 2020). Further, Singapore and South Korea are employing apps that keep track of who people come in contact with (O’Kane, 2020). As large populations rely on apps to provide government information and protect people from fatal interactions, it is more important than ever to consider IA when designing these solutions.

 

Many local businesses have turned to online platforms to help keep business going during the pandemic. Small restaurants have started revamping websites so more customers can order online hassle-free. Mobile sites have also been crucial in communicating safety precautions with customers. Some restaurant apps allow for contactless delivery by allowing customers to request delivery people leave food outside their door. In addition, more restaurants are using mobile payment methods to avoid human contact. As small local businesses begin to invest more in providing mobile services, the demand for smart IA increases yet again. 

 

Even large corporations are looking more to mobile applications to keep their employees productive at home. Slack, a workplace communication app, helps to maximize productivity by using single-topic “channels” to ensure employees stay on-task (Slack, n.d.). Slack is a great example of a tool that capitalizes on IA to ensure employees generate more quality content. These products, along with many other remote working and learning platforms, have become essential to those in quarantine worldwide. 
 

Conclusion

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With a high demand for mobile applications, knowledge of IA has become more necessary than ever before. In the case of the Iowa Caucus app, the danger of insufficient IA was revealed at the state level. Despite the failure, government officials have still considered using mobile voting apps for the sake of voter turnout. However, the general public is beginning to question whether mobile apps should have a place in elections at all (Rosenberg, 2020). Thus, the Iowa Caucus app illustrates how one inadequately designed interface can cause an audience to dismiss a digital product altogether. Since the caucus, voters across the country have been vocal about concerns over the usability, security, and reporting accuracy of potential apps. 

 

Knowing that IA is the root of delivering an intuitive user interface that people can trust, companies and institutions must consider the structural design of information to avoid product failures that could lead to negative user emotions, and most importantly, costly user errors. As mobile device usage is increasing during times of global instability, the cost of user interface errors can be detrimental to government surveillance, and the health of individuals. Consequently, IA must be leveraged, not just to support sales, but to help solve problems during unforeseen circumstances. 

 

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References

 

Babich, N. (2017, November 20). A Beginner's Guide to Information Architecture for UX Designers. Retrieved from https://theblog.adobe.com/a-beginners-guide-to-information-architecture-for-ux-designers/

 

Davis, N. (2011, September 7). Framing the Practice of Information Architecture. Retrieved from https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/09/framing-the-practice-of-information-architecture.php

 

Cardello, J. (2014, June 22). The Difference Between Information Architecture (IA) and Navigation. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ia-vs-navigation/

 

Chapman, C. (2018, March 27). Exploring the Gestalt Principles of Design. Retrieved from https://www.toptal.com/designers/ui/gestalt-principles-of-design

 

Fessler, P. (2020, February 5). Lessons Learned From The Iowa Caucuses, And Danger Signs Ahead. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2020/02/05/802883801/lessons-learned-from-the-iowa-caucuses-and-danger-signs-ahead

 

Norman, D. (2013). The Design of Everyday Things – Revised and Expanded Edition. Basic Books.

 

O'Kane, C. (2020, March 23). Poland is making quarantined citizens use a selfie app to prove they're staying inside. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-update-poland-quarantine-app-asks-selfies-to-prove-isolation-social-distancing-police-patients/

 

Rosenberg, M. (2020, February 13). Voting on Your Phone: New Elections App Ignites Security Debate. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/politics/voting-smartphone-app.html

 

Sherwin, K. (2018, March 18). Card Sorting: Uncover Users' Mental Models for Better Information Architecture. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/card-sorting-definition/

 

Slack. (n.d.). Where work happens. Retrieved from https://slack.com/

 

Wong, E. (2020, March). How to Prevent Negative Emotions in the User Experience of Your Product. Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/how-to-prevent-negative-emotions-in-the-user-experience-of-your-product