Information Architecture Read online

  Dedication

  Praise for This Book

  By the time I’d finished reading—devouring, actually—the first edition of IAftWWW in 1998, the pages were—literally—dripping yellow highlighter ink. I don’t think I’ve ever learned as much from another book. And now with Jorge’s help, Lou and Peter have pulled off another remarkable feat: they’ve taken a groundbreaking book written for a world that’s being replaced by another one with head-spinning speed (do they still even make highlighter pens?) and reinvented it brilliantly, proving that the principles they made so clear in the first place are still...the important principles.

  Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

  I was one of the rare people with the job title “information architect” when the first edition of this book came out. At the time, it seemed like a meaningful validation of my work, and I feel no less so about seeing the fourth edition come out. Nearly 20 years later, information architecture is more meaningful and necessary than ever, and so is this book.

  Karen McGrane, managing partner, Bond Art + Science

  The Web isn’t just for browsers anymore. It’s the thread tying our digital lives together. That’s just one lesson from this essential classic, reframed and renewed for our omni-channel, internet-of-everything age. If you’ve never read it, now is the time. And if you think you know it already, you’re definitely due for an update.

  Andrew Hinton, author, Understanding Context, senior information architect, The Understanding Group

  Awesome to see this canonical IA textbook updated with an eye towards cross-channel information architecture. Jorge Arango was the perfect third author to add a perspective from the emerging new school of IA. Kudos to O’Reilly for realizing the need to bring this important book back into the conversation.

  Abby Covert, president of the IA Institute

  I’m fascinated by the ways that imprimatur corresponds with permission. The fact that O’Reilly continues to deepen its investment in IA by way of this fourth update to the polar bear book gives all of us permission to continue being curious about and building skills around IA. If this stuff weren’t important, or used to be but is no longer a thing, or was just a subset of UX, why bother with another edition?

  I’ll tell you why: because it is impossible to know what “good” means in design without the frameworks for understanding provided by and through the process of information architecture.

  This book helps you get there.

  Dan Klyn, cofounder and information architect, The Understanding Group

  Once again, the polar bear book proves just how vital information architecture is to how we design interactive products and services. This book offers a fresh look at a fundamental topic. It’s timeless, definitive, and indispensable.”

  Jim Kalbach, author of Mapping Experiences (O’Reilly, 2015)

  The polar bear book has always been my go-to recommendation for a solid introduction to information architecture for the Web. With the new material now included on mobile, meaning-making, system design, and the importance of context—as well as updates to the fundamentals of IA—this is the first book I recommend to anyone involved in designing electronic information spaces of any kind.

  Andy Fitzgerald, PhD, frog design

  The fourth edition of a book that almost twenty years ago changed the way we work with information is a slimmer, more compact, and more focused read that takes us all the way from the Web to the ever-expanding world of cross-channel design.

  Andrea Resmini, senior lecturer, Jönköping University

  Information Architecture

  Fourth Edition

  For the Web and Beyond

  Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, and Jorge Arango

  Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond

  by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, and Jorge Arango

  Copyright © 2015 Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, and Jorge Arango. All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472.

  O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or [email protected].

  Acquisitions Editor: Mary Treseler

  Editor: Angela Rufino

  Production Editor: Matthew Hacker

  Copyeditor: Jasmine Kwityn

  Proofreader: Rachel Head

  Indexer: Judith McConville

  Interior Designer: David Futato

  Cover Designer: Ellie Volckhausen

  Illustrator: Rebecca Demarest

  February 1998: First Edition

  August 2002: Second Edition

  December 2006: Third Edition

  September 2015: Fourth Edition

  Revision History for the Fourth Edition

  2015-09-01: First Release

  2015-10-30: Second Release

  See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781491911686 for release details.

  The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond, the cover image of a polar bear, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.

  While the publisher and the authors have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the authors disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk. If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights.

  978-1-491-91168-6

  [LSI]

  Preface

  The town may be changed,

  But the well cannot be changed.

  It neither decreases nor increases.

  They come and go and draw from the well.

  I Ching

  The first edition of this book—then titled Information Architecture for the World Wide Web—was published in 1998. This was a full 9 years before the iPhone changed the way we share pictures of our kids with our family and friends, 6 years before Facebook reintroduced long-forgotten high school friends into our lives, 6 years before the term “folksonomy” was coined (and 10 years before its currency devalued), and 12 or so years before many of us first heard the term “Internet of Things.” There was no “Web 2.0” back then; we were still trying to figure out Web 1.0!

  Those of us who have been structuring and designing websites since the “early days” have experienced astonishing changes in our industry. We’ve seen the underlying technologies of the medium—including HTML itself, along with JavaScript—evolve from what were at first primitive content-delivery mechanisms into full-featured interactive application stacks. We’ve seen device form factors evolve from indirect experiences where we controlled an abstract pointer with a mouse, to the direct, intimate experience of manipulating information by touching elegant slabs of glass with our fingers. We’ve seen Internet access go from being a slow, discreet activity that we engaged in by sitting at a desk, in front of a bulky computer tethered to a copper wire, to something we do everywhere at any time by pulling out a blazing fast, sensor- and camera-laden minicomputer/telephone from our pocket. And now we’ve started to see that p
ower permeate into everyday objects and environments, fundamentally transforming everyday experiences we’ve long taken for granted. Change is relentless, ubiquitous, exhilarating—and a little scary.

  One constant amidst all this change is that every year humanity produces and consumes more information than before. This information glut can make it increasingly challenging for people to find the stuff they’re looking for, and make sense of it once they do—especially now that users can interact with information using a wide range of devices and services. Information architecture is the area of practice that helps alleviate this problem. The concepts, methodologies, and techniques that have been so effective in structuring websites can also be applied to broader, more heterogeneous information ecosystems such as those we have today.

  Earlier editions of this book were focused on one type of such information ecosystems: websites (in their various manifestations, including intranets and corporate portals.) This fourth edition has a new subtitle: For the Web and Beyond. This is an acknowledgment that the information ecosystem landscape is richer and more complex today. Many people’s experience of interacting with information increasingly occurs via smartphone apps and other channels that do not involve a traditional web browser. Additionally, as system components and sensors keep getting smaller and cheaper, two-way access to information is becoming a key part of everyday objects like thermostats and doorknobs, which aren’t perceived as traditional computing devices at all. While many of these experiences will not require the same types of semantic structures that traditional websites did, they are still key components in information ecosystems and thus subject to many of the same design principles presented in previous editions of the book. When considering the subject of our designs in the abstract—as information environments instead of websites—we can see that the design principles that inform these semantic structures have broad applicability beyond design for the Web.

  The I Ching is an ancient Chinese oracle, and arguably the oldest interactive information environment in the world. Its text presents 64 patterns that describe—and teach us how to deal with—different aspects of change. One of these patterns, “The Well,” represents those things in life that are constant and which steadfastly replenish and refresh us, even as the chaos of impermanence alters the world around us. We have approached this fourth edition of the “polar bear book” with the recognition that information architecture is one such “well”: as long as we are dealing with the design of information environments for use by human beings, we will have a need for tools and techniques that allow us to structure that information to make it easier to find and understand. We have gone back to first principles to identify those that can be used in any situation to help bring consistency, coherence, and understandability to digital products and services, regardless of their manifestations in space and time. Our hope is that even as technologies and techniques come and go, you will be able to continue drawing from the well of information architecture for many years to come.

  What’s New in the Fourth Edition

  Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond focuses on information architecture as a set of tools and techniques for dealing with tough information organization problems—by anyone involved in any aspect of design, regardless of their job title. We have gone through the first three editions and brought forward those principles of information organization that are universal and timeless. We’ve cast these in the context of current practice by updating the examples and illustrations. We’ve avoided discussions of particular software packages; it’s all changing too quickly for this information to have much value in the long term. Instead, we’ve focused on tools and techniques that have stood the test of time and which are not dependent on particular technologies or vendors. Finally, we’ve updated Appendix A to include the most useful information architecture resources available today.

  Organization of This Book

  This book is divided into 3 parts and 13 chapters, progressing from abstract fundamental concepts to processes, tools, and techniques you can use to put them into practice. It breaks down as follows.

  Part I, “Introducing Information Architecture,” provides an overview of information architecture for those new to the field and experienced practitioners alike, and comprises the following chapters:

  Chapter 1, The Problems That Information Architecture Addresses

  This chapter sets the stage by describing the main challenges we face today when dealing with complex information environments.

  Chapter 2, Defining Information Architecture

  This chapter offers definitions and analogies, and explains why information architecture is not easy to identify in everyday life.

  Chapter 3, Design for Finding

  This chapter helps us better understand people’s information-seeking needs and behaviors.

  Chapter 4, Design for Understanding

  This chapter explains how information architecture can create the right contexts for people to understand information.

  Part II, “Basic Principles of Information Architecture,” presents the fundamental components of an architecture, illustrating the interconnected nature of these systems. It comprises the following chapters:

  Chapter 5, The Anatomy of an Information Architecture

  This chapter helps you visualize the nuts and bolts of an architecture and introduces the systems covered in subsequent chapters.

  Chapter 6, Organization Systems

  This chapter describes ways to structure and organize sites to meet business goals and user needs.

  Chapter 7, Labeling Systems

  This chapter presents approaches for creating consistent, effective, and descriptive labels for a site.

  Chapter 8, Navigation Systems

  This chapter explores the design of browsing systems that help users understand where they are and where they can go within a site.

  Chapter 9, Search Systems

  This chapter covers the nuts and bolts of searching systems, and describes approaches to indexing and the design of search result interfaces that can improve overall performance.

  Chapter 10, Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and Metadata

  This chapter shows how vocabulary control can connect these systems and improve the user experience.

  Part III, “Getting Information Architecture Done,” covers the conceptual tools, techniques, and methods to take you from research to strategy and design to implementation of an information architecture. It comprises the following chapters:

  Chapter 11, Research

  This chapter explains the discovery process necessary to create a foundation of understanding for your information architecture.

  Chapter 12, Strategy

  This chapter presents a framework and methodology for defining the direction and scope of your information architecture.

  Chapter 13, Design and Documentation

  This chapter introduces the deliverables and processes required to bring your information architecture to life.

  We end with the Coda, which wraps things up.

  Appendix A presents a selective list of pointers to the most useful information architecture resources available today.

  Audience for This Book

  Who do we hope to reach with this fourth edition of the polar bear book? Because we assume that any interactive product contains information, this book is for anyone who’s responsible for defining how interactive products and services work: user experience designers, product managers, developers, and more. The job titles don’t really matter; what matters is that your work results in products and services that are interactive, information dense, and used by at least one person besides yourself.

  Previous editions of the book delved into the subject of information architecture as a career path. We have eschewed these discussions in the fourth edition in favor of treating information architecture as an area of practice. You do not need to have the words “information architect” on your business card in order to be
nefit from the ideas in this book.

  Conventions Used in This Book

  The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

  Italic

  Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.

  Constant width

  Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

  Note

  This element signifies a general note.

  Contacting the Authors

  Please direct all suggestions, kudos, flames, and other assorted comments to us via email:

  Peter Morville, Semantic Studios ([email protected])

  Lou Rosenfeld, Louis Rosenfeld LLC ([email protected])

  Jorge Arango, Futuredraft ([email protected])

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