From puzzling to powerful

You want your project to succeed, but the website is standing in the way.

Your website’s visual branding is on point. The site runs smoothly, tech-wise. Yet it’s a sensitive topic within the company.

Things are hard to find.

Your colleagues have to answer the same questions over and over.

The team publishes and updates content frequently yet you keep getting complaints that people can’t find what they need.

Since different teams are involved and different platforms are used, website visitors encounter different navigation styles and different names for the same thing. This creates a sense of disconnection, as if they’re visiting multiple sites. Subconsciously, they deem the company less trustworthy.

You’re dealing with large amounts of information, but you’re not sure how to structure it so it’s easier to discover.

The homepage and navigation features various products and call to actions, but the content hierarchy doesn’t accurately reflect key user tasks. You’re not actually sure what key user tasks, the most common reasons people visit your site, are.

Envision the following scenario

Imagine having a site that’s simple and intuitive to use.

Clients can figure out the site’s interface on their own, so you spend less time on training and troubleshooting and more on strengthening relationships.

Users need less time to complete complex tasks.

Onboarding is simpler.

User retention increases.

Your Customer Satisfaction Scores go up.

You can confidently talk about how the site influences business goals and how critical touchpoints are performing.

Customer service reps keep thanking you every time they pass you in the hall (or the #watercooler channel).

Get an information architecture redesign 👷‍♀️

Information architecture (IA) is the practice of structuring information. I’ve led 30+ information architecture redesigns for anything from enterprise websites to university admission experiences, backend workflows, open source libraries, and search plugins. I help teams dealing with large amounts of information structure it in a way that facilitates easier discovery.

Ready to simplify and standardize your site’s information structure?

Are you ready to team up to untie all the content knots? Awesome!

This 30-minute intro call is to explore mutual fit (no icebreaker games) and address any immediate questions. If Little Language Models isn’t a good match for your company right now, I’ll let you know and point you to other reliable consultants or agencies. Looking forward to our conversation!

Still have questions? I have answers!

What happens after I book a time via Calendly?

You’ll receive an email confirmation. You don’t need to prepare or share anything beforehand.

The 30-minute intro call is to explore mutual fit (no icebreaker games) and address any immediate questions. If Little Language Models isn’t a good match for your company right now, I’ll let you know and point you to other reliable consultants or agencies.

How long does an information architecture redesign take?

In an ideal world, a month, but it can take 2 or 6 or more depending on a few factors like your responsiveness, team availability, amount of content, access authorization, product maturity, number of stakeholders, and leadership buy-in.

How much do your information architecture services cost?

Pricing varies, but I strive to accomplish all the work described in the “What’s Included” section for a budget of under $10,000.

I offer extended consulting engagements (lasting over six months), and I’d be happy to discuss pricing following our initial conversations.

If you have a particular budget or timeline in mind, I’ll inform you of what I can and can’t accomplish within those limits. I believe hourly billing causes our financial incentives to be misaligned so I don’t charge by the hour.

What’s the format of information architecture work: diagrams, PowerPoint, Figma, Excel, something else?

These are some of the information architecture activities I do during a project, listed in a roughly chronological order:

1. Stakeholder interviews
2. Analytics review
3. User interviews
4. IA and content audit
5. Findings summary
6. New information architecture (sitemaps, content modeling)
7. Content wireframes for key pages
8. Content testing plan and findings
9. Final report

The table below provides a quick overview of activity formats. For details, see my article: Information architecture activities and formats.

Information architecture activity	IA activity format
Stakeholder interviews	45-minute guided conversations in a video format. The findings summary includes stakeholder interview insights.
Analytics review	Dashboard and analytics data export in an Excel file or PDF. The findings summary includes key metrics and their performance. For websites, key metrics include most visited pages, common search terms, device breakdown, return users, referring sites, scroll depth.
User interviews	45-minute guided conversations in a video format. The findings summary includes user interview insights.
IA and content audit	A step-by-step walkthrough of key user flows in Miro or Figma, what’s going well, and what could be improved. The audit includes screenshots and videos to show frustrating interactions (filtering experiences, looking at you). The findings summary includes key metrics and their performance.
Findings summary	A standalone PowerPoint presentation OR a dedicated section in the final report
New information architecture (sitemaps, content modeling)	Sitemaps – the public-facing structure of the website, including the navigational menu and footer; shown in a hierarchical diagram in Miro or Figma. Content modeling – the technical structure intended for internal use only, depicting the various content types and their interrelationships within the site; shown in a hierarchical diagram in Miro or Figma.
Content wireframes for key pages	Mockups for key pages/flows in Miro or Google Docs, showcasing content elements in a hierarchy, the rationale for each, and sample copy
Content testing plan and findings	Content testing plan – A Google Doc outlining research goals, hypotheses, participant recruitment, and costs. Content testing findings – User insights and recordings are stored in the user research platform (e.g. UserFeel). I create a copy for my own use and share an overview of findings with any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) removed in a presentation format, generally as part of the final report.
Final report	A buttoned-up report in a presentation format (PowerPoint/PDF). My latest report was 75 pages, but I also provide more condensed versions of my usual reports based on the client’s budget and timeline.

How will I know this worked?

During our first meeting, I ask questions to understand the outcomes you’re looking for. What does success look like for this project? How might we measure success? Why are you interested in doing this now? Are there any initiatives that may affect or depend on this work? Do we have leadership support for this initiative?

Not everything is measurable, but it’s generally easy to think of and track important metrics in the context of websites and apps.

Outcomes include more conversions, increased user retention, and decreased customer service costs. Metrics include task difficulty, time on task, site visits, search terms, return users, rage clicks, and Customer Satisfaction Scores.

• A potential client wanted their site to bring in more leads. They had received user feedback that the site was overdesigned and frustrating.
• A client aimed to expand their pipeline and improve success rates from the first time AI engineers landed on the platform to importing sample models, verifying inference, and tuning a model.
• Another client wanted to reduce customer support requests and the volume of unqualified scholarship applicants.
• A client was migrating 30 local sites to a new architecture and wanted to ensure they were covered from a content perspective.
• I’ve been brought in by clients to design a minimum viable product (MVP) that would help them define the Request for Proposal (RFP) scope and find the right technical partner for platform implementation.
• I’ve been brought in to secure leadership buy-in.

A clear definition of success sets us up for success and ensures we’re not spending time or energy on initiatives that won’t move the needle.

I’ll provide a walkthrough of key user flows, what’s going well, and what could be improved, and you’ll be able to apply these guidelines to future content initiatives. You’ll also see the before and after for the new experience strategy, where I’ll showcase content elements in a hierarchy that matches key user needs and business goals, and explain how I assess content effectiveness.

Our audience is extremely technical, so we’re looking for someone with experience writing for technical audiences. Is that you?

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Some highlighted projects I worked on that had more of a technical audience focus and a brief description of my role in each of them:

Project	My role
Vision AI hardware and software documentation site	IA redesign, content wireframes
Enterprise mobility and IT solutions blog	IA redesign, content wireframes
Elasticsearch-powered search and query engine for WordPress sites	Led content discovery and planning for a core workflow redesign (Settings); UX writing for filters, product education, and error messages
Data center, hardware & managed infrastructure services	Workshops, content audit, content modeling, content wireframes
Open-source reference library for government service delivery providers	Workshops, IA redesign, content modeling, content wireframes, naming workshop
Cybersecurity professionals coalition	Workshops, IA redesign, content wireframes
WordPress live chat plugin	Voice/tone review and rewrote the README, plugin description, and Settings page

At my previous workplace, I ideated the intranet IA for my discipline and received a Webby Award nomination for Harvard Law Review, a redesign project where I facilitated stakeholder workshops, conducted a content audit, updated user-facing navigation, and implemented a new content model.

I love diving deep into complex domains and I have a track record of identifying messes and untangling content knots for technical audiences.

Can we just ask ChatGPT/AI to organize our website content?

Factors like human intuition (reading the room), creativity, complexity of human behavior, change management, and empathy play a crucial role in creating an effective information architecture. AI tools sometimes miss important business context and feeding it all to them will take so much time that it defeats the purpose of it saving time and reducing costs.

AI tools may occasionally overlook important context, and giving them all the necessary company information can be time-consuming, which defeats the purpose of reducing time and employee expenses.

Relatedly, current AI privacy risks like sensitive data collection, demonstrated bias, data leakage, and collection of data without the consent of the people or companies from whom it’s being collected are quite concerning to me that I can’t personally recommend relying on AI for information architecture.

In my opinion, it’s more suitable to consider AI as an intern rather than a strategist which reflects my personal experience in deriving value from it.

AI can assist you with menial tasks like taxonomy synthesis. For example, after exporting hundreds of categories and tags from a content management system, you may ask AI to group similar-sounding ones together – think duplicates that system admins may have added accidentally during the years.

For instance, medical simulation services are categorized into several distinct classifications, including disciplines, roles, and phases. Phases include Needs Assessment, Operations, Pre-briefing, Facilitation, Debriefing. Admins can tag the service to multiple classifications both within a category (tagging 2 phases: Needs Assessment, Operations) and across categories (different disciplines, roles) so they’re served to website visitors whichever page they’re on.

During the years, services and resources may have been linked to the Needs Assessment phase, but someone might have added “Assessing needs” (different phrasing) or “needs assessment” (no capital letters) or “needs asesment” (typo). Imagine dealing with thousands of these terms and having to manually review and audit them. Now imagine having a helpful intern, AI, who’s eager to help. What a relief.

I don’t think we need help after all, can we do this on our own?

You resourceful king/queen/monarch you! You can definitely try and I recommend reading Abby Covert’s fantastic book How to Make Sense of Any Mess. It’s a practical IA guide for everyone, no technical or UX background required.

Some people find that the inside-in view of employees can be limiting and a fresh, unbiased consultant’s perspective provides a better direction while costing less social capital to implement.

We’re launching something new so we don’t have an existing information architecture, can you do this for new businesses or new business lines?

Yes! Prevention is the best cure 🤠

I still have questions, how can I contact you?

Send me a message at [email protected]. I try to respond within one business day.

Ready to get started?

Book a free 30-minute intro call below. If there’s a fit, we can reduce friction and frustration for people navigating the web together!