During my career, two different companies hired me as their first content strategist. One of those times, the biggest Albanian C2C listings platform hired me to create and execute a content plan for how to effectively support over a million users.
Founded in 1998, the company published a newspaper that was one of the key ways Albanians looked for and found jobs, housing, cars, appliances, and romantic matches.
Since then, they expanded into a media empire, creating an umbrella group of companies including a marketing agency, a recruiting agency, a loyalty program software, a yellow pages directory, a market research firm, an arts and culture publication, and appointment scheduling software.
I wrote about how to choose a therapist and Albanians’ obsession with Mercedes-Benz. Internal teams welcomed my guidance on UX writing best practices. I conducted content research by evaluating key email sequences, including those for people who just listed their house for sale, new account sign-ups, or payment confirmations for premium listings.
While I focused on building a strong digital ecosystem, the paper-based work was uniquely meaningful to me. The physical component of paper—planning thousands of entries each week, printing, distributing—fascinated me. At the end of the day, I’m a writer. I respect paper.
The same could be said for the CEO of the company. The final interview for this position was with him. I still remember a question he asked me in his book-packed office.
“What book are you reading?”
Turns out, he had one of the largest collections of old Albanian books. He owns a book from 1544!
The question sounded like a green flag to me, someone who’s always reading a book, and I joined soon after.
Similar to my first full-time role at the Albanian equivalent of DoorDash and one of Albania’s fastest-growing startups, this job also had a big tangible, real-life component to it that I loved.
How do I explain the information architecture work I do to my 6-year-old niece and my 82-year-old grandma? One only speaks English and asks the smart speaker in her house to play Katy Perry’s song Firework. The other doesn’t speak English and has never owned a computer. I rely on everyday life examples using paper.
Breaking down abstract concepts into relatable, daily life activities (bonus points for food-related analogies) makes both explaining and understanding easier.
Information architecture (IA) goals
The purpose of information architecture (IA) work can be summarized as making things more:
- findable – if users are looking for something specific, they can find it easily
- valuable – a lot of thought has gone into what gets prioritized, so the surfaced information helps guide users
- timely – information flow is optimized to match users’ needs at each step of the process, not showing too much or too little information.
In this article, I’ll share everyday life examples for each of these 3 main goals of information architecture work.
AI Policy: I personally write each draft and final copy on this website. All content reflects my own thinking, ideas, style, and craft. I do not use AI such as ChatGPT or other LLMs to generate articles. Occasionally, I ask AI (such as Formalizer or Equativ) to summarize or re-state my own ideas and may restructure sections based on the response.
Everyday life information architecture examples in this article:
How to turn the light off? – Everyday life application of findability in information architecture
Even though I’m self-employed and work with clients remotely, I go to the office 5 times a week. My office is in a coworking community I share with other members. I love the space. Last week, I was done for the day and about to leave when someone asked me if I knew how to turn off the big light. He said he had looked everywhere the previous day.
Since the space is big, there are multiple lights and light switches. The office manager had sent a video in our WhatsApp group showing the locations and purposes of the light switches around the office. I remembered the video and rewatched it, but there was no mention of the big light.
As it turns out, there’s no light switch for the big light. There are multiple remote controls on tables, where the power sockets for computers are, but I had never paid attention to them. These remote controls were how you turned the big light on or off. Many of us didn’t know that.
Information architecture goal: Making things more findable (if users are looking for something specific, they can find it easily)
Issue: Some people at the office didn’t know how to turn off the big light. We went to the light switches since that’s how we turned off other lights. The big lights used another mechanism, remote controls.
Everyday life application of findability in information architecture: To make turning off the big light easier, we can add a tag on remote controls clarifying what they’re off (BIG LIGHT). Additionally, since most people go to the light switches, adding a note near the switches would help. “For the big light, use remote controls from table Y.”
I can’t find a meeting room – Everyday life application of content hierarchy in information architecture
Here’s a message I sent to the coworking space group chat :
Hi! Meetings are an important part of our work, so I’d like to request that we use the booths fairly, honoring the 2.5h max limit, so that everyone has the opportunity to hold meetings from the hub. I empathize with the person who has 6h of meetings today, but booking the good booth for 6 hours a day makes it difficult for other members to have calls especially if we need the more spacious booth as well. Thanks!
Can we apply information architecture principles in this case to improve the organization of meeting booth bookings? Yes!
Information architecture goal: Making things more valuable (a lot of thought has gone into what gets prioritized, so the surfaced information helps guide users)
Issue: There are multiple meeting booths around the office. For people in shared spaces without dedicated offices, there’s a 2.5-hour daily meeting limit. The time limit note is small and easy to miss.
Everyday life application of content hierarchy in information architecture: Readability refers to the degree of ease with which a reader can understand text. Expanding the size of the time limit note increases its readability and the chances that people will notice and respect it.
How does this coffee taste? – Everyday life application of information load in information architecture
My friend got me a great gift: a coffee cupping workshop at a specialty coffee shop in Vienna.
Coffee cupping is “the practice of observing the tastes and aromas of brewed coffee.”
We tried 8 different coffees. We had to identify sensory differences by looking, smelling, and tasting.
Information architecture goal: Making things more timely (information flow is optimized to match users’ needs at each step of the process, not showing too much or too little information)
Opportunity: Creating a singular place for tracking coffee notes and rating categories like aroma, sweetness, balance, acidity, and aftertaste
Everyday life application of information load in information architecture: The form below is well organized and intuitive to fill out despite the amount of information. This is achieved partly because of the decision to organize the page by coffee sample (rather than by what’s being assessed like aroma or acidity), the legend at the top describing each score (specialty coffee doesn’t go under 6), having two rating methods (number or bar chart), and the clear borders between categories.
Paper examples are easy to grasp and relate to. Many of us have gotten confused or lost when interpreting written instructions, whether it’s understanding recycling symbols, geographical directions, or supermarket signage.
Focusing on the key goals of information architecture work—making things more findable, valuable, and timely—these were some of the everyday life examples I’d use to explain IA to people of different ages and tech proficiency levels.
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