Fungi. Our noses as we age. The number of tech startups created every year.
Some things just keep growing.
Fungi can grow at a rate of around 1.2 millimeters per hour. The tech industry isn’t quite there, but the speed with which things change is equally impressive/scary. New technologies, unclear business models, increased competition, and evolving customer needs create a market need for unique skill sets. Designers who are familiar with customer support processes. Writers with development experience. Developers who advocate and evangelize. Architects who… inform?
Let’s talk about information architecture and what it looks like in a consulting context.
AI Policy: All content on this website is written by me. I do not use AI such as ChatGPT or other LLMs to generate articles from prompts or similar. All content reflects my own thinking, ideas, style, and craft. Occasionally, I ask AI (such as Frase or Formalizer) to summarize or re-state my own ideas on the basis of a complete skeleton I’ve written. Based on the response, I may reorder, restructure, or alter my original thinking. I personally write each draft and final copy.
“I am in the understanding business,” Wurman says. I love that.
IA has been around for years, but information architect roles haven’t become widely prevalent in the job market.
A LinkedIn worldwide job search returns:
974 results for information architect
35,775 results for financial analyst
45,182 results for designer
328,487 results for finance
Information architecture (IA) is the practice of structuring information.
We usually refer to IA in the context of websites and digital products. However, information architecture decisions affect us daily through non-digital interfaces.
I live in Austria, a country renowned for its fantastic public transport system.
Network maps like the one below are printed in large formats and found at every stop, showing locals and tourists each stop and how the lines connect and in which stations. You can also see in advance which stations don’t have elevators (so people with reduced mobility can plan alternative routes) and which routes fall outside the Vienna fare zone (so you know you need to pay more and get another ticket and can plan accordingly).
A map of Vienna’s transport network
The decisions on what to show and what not to show here are information architecture decisions.
There is so much more information Wiener Linien, the company running most of the public transit network in Vienna, could display in physical stations or their app.
Finding the departure time for each line is essential, representing a key user need, as is commonly stated in the UX industry.
Timetables can be found at each stop too, but they’re presented in a separate graphic. Showing everything would have the contrary effect of Wiener Linien, reducing understanding rather than increasing it.
The organization of books in a physical library or food and drinks in a restaurant menu is also information architecture.
The menu at Viennese bar Bestens shows clients exactly where drinks fall on the sweet, sour, fruity, bitter, and spicy scales.
My dirty martini watercolor nail art might give away the type of drinks I like.
How can someone implement information architecture within a consulting capacity?
I love examples so here’s how someone explained their IA needs in their request for proposals doc.
The consultant would assess and provide actionable recommendations for improving the usability, accessibility, and clarity of their developer site.
Key responsibilities of the information architecture consultant included:
Conducting an Information Architecture Audit: evaluating the site structure, navigation, and content organization to identify gaps, redundancies, and opportunities for improvement
Analyzing how well individual pages function as self-contained units, catering to both first-time and returning users
Ensuring content aligns with user goals, using clear and concise language
Interviewing stakeholders to align site functionality with audience needs
Suggested information architecture deliverables included:
Comprehensive audit report
Prioritized recommendations
Mockups or example revisions for key pages (if possible)
My proposal for completing the work included mockups for key pages (aka content wireframes). After winning this IA consulting project and better understanding client needs, I decided to offer 2 supplementary deliverables to assist the team in achieving their objectives:
a detailed spreadsheet outlining the new tree view navigation of a documentation platform
a product ecosystem review
Tree views allow users to navigate nested hierarchical information. My spreadsheet had multiple levels of parent tree view items and child tree view items.
Tree view anatomy
Tree view with icons (Adobe example)
The ecosystem review I provided was an overview of other touchpoints within the product ecosystem like chatbots, client portal, support site, and mobile app, highlighting how these elements may influence user experience and overall client satisfaction.
Information architecture methodologies and tools used
This is a non-comprehensive list, but a good starting point for some key information architecture activities, deliverables, and tools.
UX content management tools – Ditto, Crowdin, Phrase, Bynder (which is mostly a digital asset manager, but I’ve used it for structured content to increase content scalability and optimize version control)
The importance of information architecture in enhancing user experience and optimizing information flow
Information architecture consultants contribute to different types of projects:
leading the content strategy for website projects
leading feature organization and rewriting content (button copy, confirmation flows, error messages) for mobile apps
reorganizing platforms (client portals, dashboards, knowledge bases, or documentation)
shaping the user experience of conversational interfaces (chatbots, AI language models)
developing and maintaining taxonomies and metadata (how should things be named, tagged, and connected to one another)
creating content testing plans (Is driving permit or driving licence clearer? Do people know where to go to renew their driving license? Is Personal Documents and Confirmations a clear navigation term for people who want to renew their driving license?)
The preference for focusing on strategy versus implementation varies among consultants. Some consultants prefer strategy, defining business requirements and technical strategy; others prefer implementing and doing more hands-on work like updating terms or rewriting pages; and some do both.
Information architecture can heavily affect how a user views a system, whether that’s a website or a language model.
The point of IA work can be summed up as making things more findable (if users are looking for something specific, they can find it easily), more valuable (a lot of thought has gone into what gets prioritized so the surfaced information helps guide users), and more timely (information flow is optimized to match users’ needs at each step of the process, not showing too much or too little information).
Common challenges businesses face that can be addressed through information architecture consulting
The outcomes of information architecture may include:
Reduced learning curves for new users
Reduced customer service costs
Improved onboarding experience
Increased conversion rates
Increased user retention
Increased Customer Satisfaction Scores
Information architecture consultants bring objectivity, outside market knowledge, strong stakeholder management and conflict resolution skills. We help companies save money by helping avoid costly mistakes. IA work helps optimize budget, time, and efforts by enabling the team to develop solutions that will benefit most users (aka, build the right thing).
Examples of successful outcomes derived from information architecture
Gerry McGovern is the creator of the Top Tasks methodology (a personal favorite) and a great proponent of the “more isn’t always better” philosophy. He shares these success stories of how focusing on top user tasks and deleting everything else helped organizations:
The Norwegian Cancer Society reduced their website size from 4,000 down to 1,000 pages. Donations and satisfaction rose substantially as a result.
Liverpool City went from 4,000 pages to 700 and saw lots of positive results.
Telenor Norway went from 4,000 to 500 pages. Sales and customer satisfaction went up. Customer support inquiries went down.
“Giving a website to an organization is like giving a pub to an alcoholic. Every hour is Happy Hour as they publish, publish, publish. Designing apps is pretty much the same, as ‘featuritis’ spreads rapidly. Typically, when organizations delete up to 90 percent of what they have, everything begins to work much better.”
Gerry McGovern
Company priorities may not always align with the needs and preferences of the customer.
Engaging UX experts who can identify key tasks and align them with business objectives will make it easier to reach company goals without relying on dark patterns or questionable business practices.
This collaboration can yield successful outcomes for us all to celebrate. With a mocktail. By the ocean. Sounds interesting?
Hi! I’m Delfina Hoxha, the founder of Little Language Models and a lead content designer who has worked with tech startups, leading agencies, and Fortune 500 companies like Sony and Microsoft. I’d love to help you solve your findability challenges.
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