The Working Approach
Information Architecture turns an inventory of screens, features, and content into a structure people can understand. It separates categories, labels, relationships, and navigation depth from the visual controls that eventually expose them. That makes it useful when a growing product has accumulated overlapping sections, orphaned pages, or labels that only the internal team understands.
The source asks for an audit followed by research, candidate hierarchies, tree testing and documentation. Supply real card-sort results and interview vocabulary to inform labels; the skill cannot invent that evidence. Its suggestions for short paths and shallow hierarchies are design heuristics, not guarantees that every user will find every item.
Expected Deliverables
- A hierarchical sitemap identifying parents, children, and disconnected content.
- A navigation model separating global, local, utility, and contextual access.
- A content model documenting types, attributes, and relationships.
From Brief to Review
- 01Inventory the Content
List existing destinations and content types. Mark duplicate routes, orphaned material, and dead ends before drawing the future hierarchy.
- 02Draft Task-Based Groups
Use supplied user vocabulary and grouping evidence to propose categories. Compare alternatives instead of reproducing the company's org chart.
- 03Plan Validation
Choose representative findability tasks for a tree test. Record uncertain labels and unresolved groupings for research rather than declaring the draft validated.