25 May 2016
Dan Brown, who's a seasoned Information Architect, has laid out these eight principles as a foundation for approaching IA.
I encourage you to check out this pdf where Dan outlines the principles in greater depth. I would also like to point you to The ultimate guide to information architecture by Cameron Chapman, which is a great primer on the field of IA but also explains these principles.
Treat content as a living, breathing thing with a lifecycle, behaviors and attributes.
Create pages that offer meaningful choices to users, keeping the range of choices available focused on a particular task.
Show only enough information to help people understand what kinds of information they’ll find as they dig deeper.
Describe the contents of categories by showing examples of the contents.
Assume at least half of the website’s visitors will come through some page other than the home page.
Offer users several different classification schemes to browse the site’s content.
The principle of focused navigation – Don’t mix apples and oranges in your navigation scheme.
Assume the content you have today is a small fraction of the content you will have tomorrow.
Treat content as a living, breathing thing with a lifecycle, behaviors and attributes.
Create pages that offer meaningful choices to users, keeping the range of choices available focused on a particular task.
Show only enough information to help people understand what kinds of information they’ll find as they dig deeper.
Describe the contents of categories by showing examples of the contents.
Assume at least half of the website’s visitors will come through some page other than the home page.
Offer users several different classification schemes to browse the site’s content.
The principle of focused navigation – Don’t mix apples and oranges in your navigation scheme.
Assume the content you have today is a small fraction of the content you will have tomorrow.
