IA for Application | Information Architecture

→ some observations are documented here: https://www.figma.com/file/ojGzJkemunK61EiSvYn1ae/Navigation-IA-etc?type=whiteboard&node-id=0%3A1&t=GrCv3EJuc84exeba-1

The current architecture, as pulled together from different sources:

Likely we will end up with something like this (but we are building the solutions and mapping out needs etc)

Note:

Suggestions are based on general UX design heuristics, and a review of best practices of large industry players (with loads of budget to do research and experiment what works best).

Suggested changes:

Split services and utilities in the navigation

Split services and utilities

A well-established design best practice (utility-based navigation, NN Group, 2015) https://www.nngroup.com/articles/utility-navigation/

What are utilities?

Utilities shape how people interact with your organization, website, and content.

Tools that websites provide vary with their size and mission, but many utility-navigation areas include:

Contact us
Follow us/subscribe
Locale switcher / language tools
Log in / Sign up
Share
Tools for changing font size
View single page
…

What are services?

Services = what we offer to the customer - what are our capabilities?

Approaches to be tested when designs are worked out:

services in collapsable overlay panel on left side
submenu for detail of services
utilities + search in services is in top navigation if needed

Optimizing the utilities in the current header will be a quick win to make the current header simpler, and will increase the space utilization.

If possible, use group/label capabilities with a noun-verb grouping.

= object-oriented approach and task-based grouping (JTBD)

Current information representation is mostly on a noun-noun driven approach:

This type of approach is e.g. very common for e-commerce sites where visitors would expect to see listings per type eg shirts vs shoes.

For application-oriented sites/platforms like ours two are more common:

· audience-based

· task-based

More on audience-based below, but task-based is what most would recommend.

Here’s an illustration of the difference. When a user wakes up in the morning and starts to organize the day, which mental model is more likely?

Task-focussed navigation

Object-focused navigation

Although in this case the verb connected with all nouns is “wash,” we’d venture that users are thinking noun-verb, not verb-noun.

Appendices:

Side note: on audience-based navigation

Audience-based navigation has loads of value at acquisition stages - where users can easily identify how we could help them. Once the task has been identified though, that split makes less sense to continue inside of the actual application.

it is hard to create good mutually exclusive categories inside the platform
there is an extra step, a cognitive load, when users need to make this choice every time. Once ‘in’ users focus on the JTBD

Quote from UK.gov’s website services re audience-based splits:

This emphasis on a single unified list represents a shift in our thinking over time. Previously we’d assumed that we needed separate taxonomies for different groups of users and different types of content (mainstream/specialist/policy). We now think a single taxonomy which includes all content and meets the needs of all users will make it easier for users to get to the content they need, and for publishers to classify their content.