The fundamental goal of an information architecture is to present a useful interface to the visitor, provide a sensible structure for staff updating, and provide a vision of website evolution that can help guide website planning and evolution. When people say that a website is, ?easy to use,? they are referring to excellent architecture.

There are four primary areas of investigation: Organization schemes, navigation systems, labeling systems, and searching systems. Following are examples of some choices from each category:

Organization Schemes
Defines the shared characteristics of content items and influences the logical grouping of those items.

• Exact schemes
  • Alphabetical list of topics
  • Chronological list of topics
  • Geographical list of places

• Ambiguous schemes
  • Topical, e.g. ?Departments?
  • Task-oriented, e.g. ?Register today?
  • Audience-specific, e.g. ?Prospective students?
  • Metaphor-driven, e.g. ?The Utne Cafe?

Navigation Systems
Provides direction, hints, context, and flexibility for user interaction.

• Hierarchical (everything in the site starts at the top)
• Global (for horizontal and vertical movement within the site)
• Local (page-specific links)
• Ad Hoc (editorial links that are not structural)
• Table of contents, Site map, Index (useful for large sites)
• Guided Tour (only useful for very large sites)

Labeling Systems
What we name something. Particularly important with short web attention spans.

• Labels for navigation
• Labels as indexing terms
• Link labels

Searching Systems
How we find what we're looking for.

• Known-item searching
• Existence searching
• Exploratory searching
• Comprehensive searching
• Searching vs. Browsing

One thing to avoid at all costs in designing an information architecture is to replicate the organization chart of the institution. The org chart may have meaning inside a company, but it has little meaning to a visitor. Web surfers are ?virtual visitors? and need a structure that matches their information requirements.