Thanks to an ever-growing digital world, businesses are spoiled for information and data. The more complex the business, the more information there is and the more complicated the business requirements are. But where there are challenges, there is opportunity. That’s where information architecture and data architecture come in.

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Information and data architecture both seek to make sense of the plethora of information a business handles. However, the two have different roles to play in the way businesses use, move, maintain, and present data - both to internal and external stakeholders. So what are they and why should businesses take note?

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Defining Information Architecture 🗺️

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Information architecture is the structure used to organize and label content on websites, mobile applications and other digital environments. Its primary purpose is to enhance user experience by ensuring information is structured in an accessible, usable and relevant way.

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Information architecture seeks to understand user needs and goals by analyzing both existing and required information, then building an information framework in a logical and user-friendly way. It deals with three main components:

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• Labels: How information is represented
• Navigation: How users make their way through the information
• Search: How users look for information

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Whilst this information sits in the background, it’s the layer upon which you build the design of your digital products.

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Information architects bring data from file systems and databases to life by building meaningful narratives and stories. Outputs can include site-mapping, information architecture diagrams and content inventories. These outputs are supported by user research techniques such as card sorting, tree testing, user surveys and first-click testing.

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Defining Data Architecture 💻

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Data architecture bridges the gap between business needs, goals, and system requirements related to data handling. It sets out a framework for managing data assets, the flow of data and the maintenance of data systems. As such, it has a slightly more macro view than information architecture and concerns itself with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain.

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Where information architecture centers around the end-user interaction, data architecture centers around practical handling and operation of data processes i.e. collection through to transformation, distribution, and consumption. Because of this, data architecture must take into account the businesses ability to scale operations, integrate with third party systems, support real-time data processes and the reduction of operating costs. Modern data architecture may point to artificial intelligence to tackle some of these challenges.

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The Importance of Enterprise Architects in Information and Data Architecture 🏗

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Enterprise architects are big-picture people. Data architecture and information architecture both fall within their remit, and they often oversee other data management job specialities within an IT department.

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As a leader (and often, visionary) within a business, enterprise architects shoulder the responsibility of ‘mission critical’ projects. As a result, they tend to have several years experience with IT systems, backed by a bachelor’s degree in computer science, IT management, data science or similar. Many will hold a master’s degree and specialty certifications.

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The role involves collaborating with senior business leaders, solution-delivery teams and external stakeholders, and requires creative problem solving and excellent communication skills. Therefore, enterprise architects very much steer the ship when it comes to information and data architecture. Combining high-level business strategy with knowledge of ‘the nuts and bolts’ of IT data systems and processes, they command an annual salary in New Zealand between $150,000 and $200,000 per annum..

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Continuous improvement within any business that has substantial IT infrastructure calls for serious investment in enterprise architecture.

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Designing and Implementing an Effective Information and Data Architecture 𝞹📈🧠📚

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Once overarching business goals are aligned with the scope of data and system requirements, information and data architecture design (or redesign) can begin.

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Crucial to the design and implementation process is developing an architecture framework. This is a set of guidelines that lays out principles, practices, tools and approaches required to complete the design. It supports system design decisions, assigns key tasks and provides project guidance throughout the design process. The framework essentially aims to unite disparate teams and maintain business and IT alignment.

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The choice of architecture design is also critical. It should consider scalability, performance, maintainability and adaptability to emerging technology. Which is why cloud platforms feature so heavily in modern data architecture. Cloud architects will navigate the architecture design and technical requirements of cloud-based delivery models, which offer the solution to those scalability and adaptability challenges. They are responsible for bridging the gaps between complex business problems and solutions in the cloud. Modern data architecture tends to involve some form of cloud delivery component.

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Throughout implementation, data and information architects will work closely with designers and engineers until testable architecture is ready. User research and testing will be carried out, and a feedback loop will commence until requirements are met. Users, as always, should be at the center of your digital product.

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Summing Up the Complexities of Information and Data Architecture 🧮

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Whilst the difference between information and data architecture can appear nuanced on the surface, they hold unique roles when delivering a cohesive, user-friendly digital product.

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Think of a sliding scale where business operations sit at one end, and users sit at the other. Data architecture addresses challenges closer to the business: aligning business requirements and goals with how data flows through the system. On the other hand, information architecture addresses the challenges related to how this data is organized and interpreted for the end user.

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At the end of the day, both information and data architecture need to work in harmony to satisfy the user and the business.

Information architecture is so much more than finding your way around a website or app. IA should be considered the foundation of a great user experience. The planning and consideration that goes into how information is organized labeled, and named. Once this foundation is laid, the user interface is what sits above and allows users to access the information. Navigation is one way that designers can point users in the right direction. But without correct labeling and naming (or even searching) navigation can only get us part of the way.

Let’s go into detail about what information architecture and the role navigation really plays. 

What is information architecture for a website?

Probably the easiest example of navigation is on a website. We are familiar with websites and how navigation can make or break a user experience. A website's information architecture (IA) can be considered to be made of two main components:

• Identification and the definition of the site content and functionality.
• Underlying organization, labeling, and structure that will define the relationship between the site's content and functionality.

When a user lands on your website they won’t see the information architecture, rather, they will be interacting with the user interface (UI). While the IA itself is not visible while using the user interface it most certainly impacts the user's experience (UX). 

The IA should be planned and the content structure visualized through diagrams, spreadsheets, and with wireframes, prototypes, or comprehensive layouts. Designing with the IA in mind web designers can create a better user experience. The user will not see the structure of the website but they will quickly discover the way the content has been divided up and then connected visually. And how well the information architecture matches these expectations will influence their UX.

When this interaction is not a great experience, users may leave feeling that your website content or functionality is not what they needed. They may end up feeling disappointed with the experience due to poor organization, naming, or structure.

What’s the difference between IA and navigation?

Ensuring that the information architecture is thought through, considered from the end users’ perspective, tested, and planned is essential to building a great website from the ground up. Great navigation is what cues users to move on to the next step in their journey and ultimately will determine their experience.

Navigation is but one part of the story and tools to help users find their way through a website, app, or other product. 

Information architecture can be broken down into three main areas to consider when building a great user experience:

• Navigation: How people make their way through information (website content)
• Labels: How information is named and represented.
• Search: How people will look for information (keywords, categories)

When put like this it does seem pretty straightforward. Information architecture isn’t just how your information is navigated (on a website or app) but how it is labeled, the taxonomy, and the searchability help users find what they need from the information architecture.

How do the IA and navigation work together best?

An information architecture that has been planned, considered, researched, and structured with understanding and the intention of the needs of users and the owners will be robust and at its very best intuitive.

With an information architecture that has been organized well the navigation doesn’t need to work as hard. With correct labeling and organization of the content, navigation acts as a visual guide on your product to help users find their way to what they want. Imagine well-named road signs that are expected and easily seen. It makes finding what (where) you want much easier, even on a dark night.

Coupled with robust IA navigation will provide intuitive pathways for users to complete tasks. For instance, if you want your users to find where your contact information is, making certain that there is a navigation tab at the top of your website labeled ‘contact us’ which then has what might be expected (address, phone number, map, and even an email contact form) will make sense for users and the owners of the website.

Wrap Up

Whilst navigation is a key component to users finding their way through your content information architecture is so much more than navigation. IA is the foundation of a great product, naming, labeling, organizing, and planning your information in a logical and expected way. Navigation is the sign that directs people to the content they want. And from there to the task or product they are looking for. If there is navigation without thought through information architecture, they may look in the wrong place, becoming lost and abandoning their task altogether.

Note: This is part 2 of our series on great website navigation. You can read part 1 here.

Early on in my career, a wonderful mentor of mine shared what I consider to be my all time favourite analogy for describing the difference and relationship between information architecture (IA) and navigation. She called it the warehouse and the department store.

A department store is a beautiful space with many different product category based departments joined by clear, wide and well lit pathways. These pathways are lined with featured products highlighting the best each department has to offer and the order and placement of each department makes perfect sense to customers.

Women’s clothing is the largest department and adjacent to it, you will find the women’s shoe department and a little bit further down, women’s handbags and accessories. It flows intuitively allowing customers to find everything they need without having to hunt for it.

As for the warehouse, it’s out the back of the store but it’s also hidden in pockets throughout it supporting the department store experience every step of the way by making it easy for staff to access extra stock or store special orders for customers. It’s not that nice to look at it, but without it there wouldn’t be a beautiful department store to shop in. The warehouse is the IA and the department store is the navigation.

I’ve written about and have worked with IAs a lot throughout my career and today I am especially excited to step out into the department store and share some examples of great website navigation. I’ve trawled the internet and have pulled together (in no particular order) what I think are some great website navigation examples, so let’s take a look at them and why they’re awesome.

6. Walmart

Speaking of mega menus, Walmart’s approach to guiding website visitors through its gigantic IA is quite clever. Hidden neatly away under a hamburger menu, Walmart’s mega menu uses vertical navigation instead of a horizontal dropdown that many websites with large IAs use (see below image).

A website visitor can easily see all the categories and all the content labels below either by hovering over the level 1 labels or by clicking on them — clicking results in a pink line appearing under the label (see below image) making it easy to see where you are in the menu.

Selecting ‘See All’ next to ‘Departments’ takes the website visitor to a clear and simple site map-like page allowing them to see the whole IA on one page with no visual distractions at all (see below image).

Overall, Walmart’s simple and structured approach to surfacing a mega menu through vertical navigation is pretty awesome.

7. Android

Android’s website has quite a few great navigational elements. Like a lot of technology websites, the home page is clean and simple and has a top navigation bar that hides when a website visitor scrolls down and reappears when they scroll up. The content carousel that sits at the top of the home page on opening is manually driven by the website visitor and doesn’t autoplay which is an awesome thing to see from an experience and accessibility perspective for all users. The rest of the content on the home page is sectioned off into clear horizontal groups and each one features its own manually driven carousel and filtered navigation by device type which is consistent, easy to understand and visually engaging (see below image).

8. Disqus

Disqus’s navigation menu is simple and flat. It has a universal top navigation bar with just four labels and only one of them (‘Features’) has suboptions to choose from. It works well because there’s nothing that doesn’t belong there and the labels clearly indicate what lies beneath. The dropdown menu that appears on ‘Features’ is quite interesting. If a website visitor hovers over it, the menu showing four suboptions appears and stays in place until the cursor is moved away from that space and then it hides. If ‘Features’ is clicked, the menu stays dropped down in place regardless of where a website visitor moves their cursor to until another link (that could be anywhere on the page) is clicked on. This is great because it responds to two different types of visitor behaviors where hovering might temporary and clicking might be ‘I want to take a closer look’ — it doesn’t matter what the visitor does, the menu is presented in a natural and intuitive way. And it’s worth taking a closer look because regardless of whether ‘Features’ has been hovered over or clicked on, when a website visitor hovers over those four options underneath, cute and friendly colour coded illustrations appear providing a nice human touch to the navigation experience (see below images).

9. Purple Orange

Purple Orange is a creative agency with a single page website that has a fixed vertical navigation menu that works really well. When a website visitor scrolls down the page, the text labels in that menu which is designed like a table of contents are highlighted in orange to show them where they are on the page (see below image). Website visitors can also navigate the content by clicking on the menu labels.

The thing I really love about this navigation experience is the layered approach to the visual design of the page. The content sections are visually divided by full width image banners and the fixed vertical navigation bar sits at the very foreground of the page. As a website visitor scrolls, all the content just passes behind it. It’s really beautiful. Navigation on single page websites can be tricky and many often end up just being a long scrolling page. This example highlights a great way to maintain that nice flat and uncomplicated one page feeling and add in an intuitive handrail to guide visitors.

10. Angry Bear

For our tenth and final example this time around, another single page agency website, Angry Bear, caught my interest due to its wonderful use of visual storytelling in its navigation experience. Upon arrival at the website, the visitor is presented with the image above. They land on the page standing at the top of a waterfall with a sign warning them to ‘beware of cliff falls’ as a howling bear shaped rock looms in the distance. The visual illustrations that form the backbone of this website make for an intriguing experience that transports the visitor to a far away forest - it doesn’t feel like a website and it’s awesome! The navigation menu is hidden under a dark red pull out tab with the logo on it on the left hand side of the screen and can be opened either by clicking on it or by scrolling down the waterfall (AKA the page). Once opened (see below image) the visitor is delighted with cleverly worded labels that clearly indicate the type and intent of the content but keep the story and the bear theme going. Instead of ‘Contact us’ it says ‘Yell for help’ and ‘Awards’ are ‘Trophies’.

The further the visitor scrolls down the page, the deeper they descend down the waterfall and into the darkness of the forest below. Angry Bear’s portfolio of work with the label name of ‘Public Works’ has a really interesting filtered tile navigation system (see below image).

A website visitor can view all or can filter by type which eliminates all the tiles that don’t match the selection and clearly shows what has been selected by the animated filter which removes the background behind the label and has two arrow shapes pointing at it from either side (see below image showing the ‘Design’ filter in action).

Finally, as the website visitor scrolls all the way down to the bottom of this one page website, the waterfall has become a tree lined stream trickling across the forest floor and the ‘Yell for help’ contact form does not disappoint with its note about how ‘bears can be difficult to track’ (see below image).

There’s just ten examples of great website navigation — what are your favourite examples?

Early on in my career, a wonderful mentor of mine shared what I consider to be my all time favourite analogy for describing the difference and relationship between information architecture (IA) and navigation. She called it the warehouse and the department store. A department store is a beautiful space with many different product category based departments joined by clear, wide and well lit pathways. These pathways are lined with featured products highlighting the best each department has to offer and the order and placement of each department makes perfect sense to customers. Women’s clothing is the largest department and adjacent to it, you will find the women’s shoe department and a little bit further down, women’s handbags and accessories. It flows intuitively allowing customers to find everything they need without having to hunt for it. As for the warehouse, it’s out the back of the store but it’s also hidden in pockets throughout it supporting the department store experience every step of the way by making it easy for staff to access extra stock or store special orders for customers. It’s not that nice to look at it, but without it there wouldn’t be a beautiful department store to shop in. The warehouse is the IA and the department store is the navigation. I’ve written about and have worked with IA's a lot throughout my career and today I am especially excited to step out into the department store and share some examples of great website navigation. I’ve trawled the internet and have pulled together (in no particular order) what I think are some great website navigation examples, so let’s take a look at them and why they’re awesome.

1. Mailchimp

There’s a lot to love about Mailchimp’s website navigation. The overall navigation experience is simple and clean with beautiful illustrations accompanying each content category which makes them all feel just that little bit more human. The unexpected animation that appears on hover on the logo is a nice touch that engages visitors and winks at them as if to say “Yes, this will take you back to the home page”.

The universal navigation bar at the top of the page hides when a website visitor scrolls down the page and reappears when they hover over the top of the page or scroll back up. It hides when you’re moving away from it and it reappears when you’re moving back towards it. I also find Mailchimp’s take on a fat footer (see below) especially interesting — it fills an entire page view and works quite well.

A footer has many jobs including: communicating to website visitors that they’ve reached the bottom of the page, housing content that doesn’t belong anywhere else (e.g., privacy policies, social media links etc) and it serves as a safety net for people who might be feeling a bit lost. Mailchimp’s fat footer has five sections that are not overwhelming at all and is consistent with the rest of the website through its clear and simple content groupings and functionality.

2. Mosster Studio

With a riot of colour and delightfully animated illustrations, Mosster Studio’s website is amazing to look at. It also takes that animation one step further through a really cool navigational feature that helps orient website visitors. The top navigation bar is sticky on scroll and the building block-like shapes for each page are animated — on hover they push out and on click they push in as shown in the below image for the ‘Info’ page.

This is a really nice way to show people where they are on this website and it’s definitely consistent with the overall experience. This website also has a sticky minimal non-footer footer that can be seen at the bottom of both the images above. It works because it only has two items in it — copyright information and the privacy policy — and no matter where you are on the website, it’s always there within easy viewing and reach. I feel that it’s just right for this particular website. The IA is quite shallow and the sticky top navigation menu ensures that the footer safety net isn’t really needed in this case.

3. Brit + Co

Brit + Co is a media company and the thing I really love about their website navigation is what happens when a website visitor clicks into an area called ‘So Spring’. It’s a single page space with seasonal specific content where the main website top navigation bar is replaced by a single label in the header. It feels like a website within a website — it’s connected to the main website which is easily accessed through the link on the logo and the subscribe call to action (CTA) is still there, but it definitely has its own architecture and navigation style.

When first opened (see below image), the label at the top says ‘So fresh + So Spring’ and the visitor is presented with a gorgeous wide, animated banner with a woman walking across the page and turning around while carrying an enormous bunch of flowers.

Then, when the website visitor scrolls down the page to the next content section, the header automatically changes to show them where they are in this mini website as shown in the below image when I scrolled down to the ‘Gardening’ section — awesome!

This dynamic navigation feature also contains a dropdown menu allowing website visitors to see all the other topics at a glance and directly navigate between them (see below image).

I feel that these navigation choices make this presumably temporary online space even more immersive and really well thought out.

4. Mental Floss

Mental Floss is a long time favourite website of mine. In addition to its fun articles, quizzes and amazing facts generator — did you know that the national animal of Scotland is the unicorn?! — it also has a super cool transforming navigation menu. It starts out as shown in the image above with a big orange square in the top right hand corner that’s simply labelled ‘Menu’ that when clicked, opens a large, full page menu as shown in the image below.

When a website visitor scrolls down the very long home page, the header transforms into a sticky top navigation bar (see below image). The original menu tile is still present and produces the same menu shown above when clicked, but has been shrunk down and attached to the newly transformed sticky navigation bar.

As the website visitor’s journey progresses further down the home page, clearly sectioned groups of content with their own micro navigation menus start to emerge — funnily enough, there’s one called ‘Sections’ that has a mini vertical side navigation (see below image) and this group of content also appears under the menu tile we saw a few moments ago.

Mental Floss is like a rabbit hole in the best possible and most immersive way. Its transforming and intricately connected navigation works because it’s completely consistent with the experience of having a place to go and just get lost in interesting content. I love it.

5. Airtasker

The category section on Airtasker’s website is — as expected — quite the mega menu. The overall website navigation is fairly simple with a fixed header running along the top of the page and the ‘Categories’ label does not lead to a landing page — it exists purely to launch that mega menu. What I really like about this navigation example is the way a website visitor can filter the category content at that very high level of the IA through the mega menu with one click by indicating if they are looking for work or looking to hire someone (see below image).

The categories themselves don’t reduce, increase or change in any way at this level, but the content below them is filtered to match the selected view so that when a visitor clicks into their category of choice, they’re only shown the perspective that matters to them. For example, if a website visitor selects ‘I’m a poster’ and then selects the ‘Catering’ category, they will be taken to the below screen.

And for the same scenario in reverse where ‘I’m a tasker’ is selected before selecting ‘Catering’, this is the screen that appears (see below image).

I think it’s a really cool way to chart that navigation course upfront and completely avoid content that holds no relevance in that moment.

Read part 2 of this series here