March 5, 2024
5 min

Kat King: Where is the Information?

As information professionals, we work with the “stuff” of information in our everyday work. We search for information, we spend time analyzing and synthesizing it, and we carefully create and structure it. Whether you elicit information from users and stakeholders, explore large data sets, design ‘journeys’ or interfaces, or create information architectures, understanding the information you are using and creating as information can help you do your work better.

Kat King, Business Intelligence Analyst at the University of Michigan Library, recently spoke at UX New Zealand, the leading UX and IA conference in New Zealand hosted by Optimal Workshop, about understanding exactly what information is, and where it is, in our work.

In her talk, Kat uses simple examples to teach you to “see” the information around you and understand what makes something “information” in the context of working as a human to accomplish something.

Kat King bio 🎤

Kat King is an Information Architect interested in language, meaning, and the things we make. She currently works as a Business Intelligence Analyst for the University of Michigan Library.

Contact Details:

Email: Katalogofchaos@gmail.com

Where is the information? 📍🗺️

Information theory can be dense and jargon-filled, and discussions in academic texts can feel divorced from the practice of actually working with information. We’re all told that information architecture is much more than website navigation. So, what is it? IA has a reputation for being difficult to understand, and in her talk, Kat attempts to help us understand what it is, where the information is, and what is it that we’re doing when we use IA methods.

Kat defines IA as “the practice of ensuring ontological alignment”. ‘Ontological’ relates to concepts, categories, properties, and relationships. ‘Alignment’ means arrangements into appropriate relative positions. Therefore, information architecture is “the practice of ensuring concepts, categories and their properties and relationships are arranged into appropriate relative positions.”

To align information then, you need to begin by sorting it into concepts and categories, which is difficult because information can sometimes be “slippery and abstract”. Kat argues this is the real reason that IA is sometimes hard to wrap our heads around. So, getting to the heart of the question, what is information? 

Kat defines information as “a patterned relationship between differences that reduces uncertainty”. The key word here is ‘differences’. The trick to understanding and taming information is to identify what is different about sets of information. The next trick is to identify consistencies between these differences.

This can be a little confusing, so Kat uses the example of picking fruit. We tend to use color (the difference) to identify when fruit is ripe and sweet. We know for a fact that, at some point, the fruit will be at its sweetest and, while there is a scientific way of identifying this point, we have to use the information we have at our disposal instead i.e. the colour of the fruit. The skin of the fruit in this example is like an interface - allowing a flow of information from the fruit’s ripening process to our eyes.

Information categories 🧺🧺🧺

The relationship between the information described in the fruit example can be split into two categories. “Information 1” is a factual, objective description of when the fruit is ripe (i.e. the science of why the fruit is the color that it is right now), whereas our subjective observation, based on color, is “Information 2”.

  • Information 1: Matter and energy, and their properties and interactions i.e. the laws of physics and universal truth or rules

Information 1 poses challenges for us because we have a narrow range of perception, attention, and aggregation, which means we, as humans, can’t possibly understand the laws of nature just by observing. We have evolved to be simple, efficient observers of what is important to us. In other words, we don’t need to understand everything in order to get things right. We see patterns and generalize. Going back to the fruit example – we only need to know the color of ripe fruit, not the exact chemistry of why it is ripe.

  • Information 2: This is Information 1 that is given meaning by humans. This is done via processing semantic information, or “differences and structures that create meaning for people”.

We use semantic information by processing concepts, patterns, categories, mental models, and even language as inputs to form our understanding. As social animals, we tend to reinforce general ‘truths’ about things because we’re constantly cooperating using shared information. General ‘truths’ are good enough.

Kat uses the following interaction to demonstrate the interplay of different information.

  • Person 1: If the raspberries look good, can you get some for me?
  • Person 2: How can tell is they’re good?
  • Person 1: Get the ones that are the most red.

In this interaction, the different pieces of information can be broken down by category:

  • Semantic information = Words and concepts
  • Information 1 = Meaningful signs
  • Information 2 = Perceptible differences
  • Real life information = Raspberries

Using our ability to communicate and understand concepts (words “red”, “good”, and “raspberries”) helps us to understand Information 2 (processing the words and concepts to understand that a red berry is good”), which aligns with Information 1 (the evolutionary science and ongoing consistency of red/ripe berries being sweet) that helps us decide when processing all of this information.

So, now that we understand a little more about information, how does this influence our roles as designers?

Why it matters 👀

Thanks to our individual lived experiences, people have many different inputs/concepts about things. However, Kat points out that we’re pretty good at navigating these different concepts/inputs.

Take conversations, for example. Conversations are our way of getting a “live” alignment of information. If we’re not on the same page we can ask each other questions to ensure we’re communicating semantic information accurately. 

When we start to think about technology and digital products, the interfaces that we design and code become the information that is being transmitted, rather than words in a conversation. The design and presentation become semantic information structures, helping someone to understand the information we’re putting forward. This highlights the importance of aligning the interface (structure and semantic information) and the users' ontology (concepts and categories). For the interface to work, IA practitioners and designers need to know what most people understand to be true when they interact with information, concepts, and categories. 

We need to find some sort of stability that means that most users can understand what they need to do to achieve a goal or make a decision. To do this, we need to find common ground between the semantic information (that might vary between users) so that users can have successful Information 2 style interactions (i.e. absorbing and understanding the concepts presented by the interface).

To wrap up, let’s remind ourselves that information architecture is “the practice of ensuring concepts, categories and their properties and relations are arranged into appropriate and relevant positions”. As IA practitioners and designers, it’s our job to ensure that concepts and categories are arranged in structures that can be understood by the nuance of shared human understanding and semantic information – not just in some physical diagram.

We need to present stable, local structures that help to reduce uncertainty at the moment of interaction. If we don’t, the information flow breaks and we aren’t reducing uncertainty; instead, we create confusion and disappointing user interactions with our digital products. Making sure we present information correctly is important (and difficult!) for the success of our products – and for better or worse, it’s the work of information architecture! 

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Are small links more attractive to people as icons or text?

"Dear Optimal Workshop
How do you make a small link attractive to people (icon vs. text)?"
— Cassie

Dear Cassie,

I'm going to dive straight into this interesting question with a good old game of Pros and Cons, and then offer a resolution of sorts, with a meandering thought or two along the way. Let's kick things off with Team Icon.

The good side of icons: A picture is worth a 1000 words

When shopping online, the number above the little shopping trolley icon tells me how badly behaved I’ve been, and if I click on it, I know I’ll get to gleefully review all the shoes I've selected so far. There’s a whole heap of icons out there like this that people have absorbed and can use without thinking twice. Marli Mesibov wrote a fantastic article on the use of icons for UX Booth on the use of icons that is well worth a look. Marli discusses how they work well on small screens, which is a definite bonus when you’re on the go! Young children who aren’t yet literate can easily figure out how to open and play Angry Birds on their parent’s smartphones thanks to icons. And icons also have a great capacity for bridging language barriers.

The not so good side of icons: We’re too old for guessing games

On the flipside, there are some issues that may huff and puff and blow that cute little home icon down. Starting with there being no consistent standard for them. Sure, there are a handful that are universal like home and print, but beyond that it seems to be a free-for-all. Icons are very much in the hands of the designer and this leaves a lot of room for confusion to grow like bacteria in a badly maintained office refrigerator. Difficult to understand icons can also seriously hinder a user’s ability to learn how to use your website or application. When icons don't communicate what they intend, well, you can guess what happens. In a great piece advocating for text over icons, Joshua Porter writes about an experience he had:

"I have used this UI now for a week and I still have do a double-take each time I want to navigate. I’m not learning what the icons mean. The folder icon represents 'Projects', which I can usually remember (but I think I remember it because it’s simply the first and default option). The second icon, a factory, is actually a link to the 'Manage' screen, where you manage people and projects. This trips me up every time."

If people can't pick up the meaning of your icons quickly and intuitively, they may just stop trying altogether. And now, over to Team Label.

The good side of text: What you see is what you get

Sometimes language really is the fastest vehicle you've got for delivering a message. If you choose the right words to label your links, you'll leave the user with very little doubt as to what lies beneath. It’s that simple. Carefully-considered and well-written labels can cut through the noise and leave minimal ambiguity in their wake. Quoting Joshua Porter again: "Nothing says 'manage' like 'manage'. In other words, in the battle of clarity between icons and labels, labels always win."

The not so good side of text: Your flat shoe is my ballet pump

Text labels can get messy and be just as confusing as unfamiliar icons! Words and phrases sometimes don’t mean the same thing to different people. One person’s flat enclosed shoe may be another person’s ballet pump, and the next person may be left scratching their head because they thought pumps were heels and all they wanted was a ballet flat! Text only labels can also become problematic if there isn’t a clear hierarchy of information, and if you have multiple links on one page or screen.  Bombarding people with a page of short text links may make it difficult for them to find a starting point. And text may also hold back people who speak other languages.

The compromise: Pair icons up with text labels

Because things are always better when we work together! Capitalise on the combined force of text and icons to solve the dilemma. And I don’t mean you should rely on hovers — make both text and icon visible at all times. Two great examples are Google Apps (because nothing says storage like a weird geometric shape...) and the iPhone App store (because the compass and magnifying glass would pose an interesting challenge without text...):

When text and icons wins

So what comes next? (You can probably guess what I'm going to say)

Whatever you decide to run with, test it. Use whatever techniques you have on hand to test all three possibilities — icons only, text only, and icons and text — on real people. No Pros and Cons list, however wonderful, can beat that. And you know, the results will probably surprise you. I ran a quick study recently using Chalkmark to find out where people on the ASOS women's shoes page would click to get to the homepage (and yes, I can alway find ways to make shoe shopping an integral part of my job). 28 people responded, and...

Chalkmark first click text

...a whopping 89% of them clicked the logo, just 7% clicked the home icon, and just one person (the remaining 4%) clicked the label 'Home'. Enough said. Thanks for your question Cassie. To finish, here's some on-topic (and well-earned) comic relief (via @TechnicallyRon)

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1 min read

How to develop a taxonomy for your information architecture

When I first heard the word ‘taxonomy’, I had no idea what it meant. I remember enthusiastically nodding my head at my boss about how awesome it is while frantically Googling it under the table. We’ve all been there early on in our careers. Although, what I found left me feeling even more confused — something about classifying animals? Whether you’re as confused as I was all those years ago or just in need of a refresher, this quick guide to all things taxonomy will sort you out.

What is a taxonomy in information architecture?

In information architecture, taxonomy refers to how information is grouped, classified and labeled within a shared information environment. The overarching structure of that shared information environment is the information architecture (IA) and we find our way around it using the navigation. Think of an IA as a house. The taxonomy determines which pieces of furniture belong in each room and we navigate around the house via doorways and hallways. It all fits together to create one shared environment.

For a website architecture example, think of an online shoe store. The shoes might be organized and labelled by color, size, style, season or collection — that’s the taxonomy. The overall picture of where those groups of shoes live is the IA and in our pursuit of new shoes, we might navigate that structure via a navigation bar at the top of the page. In the amazing Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names visualization below, we can see how the information is categorized, connected and labeled through the lines and the colors. There’s no structure or hierarchy to it yet; that would be the next step in the process to build the IA.

A taxonomy visualization of rapper names
Source:http://hiphopmakers.com/grand-taxonomy-of-rap-names

Creating a taxonomy

There are so many different ways to carve information up into a taxonomy and the key drivers for determining that are your content and, of course, your users. Your taxonomy needs to make sense to your users.You may be starting from scratch with a new website or you may have inherited a taxonomy that for whatever reason just isn’t fit for purpose. The first step when creating an initial taxonomy is to do a comprehensive audit of your content. Ask yourself, is your content relevant? Is it up-to-date? Is it all necessary? Are there opportunities to delete or condense content? Once you have your content sorted, you’re ready to move on to the next step of running a card sort with users.Running a card sort early in your taxonomy creation process will allow you to build it up from an evidence based foundation. There’s no point guessing then testing and potentially going back to square one, when you can co-create with your users and then test that informed approach to validate and further evolve your thinking.When you’re designing your card sort, you’ll need to decide if you’re going to do an open, closed or hybrid sort. Here’s a very high level look at what each type involves:

  • Open: participants sort cards into groups and name their own categories
  • Closed: participants sort cards into categories determined by you
  • Hybrid: participants sort cards into categories determined by you AND they can also make up their own.

This early in the taxonomy creation process, it’s best to start out with an open card sort. Not only will this tell you how your users expect your content to be grouped, but will also provide insight into the language and labels that they would expect that content to be associated with. You never know, an open card sort may even surface something you hadn’t considered. At this stage of the process, it’s important to be open to ideas and new possibilities and an open card sort will do just that.Once you’ve settled on the type of card sort you’ll be running, you’ll need to test which can be done through a tool such as Optimal Workshop’s OptimalSort. OptimalSort enables you to run unmoderated card sorts remotely (or print out cards for a moderated/in-person card sort!). After your participants have completed your card sort, you can access the benefits of OptimalSort’s powerful result analysis functions.

Learn more about running a card sort and more through our 101 guide.

After you’ve run your initial open card sort with users, you should have everything you need to create the first iteration of your taxonomy. Consider everything you learned during the card sort and cross reference that with your business goals and any tech constraints you might be facing. Don’t stress too much about nailing it this time around — remember this is the first iteration and as you test more and learn more, you can make changes. Build out your taxonomy in Post-it notes with a team and then whack it into a spreadsheet to make future testing and iteration activities easier.

How to test a taxonomy

Now that you have the first iteration of your taxonomy, it’s time to have a go at structuring those groups into an IA and running a tree test. A tree test works like a card sort but in reverse — it allows you to test your thinking by working backwards. Optimal Workshop’s Treejack is an online tree testing tool that helps you assess the findability of your content without any visual design elements. All you need are clear objectives for what you’d like to learn more about and a spreadsheet version of your draft IA (told you it would come in handy! ).

Learn more about Treejack and tree testing through our equally handy 101 guide.

Another way to test your taxonomy thinking is to run another card sort. However this time, a hybrid or a closed card sort might be more suitable. A closed card sort would be useful if you’ve got evidence to suggest that your group labels are making sense to users but you’re not 100% sure what belongs in each group. A hybrid sort will let you go one step further and tell you if your content does in fact fit within those labels and if not you’ll also pick up some new ideas to iterate your taxonomy further.

Developing a taxonomy is like any other design process. Bring users into your process as early as you can and never stop iterating, improving and learning.Oh, and about those animals — I wasn’t entirely wrong. The way we classify animals (e.g., vertebrates and invertebrates) is a taxonomy. There are taxonomies everywhere and they’re not all digital. From libraries to supermarkets, we are immersed in taxonomies. It's the role of information architects to determine how these taxonomies are presented to us and how we navigate through them — the possibilities are truly endless!

Further reading

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1 min read

Understanding and refining choreography for your information architecture

What is information architecture (IA) without its complementary elements? On this blog we’ve already discussed the information architecture elements of taxonomy and ontology, and now it’s time to take a look at choreography. While taxonomy refers to how information is grouped, classified and labeled and ontology refers to the meaning behind our words, choreography describes the rules for how all those parts should interact.

Choreography is essentially the nuts and bolts that bring organization, structure and meaning together to form one well-oiled machine that supports, enables and delights users on their path to task completion within a specific context.An often overlooked element of information architecture, nailing your choreography is essential to the delivery of a seamless user experience because it is present in everything your users will do on your website.

Understanding choreography and IA

Coming back to our house analogy from my taxonomy blog, choreography would be present throughout the entire house determining how everything works together. It’s in the positioning of the door handles and hinges to enable easy access and use of rooms and so you don’t swing an open door into a shower screen or into the knees of a toilet user (who should have locked the door anyway). Choreography appears in open plan living environments seamlessly flowing from one space to the next. The way that the laundry is usually a room that includes an external door allowing an easy workflow from storing the dirty clothes, to washing them to hanging them outside on the line to dry. These are all examples of choreography.

In the context of a website, choreography is present in a number of different website elements. These might include: the rules for how a menu might respond or behave under specific circumstances, the way the user interface adapts to suit different devices, the hierarchical relationship between content and much more.

Choreography examples

To help you understand how choreography might appear in a website IA context, I’ve scoured the internet and have found 3 interesting examples I’d like to share with you.

Mental Floss

Mental Floss is an online publication designed for curious minds — sounds awesome! But the thing I find most interesting is the choreography that is present in the surfacing behavior of the top navigation menu. There are two different ways to access its content: you can either click on the big orange menu button in the top right hand corner and you’ll get everything in one hit — including the footer links (see two images below) — or you can scroll down or up the page and it will automatically drop down and become sticky giving you just the level 1 IA headings and that sticky orange menu button (see third image below).

A screenshot of the homepage of Mental Floss. The headline says "The typo that helped end World War II"

Mental Floss as it appears when I first open the home page.

Mental_floss_menu

When I click on the big orange button

Menal_Floss_scroll

Now look what happens when I scroll a bit.... Ta da!

If you go with the scrolling option, you’re not going to miss out because Mental Floss appears to have been designed to be explored — might have something to do with that curiosity thing! All the links that live under the big menu button are distributed throughout the long scrolling page, so when you’re exploring the content, you also get everything! If you get really stuck, that sticky orange menu button is always there to help. If I scroll I get one thing and if I click I get something else, but no matter how I choose to consume the content I get access to everything without having to think about it. This website’s choreography supports both exploratory and direct navigation styles and brings all the parts together.

IKEA US Inspiration page

Part blog, part catalogue, part how-to hub, the Inspiration page on IKEA’s US website is a fascinating IA example because it exists outside the patterns used on the rest of the website. It’s like an IA within an IA. While the rest of the website has a wide rigid structure typical of large IAs, the Inspiration page (also titled ‘IKEA Ideas’) is more organic and is organized by content tags and is navigated by filtering (see below).

Ikea_Ideas
The IKEA Ideas homepage and tag cloud.
Tag_Cloud

The tag cloud-like thing displays the content tags in alphabetical order. Each piece can be assigned up to four tags and users can filter by clicking or just peruse the whole lot by scrolling. Upon clicking a content tag, the piece selection below is automatically updated to only include pieces with the selected tag.Choreography on this part of IKEA’s US website is present in the relationship and behavior of the content tags and how that affects the information on the page.

Do nothing for 2 minutes

Do nothing for 2 minutes has a completely flat IA and its choreography is present in the way it responds to user behavior and the way it presents visual and audio content. The website opens to a single page (see below image) showing an image of a beautiful sunset at the beach accompanied by the soothing sound of waves gently crashing and a group of seagulls fighting over a pickle someone tossed them from a McDonald’s cheeseburger (maybe that was me). It gives me a very clear instruction to “do nothing for 2 minutes” and presents a timer that immediately starts counting down.

Do_Nothing
A relaxing scene on the 'Do nothing for 2 minutes homepage'

In the centre of the screen in that sunlight created highlight are the the words “Just relax and listen to the waves. Don’t touch your mouse or keyboard.” It’s a bit hard to read and I didn’t instantly notice it but when I don’t follow its guidance, the timer resets and tells me to “try again”(see below image).

Do_Nothing_Fail
When I fail to do nothing, the timer resets

When I comply with its instructions, the clock ticks down and when there are just 40 seconds to go something magical happens — the wave sounds stop. It’s not jarring or surprising, in fact it actually felt like I dropped to a deeper state of relaxation. Like an experienced lead dance partner, this website’s choreography pushes and pulls the follower where it wants them to go. The rule here is: if I touch my mouse or keyboard, the clock resets, and if I follow the instructions, I get to access an additional layer of relaxation when the sound drops off. It forces me to take 2 whole minutes of out my day in a strict but supportive way.

When I reach the end of the 2 minutes, I’m congratulated and shown an advertisement for a book to help me further explore this technique. I usually hate seeing things like that but I don’t mind in this case because it doesn’t come across as pushy and it’s already given me something.

Refining the choreography of your IA

When you break it down, choreography is about behaviors and relationships between all the pieces of the IA. It’s about which parts go together, what they do and how that fits in with everything else. Think content pairings in a card sort and the hierarchical position of content within the IA’s tree structure — why do those cards go together and why does label Y appear directly before label X? These choices are deliberate; it’s not just a case of “Oh let’s just put them wherever,” or “I’m going to whack a certain label at the very top because my boss told me because that’s where he thinks it should go.” Choreography exists throughout your entire IA and like everything else, all refinements must be determined by user research.

When running a card sort, pay close attention to:

  • card pairings
  • cards that are consistently not paired
  • the hierarchy of cards within each group (card order)
  • the conversation between your participants (moderated card sorts only) for insights into the logic behind the pairings and hierarchical positioning

Cards that are paired — or not — as well as their hierarchical placement can not only provide insight into your users’ taxonomical expectations but can also help you identify relationships (or lack thereof) between content and elements. Say you were running a card sort on an intranet and two cards labeled ‘Annual Leave’ and ‘Public Holidays’ were consistently being grouped together under ‘Human Resources’. What’s their expected relationship and interaction beyond the subject matter connection? Does one appear before the other? Is one linked to the other one’s page? Or are they together on one page and if so how do they interact? (if at all). For moderated card sorts, listen closely to the conversation for insight into this and be sure to ask your participants about anything you’re not sure of.

If your IA is a bit further along in its development or you’d like to evaluate an existing IA, tree testing can help you understand the choreography that will best support your users.

Keep an eye on:

  • the location of the first click
  • the pathways followed

The pathways followed by participants in a tree test will help you determine the right sequence of interactions required by a user to reach their goal — the ultimate step by step flow to task completion. What order do the labels need to be in? And what lives underneath them? And again, in what order?Think of it like a path through the woods to a lake. Your IA’s choreography should enable your users to be seamlessly guided along a smooth pathway made of big stone steps. They shouldn’t be running into trees or bushwhacking to create their own pathways.

When looking at a tree test, consider how many of your participants did not follow the pathway/s you defined as correct. Where did they go instead? What does the right path look like to your users? Also look at where the all important first click landed. If users start out on the correct first click, they are almost 3 times as likely to reach their goal. If your participants started out on a different first click, you’ll need to explore why that is. It could indicate ambiguity in the labels, it could also be a sign of an expectations mismatch, a hierarchical issue or it could be something else entirely! The tree test will help you identify where the issues are, but you’ll need to go and have a conversation with your users to understand why it’s happening.

Unless more than say 80% of your participants achieved direct success in reaching their goal (meaning they never strayed from the big stone path that you defined) you’ll need to check these things anyway to resolve findability and usability issues. Choreography related insights are an extra thing you can pull from what you’re already doing. And of course always remember that any choreography related data has to be considered in conjunction with whether or not the labels are even correct. Choreography is just one piece of the puzzle; it sets the rules for how all the parts interact and isn’t going to be much help if the parts aren’t even right in the first place!

Choreography in information architecture might be one of the most overlooked elements but it’s not hard to give it the time and consideration it deserves and your users will thank you for it!

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