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Information Architecture (IA) is a series of design choices and techniques that prioritize the organization, structure, and labeling of page content and pages in a way that is easy for users to understand and navigate. The way you display the content on your websites should effectively show users how to find what they are looking for on your site without becoming confused or frustrated. There are two main components of information architecture: structure, or the way in which information is organized into categories, hierarchies, and relationships; and labeling, or the things used to represent and classify those things.
Why use Information Architecture?
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Take the YouTube home page and video thumbnails for example (see figure 6). If the title of a video was displayed without a corresponding image, many users may not be interested in navigating to the video without a visual preview of the content of the video.
home page video thumbnail
Icons
Icons are small visual tools used to represent functions on the interface. A user will be able to navigate a website using the icons, limiting the number of words used on the screen. Icons should be simple, consistent, and universal. For example, a magnifying glass is commonly associated with the search bar, which we can see on the IKEA website (see figure 7).
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