PROJECT PLANNING AT ACRO

Strategy: Information Architecture

Establishing the information architecture, or IA, in a web development project is a critical exercise during Discovery & Strategy. Anders Paulsen, Director of User Experience, helps us understand everything that goes into an IA and how it helps shape project success.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Anders Paulsen, Director of User Experience, at Acro Commerce. 

In this next portion of our Project Planning series, we’ll move from Discovery into Strategy, starting with a focus on Information Architecture.

Also known as an IA, this document is created and presented by the team’s UX Designer and usually consists of two primary deliverables.

• A Sitemap Diagram
• and User Personas

First, let’s look at the Sitemap …

The sitemap diagram will appear similar to the Content Inventory that we referenced previously, but will be updated to convey recommendations for improvement.

Often these diagrams will be presented alongside one another, allowing us to toggle between the two for comparison and discussion purposes.

For example, we might walk you through …

• A reorganization of Menus and Pages
• Suggested Title changes,
• Altered Workflows,
• and placement of New Site Features.

Keep in mind that the sitemap is presented as a working document, with the intent of remaining collaborative — we’re always open to discussion and revisions

Our goal is to plan for creating a well-organized navigation, ensuring we’ve accounted for your site features and content types, and created streamlined paths within the menu structure.

With your Content Management System, you’ll still have the ability to Add, Edit, Move, or Remove pages in the long run.

Next, let’s take a look at the IA’s second main deliverable, User Personas…

User Personas are developed to account for a variety of Customer and Admin roles.

The intent is not to focus on demographics the way marketing persons would, but rather to identify a group of users based on shared purpose — what they’re trying to achieve.

For example, on the Admin side, you might separate roles such as Content Editor, Commerce Manager, and Site Administrator to focus on primary functions related to these separate titles—even if, in reality, you’re a team of one managing your site or have multiple staff members contributing in each area.

For each of these and your customer personas, we’ll identify a list of common Goals and Frustrations, providing our team with an understanding of what each user is trying to achieve and why.

These representations of site users serve as a touchstone throughout the project, allowing our team to refer back to who we’re building the site for, and considering their needs to ensure understanding of why we’re designing and building what we are.

This becomes especially important as we begin the process of writing User Stories that will be used to make up the project backlog.

We’ll cover Story Writing in an upcoming video.

But first, I’ll walk you through the Strategy Deliverables presented by the Software Architect — the Technical Architecture.

Thanks for listening.

Up Next, Technical Architecture.

Precision planning leads to better projects.

Learn more about our Discovery & Strategy process by contacting our team today.