Sitemap VS Information Architecture.
We can skip the important parts, but then there won’t be any good parts.
“Hey, can you please send the sitemap in five minutes?” We’ve all got this call, text, office messaging app or tool notification or official email. But, can a Sitemap be created well under five minutes? Sure, it can be done if you have all the possible important data points and information. But, incase you don’t, the team needs to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch.
Maybe, it’s a small consumer-facing landing page or app screen, a medium-sized e-commerce page, a shopping extension page, a campaign section or an entire website that’s a showcase for a small yet important brand, team, product, service or organization. Actually, there’s nothing small when you consider all your work to be all important. And, when everyone participates in the Information Architecture process, everyone learns, everybody wins and most of all you put the safety of your project way above the sheer excitement of released work. Infact, it’s more fun when done the right way.
Whatever the case or use case may be, creating something online needs due dilligence offline. The process it requires and the sign offs it desires - from internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, project leads and other associates. We can skip the important parts, but then there won’t be any good parts. If we can do this for small projects then when we work on enterprise-level projects, things become more simpler and complexities are no longer a challenge.
It’s wonderful, painstaking, time-consuming to go through the Information Architecture process and some teams may just believe it to be a simple sitemap but honestly, a lot of hard work goes into it before the digital experience even reaches the design phase.
This is the glue that holds the digital creative dream together. Here’s what a standard Information Architecture Process looks like. It can take a week or even a month depending on the best possible way to build consensus between different stakeholders and also depending on the form, size, user research findings and the technical feasibilty of the project alongwith its implementation challenges.
Defining note taking - Offline or using Digital Tools, Post its, Cards, Diagrams, Sorting Frameworks, Jamboards, Sketchboards, Digital Whiteboards, etc.
Briefings and de-briefings with Client Teams internally & externally
Conversations with Founders & Project Leads
Understanding the Context, Environment, Space and Time
Organizing Offline Product Information as an Online Product, Platform & Experience
Understanding Product Users
Persona Mapping
Purpose behind visiting the Organization on the Website or synced Web App
Understanding Various User's Objectives
Understanding the Organization's Objectives
Studying the Competitive Landscape
Defining the Content, Brand, Content Architecture and Content Strategy
Brief discussions on the Tone of Voice and Visual Grammar that may eventually inform Creative Execution if there are existing parameters to keep in mind
Categorizing and Prioritizing Content
Creating a Sitemap and Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Nomenclature, and Findability
Designing Navigation Systems and User Flows
Digital Prototyping and Validation
Final Sign-off from the Client Team and Project Leads
Do this once, it gets a lot easier and you begin to enjoy the process. To put it simply, a Sitemap is a Tree but it’s rarely the root of the ecosystem.
Information Architecture is the entire ecosystem. The Sitemap fundamentally is born within in.
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