{"id":1042,"date":"2021-04-07T21:10:38","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T21:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.precisioncontent.com\/blog\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2021-04-08T15:02:54","modified_gmt":"2021-04-08T15:02:54","slug":"how-designing-an-information-architecture-is-like-building-an-underwater-tunnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.precisioncontent.com\/blog\/how-designing-an-information-architecture-is-like-building-an-underwater-tunnel\/","title":{"rendered":"How Designing an Information Architecture is Like Building an Underwater Tunnel"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Josh Anderson, Associate Information Architect at Precision Content<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Schematic<\/a>
\nImagine it was your job to build a 50-kilometer-long tunnel to connect two different countries. That\u2019s already no easy task, but there\u2019s one more requirement: the tunnel needs to be mostly underwater. How would you begin? In the real-life case of the Channel Tunnel<\/a>, the builders took a counterintuitive approach.<\/p>\n

While information architecture projects are not (yet) as challenging as constructing a massive underwater tunnel, the unique strategy executed by the English and French builders provides a powerful metaphor for how to think about complex content endeavors.<\/p>\n

\n

One Project, Two Sides<\/h3>\n

The earliest digging for the Channel Tunnel began in 1881, not from the English or French sides, but from both<\/em> sides! Throughout the decades, both countries chipped away off-and-on at their end of the tunnel with the hope that eventually the two sides would meet in the middle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Similarly, information architecture projects can be tackled from two \u201csides\u201d: user-first or content-first. Digital content expert Joe Gollner describes these approaches as \u201coutside-in\u201d and \u201cinside-out.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOutside-in\u201d (or \u201cuser-first\u201d) describes the practices that most people in user experience (UX) would associate with information architecture. The underlying goal is to increase the findability<\/em> of content, in other words to design, say, a website or app in such a way that users can easily find the content they are looking for. This is accomplished by researching your users\u2019 mental models of the domain space and then creating sitemaps, tagging systems, and other navigational aids. The users first arrive at a site and then bury deeper into<\/em> it to find content that lives somewhere on the site. This approach was popularized in the book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web<\/em><\/a> by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld.<\/p>\n

\u201cInside-out\u201d (or \u201ccontent-first\u201d) is the other approach. This entails the creation of content that is inherently<\/em> findable and understandable\u2014not only by human users but also by search crawlers and machine learning algorithms. This is accomplished by structuring content with semantic markup such as DITA XML. Instead of creating \u201cpages\u201d of content, authors create what might be called \u201cchunks\u201d\u2014paragraph or even sentence-length content that can be easily swapped out for other chunks as the audience or delivery medium demands. These chunks are also deliberately designed without any inherent styling (e.g. formatting, colour, animation) so that they can be pushed out<\/em> to any channel (e.g. desktop, mobile, smartwatch) without the need for arduous, costly format conversion.<\/p>\n

Comparison of Outside-in and Inside-out Approaches to Information Architecture<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nOutside-in<\/strong><\/td>\nInside-out<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Perspective<\/strong><\/td>\nUser-driven<\/td>\nContent-driven<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Goal is to make content\u2026<\/strong><\/td>\nFindable<\/td>\nUnderstandable<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Methodologies<\/strong><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Mind mapping<\/li>\n
  • User research<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
    \n
  • Structured authoring<\/li>\n
  • Domain modeling<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Examples of tools<\/strong><\/td>\n\n\n
Examples of deliverables<\/strong><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Sitemap<\/li>\n
  • Wireframe<\/li>\n
  • Taxonomy<\/li>\n
  • User research report<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
    \n
  • Content model<\/li>\n
  • Content audit<\/li>\n
  • Metadata strategy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Related disciplines<\/strong><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • User experience design<\/li>\n
  • Human-computer interaction<\/li>\n
  • Library science<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n