The goals of web designLesson 1, Planning Your Website 15Information architecture
Design is not just about visuals. The word design comes from the Latin word designare, which
means to mark out, devise, or choose. This is a good reminder that you should choose or
plan the structure of a website before you consider the visuals. The term used to describe
the planning of a website’s structure is information architecture. Information architecture is
concerned with providing optimal navigation paths for the user and helping them get from
point A to point B. For example, the user may need to go from the home page to the best
recipe for a mango/banana smoothie.
A site map is often used in the discipline of information architecture.
In more formal terms, information architecture is the process of organizing the site’s content
and defi ning the hierarchy and navigation of the site. Since most sites have a “client” of some
sort, information architecture is also where you discuss the scope of the site. Scope relates
to the number of pages in a site as well as the features and functionality the site includes.
A single-page website with some text and a few images would be a site with a small scope,
while a 200-page website that includes a video library, database integration, and sends alerts
to a user’s mobile phone would be a site with a large scope.