Information Architecture, 4th Edition

Chapter 4. Design for Understanding

A frame is a way of creating a little world round something...Is there anything in a work that is not frame, actually?

Brian Eno

In this chapter, we’ll cover:

• How people make sense of where they are and what they can do there

• Placemaking in the physical world and in information environments

• Basic organizing principles to make information environments more understandable

We only understand things in relationship to something else. The frame around a painting changes how we perceive it, and the place the frame is hanging in changes it even more: we understand an image displayed in New York’s Museum of Modern Art differently than one hanging in a shared bathroom in a ratty hotel. Context matters.

When designing an information architecture, we are engaging in a new type of placemaking: one that alters how we perceive and understand information. As with (building) architects, information architects are concerned with creating environments that are understandable and usable by human beings, and which can grow and adapt over time to meet the needs of users and their organizations.

In Chapter 3, we saw how the lens of information architecture can help designers make stuff easier to find by setting it in structures made of information. Now we’ll explore how these structures can make stuff more understandable by shaping the context that we perceive it in.

A Sense of Place

You get out of bed. You stumble clumsily to the bathroom, use the toilet, ...