Universal Principles of UX

67

Build a logical structure.

Whenever we talk about structure in UX design, what we’re really talking about is information architecture (IA), a term that was first coined by architect and TED conference founder Richard Saul Wurman in 1976. He thought changing the existing term “information design” to “information architecture” made it clearer that the focus of the practice should be on how a system works and performs, rather than what the system looks like.

In the digital space, IA is about the underlying structural organization that allows users to understand where they are, where they can go, how to find what they’re looking for, and what they can expect (see Principle 68). The field pulls from library science (the study of categorizing, ...