Flattening Information Architecture

Sorry about the boring title – I couldn’t really think of anything natural.

If you are a regular reader you may have realized that I have jumped on the design patterns bandwagon because I think it’s a valuable tool in creating valuable user experiences while keeping yourself sane. There is a debate as to whether design patterns should act as principles to adhere to or lenient guidelines.

If you haven’t been reading the design patterns series at Functioning Form, you should really check it out as the gurus have been giving their two cents regarding the practicality and reasons behind design patterns. One thing noted is that relative to other design areas, ie art, architecture, industrial, our industry (web development) is very young. Obviously design patterns are subject to change and should be challenged. Architectural standards have not sustained throughout time. People figure out differently equal or better things. It’s the nature of change.

That being said Jeff Jarvis recently wrote about Yahoo being the last portal claiming it to be the last ‘old media company’. In response to that Kenji Mori calls for a change claiming that the problem with Yahoo is their structure and information organization. He says we need a change and should move to a bottom-up hierarchy. He left us with no reasoning, but just that we should.

Naturally that got me to thinking. Is this a relevant challenge to one of the oldest digital information design principles – hierarchical, top-down information organization? We see this pattern everywhere from websites where your entrance to the site is the ‘home page’ to your Windows Explorer where folders are displayed hierarchically and files are organized as such.

Below I’ve diagrammed the difference in what I am discussing. The difference is obvious but I thought visual explanation would help

The more thinking I’ve done on the subject the more I agree with Kenji. In working on Managing the Edge I have been researching the many interfaces a company has with its customers. This same mentality can be applied to information design on websites. Flattening the hierarchy and providing many interfaces to your website and web application does create a more valuable user experience.

There are several ways to flatten your information hierarchy to give your users several paths to use your site. I will use delicious as an example. As an hourly delicious user I very, very rarely see the delicious homepage. In fact I only hear about their new homepage designs and added functionality from bloggers. Thinking of this made Kenji’s idea even more appropriate.

How does delicious do it? Well, first of all they have web services that allow me to create content without visiting the site. Second, all of their content is aggregated to me via RSS, delivering me the content I want from their website. Third, they use semantic URL’s so I know what to type to get an RSS feed, or to search, or to browse by tags. Futhermore consider the tagging phenomenon as a whole. In essence this is an adoption of a flat categorization method to organize and classfiy content.

Now, I do not disown top-down structures because they definitely still serve a purpose and are an excellent example of an evidence based design pattern. Hierarchical organization of digital information is as natural for people now as using a mouse. I just like to challenge the norm. And you do not necessarily have to create a flat structure for your site. Consider giving your users a variety of avenues for usage. This creates a better user experience because it lets the user define how they use their application making them much more comfortable.

tags: design patterns, web design, design

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