What Is Affordance?

Affordance is a property or feature of an object which presents a prompt on what can be done with this object. In short, affordances are cues that give a hint of how users may interact with something, no matter physical or digital. For example, when you see a door handle, it is a prompt you can use it to open the door. When you see a receiver icon, it gives you a hint you may click it to make a call. Affordances make our life easier as they support our successful interactions with the world of physical things and virtual objects.

Check the screen of Watering Tracker below. In split seconds, you will understand that the needed action is done – the tick shows it. The icons in the tab bar will give you clues about what you can do with the app: check your set of plants (this tab is active as it’s colored while the others are not), add a new plant or check your profile. These are affordances in action.

History of the Terminology

The term was first introduced by the psychologist James Gibson who deeply researched visual perception. He first used the term in his book ‘The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems‘ in 1966. In 1979 he clarifies the definition of his terminology in the book ‘The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception’: “The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment.” According to Gibson, humans tend to modify their environment with a wish to make its affordances suit them better and make their life easier. Learning the affordances of the environment becomes an essential part of socialization.

Being applied to design, the term referred to only those physical action possibilities of which the user is aware of. In this perspective, the term got its further development in the explorations by Donald Norman in the 1988 book, ‘The Design of Everyday Things‘. According to the expert, “…the term affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used. […] Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. Plates are for pushing. Knobs are for turning. Slots are for inserting things into. Balls are for throwing or bouncing. When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking: no picture, label, or instruction needed.”

With the advent of various user interfaces, affordances got a new vector of development. We did hundreds of operations with diverse actions, tools, and things. Now we also do tons of operations just clicking the mouse or tapping the screen. It makes UX designers work on the new ways of presenting affordances that accumulate patterns and knowledge people have from real life in digital interactions. This experience is dramatically different so the approaches change too.

Types of Affordances in UI

Affordances in UI can be classified according to their performance and presentation. Anyway, their main goal is to actualize the knowledge and experience people already have to simplify the interaction flow.

Explicit (obvious) and implicit (hidden) affordances

Based on their performance, we can find obvious and hidden hints in UI.

Explicit affordances are based on widely known and typical prompts that direct the user to a particular action. For example, when you see a button designed as an obviously clickable element, aka visually similar to the buttons in the physical world, you understand you can click or tap it to interact. If it is supported by a text or icons the affordance becomes even more clear: it informs you what will be the feedback from the system.

A CTA button of this e-commerce webpage is clear as a clickable element and the copy says what this button enables a user to do

Implicit affordances are not that obvious. They are hidden and may be revealed only in a particular flow of users’ actions. The cases when we get tooltips or explanations hovering on a layout element are the ones. Other examples are diverse multilayered elements of navigation such as drop-down menus or expandable buttons that aren’t seen all the time or from the first seconds of interaction but are unveiled after a particular operation. Perhaps, one of the most debatable points here is the hamburger menu that hides the access to functionality behind the special icon.

Hamburger button in the header hides the extended website menu

Graphic Affordances

Graphic affordances are presented with visuals applied to an interface and helping users to scan its functionality. Graphics of all kinds are perceived faster and memorized better than copy so their importance cannot be overestimated. Among them, we could mention the following.

Photos: theme photos, items photos, avatars, and title pictures present the visual support, from information that generally users can do with the app or website (buy, communicate, show, watch, study, write, etc.) to specific features. Let’s say, if an app enables a user to save and share recipes, it’s cool to set the immediate association using appropriate photos like in the example below.

Branding signs: logos, corporate signs, and colors applied to the website or app present an immediate hint about the connection of the UI to a particular brand which may be a strong affordance for its loyal customers.

The logo on the splash screen and in the header sets the link to the brand

Illustration: theme illustrations and mascots have a big potential of giving clear prompts to users. Below, you can see a popup informing users about Halloween stickers in Toonie Alarm with a well-known visual prompt – a Halloween pumpkin.

Icon: interface icons present perhaps the most diverse group of visual affordances. These pictograms are highly symbolic and mostly use the hints taken from the real world so that users could understand them quickly. Even more, after some icons lose the connection with the original physical objects they still present productive affordances if remembered by a big number of users: a floppy disk for “save” is a good example. A heart or a star will immediately link you to favorites, a magnifier will prompt it’s a search and a camera icon won’t take you long to understand that it’s for taking a photo.

Icons are also used as effective hints for classification of the content: categories and sections work much faster with the support of proper graphics.

Button: being among the core interactive elements, buttons came to interfaces as a well-recognized element. Before the era of GUI, it was used in a variety of physical things from simple calculators to complex dashboards. We all know well what to do with a button. The point is to make it visible and obviously seen as a button in UI. Shapes, contrast, colors, and copy all present a great help here.

Field: basically, fields present spaces in which users can input the necessary data. To make them effective, designers also activate the power of affordance: fields should look interactive such a way that people understand immediately they can type in the text inside. The interface of Recipes App below shows the search field: it’s clear that the field is an interactive element due to the shape and contrast and also it is supported with a search icon and the text prompt giving an instruction.

Notifications: there are numerous methods to hint the user that there is something missed or worth attention via notifications. Look at the cart icon in the interface for the Tasty Burger app below: a yellow dot on it gives a quick prompt that it isn’t empty.

Copy (Language) Affordances

Although users perceive images much faster than words, copy also doesn’t lose its positions having a great influence on an interaction flow. The point is that images sometimes need to be decoded with the help of the text so as to avoid misunderstandings. Another thing is that not everything may be shown in pictures. Finally, the copy has an incredibly diverse potential in transferring information, labeling the instructions and calls-to-action, explaining the functionality and supporting the efficiency of the layout with typographic hierarchy. However, the text should be given in a reasonable balance not to overload the interface.

Interactions with copy are very natural for people in their everyday life, for much longer than graphical user interfaces exist. Copy clues and prompts help to understand what to do or what to expect, what information to keep in mind: we read many of them, from signs, adverts, and instructions to newspapers, manuals, and books. In digital UI, it works the same way. It is a straightforward way to communicate with a user. For example, the сalendar screen of HealthCare app shows the variety of language affordances: except for major information about patients, we can see the copy prompt inside the search field, the call-to-action copy on the button and a textual clue given in empty fields of the calendar showing that a user can add an appointment for the day just tapping the space.

Pattern Affordances

Pattern affordances are based on the power of habit and present a huge factor in effective interaction design. Their biggest advantage is saving users’ effort to keeping many things in memory simultaneously. As we mentioned in an article presenting mechanisms of human memory to UX designers, the capacity of short-term memory is limited. So, the more patterns users learn, the clearer is the navigation for them and the better they deal with new input. There are many typical affordances of this kind: for example, we are all used to the clickable logos in website headers which usually open a home page. From one interface to the other, we know that underlined piece of copy is usually a clickable link, the information about contacts and privacy policy of the website is often found in a website footer, and three vertical points in the app layout mean “more” showing additional functions. Saving these patterns means making users feel they understand the interface. So, if there’s a need to break the pattern affordances, think twice and test it well: originality should be reasoned and clear for users.

Animated Affordances

Animation applied in user interfaces creates a strong connection between the physical and virtual world. In most cases, it imitates interaction with real things: pulling, pushing, swiping, dragging, etc. So, interface animations both basic and complex present a group of powerful affordances.

The example below shows the switch in Toonie Alarm app. When the switch is on, it changes several parameters together: the color of the tab, the color of the toggle and the animation of the sun activated. This way it immediately informs the user and also adds emotional appeal to the operation.

Another example shows the notification that appears in the flow of interaction in the Home Budget app and reminds the user about particular limitations. Its animation features pulsation and this way attracts user’s attention to the important warning.

Here’s one more case – pull-to-refresh animation. Appearing on the screen, it informs a user that the UI is being updated and adds some fun to the process of waiting.

Negative Affordances

Whatever strange it could sound, negative affordances also play a big role in positive user experience: they root in the fact that negative result is also a result. The purpose of a negative affordance is to give users a prompt that some elements or operations are inactive at the moment. For instance, the interface of the Homey app given below shows that the “Bedroom” button is active while the buttons of other rooms are inactive – so they present negative affordances. The security level also features that level 5 is totally inactive.

Here’s one more case: the tab bar shows the active button as colored while the others present negative affordances.

False Affordances

In a perspective of UX affordances, false and negative shouldn’t be seen as synonyms. No way. False affordance is what designers should avoid: these are the wrong prompts which lead users to the different action or result, not the one which is expected behind the prompt. Sometimes it’s done intentionally, but in most cases by mistake. For example, if the text in the web copy block is underlined, users automatically think it is clickable. So, they can be really annoyed to understand it doesn’t work – it means that they have been prompted the wrong way.

The brief introduction above lets us understand the significant role which affordances play in user experience design. We will continue this theme with more insights, tips and examples in our next posts, so don’t miss the updates.

Recommended Reading

6 Types of Digital Affordance that Impact Your UX

Affordances and Design

How to Perfect UX with Design Affordances

UX Design Glossary: Navigation Elements

UX Design Glossary: Interface Navigation Elements. Set 2

How Human Memory Works: Insights for UX Designers

Originally published in Tubik Blog

Сообщение UX Design: Types of Affordances in User Interfaces появились сначала на Design4Users.

You can’t build a great building on a weak foundation. You must have a solid foundation if you’re going to have a strong superstructure. Gordon B. Hinckley

Effective design always requires a stable foundation. Well-thought information architecture, as well as prudent interaction and navigation systems, are the base which forms positive user experience. It is recommended to plan the details from the very beginning of the creative process.

There are certain techniques which allow creating visual representations of layouts and sharing the ideas with everyone involved in a project. Two of these techniques called wireframing and prototyping have become a significant part of design process.

However, designers sometimes confuse a wireframe and prototype or talk about them as synonyms. Today’s D4U post discovers the differences between wireframing and prototyping and shows which objectives they help to accomplish.

What’s a wireframe?

A wireframe is a simple visual scheme which represents a layout of a screen or page of a digital product such as a website or application. They are often compared to architectural blueprints since a wireframe is usually a monochromatic illustration which shows the structure of a screen. Also, designers can use bright marks or spots to outline specific areas or design elements. There are three types of wireframes: low-fidelity, medium-fidelity, and high-fidelity.

Low-fidelity wireframes are black and white illustrations which aim at showing a “big picture” of a layout and often created manually with pencils or markers. UI elements are represented as boxes and lines followed by short captions. This type of wireframes may seem a bit abstract still it shows the basic structure of a user interface.

Medium-fidelity wireframes are similar to the previous type since they are also created in a monochrome palette. They are oriented to demonstrate more detailed and realistic layouts the reason why medium-fidelity wireframes can be created both manually or via digital tools. Another difference is that this type allows for distinguishing copy elements so that the typographic hierarchy could be set. In addition, designers provide more detailed comments on each element.

Example of UX wireframe for HealthCare App

High-fidelity wireframes (mockups) are created via digital tools. They are built in color and present the screens in the view close to the final visual performance which makes it differ from the previous. Designers pay deep attention to typography and UI elements presentation. This type can be called UI wireframes or mockups.

UI Mockups for PassFold

What’s a prototype?

A prototype is a sample model of a digital product. It is created for testing the efficiency of the solutions and decisions made about design for websites and applications. Designers think out interaction and navigation systems and try to make them as much similar to the final result as it is possible. Such an approach gives an opportunity to reduce possible problems before the development team starts their work. Making changes is much more time-consuming and expensive at the stage of development that’s why it’s vital to check the usability and navigation in advance.

Prototypes should not be seen as the analog of the final product. They are effective tools helping to improve UX design at the very first stages of the creative process. However, prototyping all the details on the final stage of UI in most cases is not so reasonable. It can be too time-consuming and in this perspective, it would be better to spend the same time coding a demo-version. Prototyping seems much more efficient and useful as the step between UX design and UI design.

Prototyping with InVision App

Wireframing vs Prototyping

High-fidelity wireframes and prototypes have been mistaken for a long time since they are quite similar in visual presentation. Nevertheless, they are different techniques which are applied at the different stages of a creative process. To find out the differences let’s see which objectives they aim at.
Wireframing objectives:

• Creating a fast visual representation of a layout.
• Visualizing an idea and share it with clients.
• Building effective information architecture of a product.
• Setting visual and typographic hierarchy.
• Making a pre-plan of a user journey.
• Thinking through UI elements placement.

Prototyping objectives:

• Giving a detailed view of the UI elements of a future product.
• Thinking through navigation and interaction systems.
• Testing design solutions.
• Reducing the possibility of UX problems and difficulty in navigation.
• Experimenting with the style and alignment of UI elements.
• Showing clients a clickable version of an interface.

As we can see wireframing and prototyping have different objectives. Wireframes are focused mostly on the structure of the page while prototypes are created to give a more detailed look at the UI elements, their style, and alignment. Moreover, prototypes have a great advantage as they give the opportunity to test the interactions similar to the final product.

We can’t say that one technique is better than the other. Even more, they can work better if they are applied together. Prototypes can be created on the basis of the static wireframes, making them clickable and interactive.

Everyone is free to determine for themselves which of these techniques to select or even maybe apply them in a combination. Everything lays in the situation and circumstances. Choose wisely!

Useful design articles

UX Design Glossary: Navigation Elements

UX Design Glossary: Interface Navigation Elements. Set 2

How Human Memory Works: Insights for UX Designers

Types of Affordances in User Interfaces

Сообщение Wireframing VS Prototyping: Specify UX Terminology появились сначала на Design4Users.

In the book “The More of Less”, Joshua Becker said: “You don’t need more space. You need less stuff.” Minimalism is often discussed nowadays in different spheres of life and work, and diverse directions of design are not the exception. Let’s see what are its benefits and points to consider.

What is minimalism?

Actually, minimalism is a word of broad meaning used in various spheres of human activity. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “a style or technique (as in music, literature, or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity”. Being applied to more and more fields, it saves its core traits: meaningful and simple.

Minimalism as a direction of visual design got especially popular in the 1960s in New York when new and older artists moved toward geometric abstraction in painting and sculpture. The movement found its impression in the artworks associated with Bauhaus, De Stijl, Constructivism and so on. In diverse spheres of visual arts, key principle of minimalism was leaving only essential part of features to focus the recipient’s attention as well as support general elegance. Lines, shapes, dots, colors, spare space, composition – everything should serve its function being thoughtfully organized. Today we can meet minimalism in a variety of life spheres: architecture, arts, photography, all kinds of design, literature, music and even food presentation.

“A shape, a volume, a color, a surface is something itself. It shouldn’t be concealed as part of a fairly different whole. The shapes and materials shouldn’t be altered by their context”, said Donald Judd, an American artist associated with minimalism. Working in this style, designers seek to make the interfaces simple but not empty, stylish but not overloaded. They tend to use negative space, bold color and font combinations, and multifunctional details making the simplicity elegant. The line dividing simple and primitive is very thin. That is why not all the designers take the risk of trying this direction: some may think it looks too decent, the others don’t find enough ways to show much with fewer elements.

Architecture Blog

Characteristics of minimalism

Main features of minimalism often mentioned by designers include:

• Simplicity
• Clarity
• Expressive visual hierarchy
• High attention to proportions and composition
• Functionality of every element
• Big amount of spare space
• High attention ratio to core details
• Typography as a significant design element
• Eliminating non-functional decorative elements

Surely, the list can be continued but even the given positions show that minimalism in UI sounds like user-friendly trend. Applied wisely, it helps users to see the core elements of the interface and makes user journey intuitive and purposeful. Moreover, minimalist interfaces usually look sophisticated and uncluttered bringing aesthetic satisfaction as one of the factors of desirability in UX.

Dance Academy landing page

Practices of minimalism in digital design

Today minimalism is one of the wide-spread trends in the design of websites and mobile applications. Main points to consider can be described in the following practices.

Flat design

As we mentioned in one of our previous articles, flat design became a great supporter of minimalism in modern digital products. The most prominent feature of this direction is applying flat 2-dimensional visual details as the opposite of highly realistic and detailed skeuomorphic images. Flat images usually use fewer elements and curves, avoid highlights, shadows, gradients, or textures. This approach allows creating images, buttons, icons, and illustrations which look neat in different resolutions and sizes. It lets designers enhance usability and visual harmony of user interfaces.

However, the terms “flat” and “minimalist” shouldn’t replace each other which often happens today. They are not the same. “Flat” deals with the style of icons, illustration, buttons, and other visual elements of the interface in the aspect of gradients, textures, shadows, etc. “Minimalist” has a much broader meaning and deals with the layout in general, its composition, color palette, contrast and all the techniques of visual performance applied to it. So, flat can be described as one of the design techniques applied in the minimalist approach to creating interfaces.

Cafe Coupon App

Monochrome or limited color palette

Color is a feature of great potential in the design of interfaces as it can set both informative and emotional links between the product and the user. Designers working in minimalism tend to take the maximum from color choices, and in most cases, they limit the color palette to monochrome or minimal set of colors. This strengthens the chosen colors and doesn’t distract users with too much variety. Such an approach is efficient in interfaces concentrating users’ attention on particular actions like buying, subscribing, donating, starting to use, etc. Moreover, from the psychological perspective, the colors usually transfer particular associations and emotions perceived by users, so limited palette makes chosen colors stronger in this aspect.

Slopes Website

Bold and expressive typography

Typography in minimalistic design is seen as one of the core visual elements of not only informing users about the content but also setting the style and enhancing visual performance. Choosing the way of concise use for graphics, designers usually pay much attention to the choice of typography and never hurry in testing the pairs, sizes and combinations. As well as color, fonts and typefaces are seen as a strong graphic element contributing to general elegance and the emotional message it sends. On the other hand, readability and legibility do not lose their leading positions in the matter of choice.

Upper App

Choice limitation

One of the strong sides of minimalism in interfaces is enhanced user concentration. Being focused on functionality and simplicity, the pages and screens of this kind don’t usually overload users attention with decorative elements, shades, colors, details, motion, so in this way, they support high attention ratio and often let users quickly solve their problems and navigate through the website or app.

Birds of Paradise Encyclopedia

Prominent theme visual elements

Working on minimalist UI, designers do not apply many images, but those which are chosen to be used are really prominent, catchy and informative. This approach results in the long and thorough search of the “right” image which would cover all those functions and set the required mood instantly. The photo or illustration itself has to follow the principles of minimalism, otherwise, the choice of the wrong image can ruin all the layout integrity.

Architecture Firm

Concise and intuitive navigation

Navigation in minimalist interfaces presents another challenge: designers have to prioritize the elements rigorously in order to show only the elements of the highest importance. There are different techniques to hide the part of navigation, but doing this, it’s vital to ensure that users will find what they need easily. That is one of the reasons why minimalist approach can be criticized: not being presented properly and tested enough, solutions like hamburger menus and hidden layout elements can leave some users lost in the journey around the website. Obviously, it is not the good ground for positive user experience, therefore every solution about navigation should follow the philosophy “measure thrice and cut once”.

Adding air and using negative space

White space (also called negative) in digital design is the term which is more about space rather than color. In minimalism, it is one more effective way of adding elegance and marking out the core elements. Also, in terms of monochromatic or limited color palette, white or negative space plays a big role in creating enough contrast and supporting legibility.

Ice Website

Grids

Grid system in minimalist interfaces can be effective for making the layout look highly-organized, especially if the website presents a lot of homogenous content. Another benefit is that grids are responsive-friendly.

The Big Landscape

Contrast

Following the philosophy of limits and simplicity, minimalism depends much on contrast as a tool of good visual performance. The choice of colors, shapes and placement are often based on the contrast as the key feature.

Bjorn Website

Well, it’s easy to see that minimalism has a great number of benefits and presents a good approach to creating user-friendly interfaces. However, it doesn’t mean that minimalism should be applied everywhere: every goal should be achieved by the proper means. One thing is for sure: the more minimalistic is the interface, the more time and effort the designer should invest to make it clear and functional. Elegance and beauty of minimalism should support the global aim of providing positive user experience.

Recommended reading

The Characteristics of Minimalism in Web Design

The How and Why of Minimalism

6 Steps to Perfecting Minimalism in Web Design

Functional Minimalism for Web Design

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Сообщение Lean and Mean: Power of Minimalism in UI Design появились сначала на Design4Users.

What’s information architecture?

Information architecture (IA) is a science of organizing and structuring the content of the websites, web and mobile applications, and social media software. An American architect and graphic designer, Richard Saul Wurman, is considered to be a founder of the IA field. Today, there are many specialists working on IA development who have established the Information Architecture Institute. According to the IAI experts, information architecture is the practice of deciding how to arrange the parts of something to be understandable.

Information architecture aims at organizing content so that users would easily adjust to the functionality of the product and could find everything they need without big effort. The content structure depends on various factors. First of all, IA experts consider the specifics of the target audience’s needs because IA puts user satisfaction as a priority. Also, the structure depends on the type of the product and the offers companies have. For example, if we compare a retail website and a blog, we’ll see two absolutely different structures both efficient for accomplishing certain objectives. Information architecture has become a fundamental study in many spheres including design and software development.

The role of information architecture in design

Nowadays, when the user-centered approach in design is a top trend, many designers learn the principles of information architecture science which they believe is a foundation of efficient design. IA forms a skeleton of any design project. Visual elements, functionality, interaction, and navigation are built according to the information architecture principles. The thing is that even compelling content elements and powerful UI design can fail without appropriate IA. Unorganized content makes navigation difficult and inexplicit, so the users can easily get lost and feel annoyed. If the users face first bad interaction, they may not give the second chance to your product.

Many companies don’t see the importance of information architecture because they think it’s impractical. It’s hard to argue that IA takes some time to create it and requires specific skills to do it efficiently. However, powerful IA is a guarantee of a high-quality product since it reduces the possibility of usability and navigation problems. This way, well-thought information architecture can save both the time and money of the company which otherwise they would have spent on fixing and improving.

IA and UX design

After reading everything written above, many people may have the question: “Isn’t IA the same as UX design?”. Technically, these terms relate to each other but they are far not the same. IA is a blueprint of the design structure that can be generated into wireframes and sitemaps of the project. UX designers use them as the basic materials so that they could plan the navigation system.

UX design means much more than content structuring. In the first place, UX designers aim at making a pleasant interaction model, so that users feel comfortable using the product. They encompass various aspects influencing users’ behavior and actions such as emotion and psychology when the IA experts stay focused on the user’s goals.

Let’s get this straight: good information architecture is a foundation of efficient user experience, so the IA skill is essential for the designers. Effective IA makes the product easy to use but only united with design thinking the product has a powerful user experience.

IA system components

If you want to build strong information architecture for the product, you need to understand what it consists of. Pioneers of the IA field, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville in their book “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web” have distinguished four main components: organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, and searching systems.

Organization systems

These are the groups or the categories in which the information is divided. Such a system helps users to predict where they can find certain information easily. There are three main organizational structures: Hierarchical, Sequential, and Matrix.

Hierarchical. In one of our previous articles, we’ve mentioned a well-known technique of content organization which is called visual hierarchy. It is initially based on Gestalt psychological theory and its main goal is to present content on the carrier, be it a book page or poster, web page, or mobile screen, in such a way that users can understand the level of importance for each element. It activates the ability of the brain to distinguish objects on the basis of their physical differences, such as size, color, contrast, alignment, etc.

Big City Guide

Sequential. This structure creates some kind of a path for the users. They go step-by-step through content to accomplish the task they needed. This type is often used for retail websites or apps, where people have to go from one task to another to make the purchase.

Vinny’s Bakery Website

Matrix. This type is a bit more complicated for the users since they choose the way of navigation on their own. Users are given choices of content organization. For example, they can navigate through content that is ordered according to date, or some may prefer navigation along the topic.

MoneyWise App

In addition, content can be grouped according to the organization schemes. They are meant to categorize the content of the product. Here are some of the popular schemes:

Alphabetical schemes. Content is organized in alphabetical order. Also, they can serve as a navigation tool for users.

Chronological schemes. This type organizes content by date.

Topic schemes. Content is organized according to the specific subject.

Audience schemes. The type of content organization for separate groups of users.

Book Swap App

Labeling systems

This system involves the ways of data representation. The design of the product requires simplicity, so a great amount of information can confuse users. That’s why designers create labels that represent loads of data in a few words. For example, when the designers give the contact information of the company on the website, it usually includes the phone number, email, and social media contacts. However, designers can’t present all of this information on one page. The button “Contact” in the header of the page is a label that triggers the associations in the users’ heads without placing the whole data on the page. So, the labeling system aims at uniting the data effectively.

Gym Landing Page

Navigation systems

In one of our UX Glossary articles, we’ve defined navigation as the set of actions and techniques guiding users throughout the app or website, enabling them to fulfill their goals and successfully interact with the product. The navigation system, in terms of IA, involves the ways how users move through the content. It’s a complex system that employs many techniques and approaches, the reason why it’s wrong to describe it in a short paragraph. So, we’ll go back to the topic a bit later on our new blog’s article.

Searching systems

This system is used in information architecture to help users search for the data within the digital product like a website or an app. The searching system is effective only for the products with loads of information when the users risk getting lost there. In this case, the designers should consider a search engine, filters, and many other tools helping users find content and plan how the data will look after the search.

To sum up, we can claim that information architecture is a core part of the powerful user experience design. Efficient IA helps users quickly and easily navigate through content and find everything they need without striking a blow. That’s why designers are recommended to learn the basics of IA science.

The topic of information architecture is wide and there are more interesting and useful aspects. Our next article on this theme will be devoted to the various techniques and methodologies which designers employ to create efficient IA. Stay tuned!

Recommended reading

IA for the Web and Beyond
How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody
Information Architecture Basics
The Difference Between Information Architecture and UX Design

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Сообщение Basics of Information Architecture for Designers появились сначала на Design4Users.