How to start with Information Architecture:

THE 5 WAYS TO ORGANIZE INFORMATION.

The way information is organized on a product can actually have a significant impact on society at large. After the COVID19 pandemic started we noticed, even more, the transition of moving into digital spaces, where almost all of our social interactions where taking place in digital means, like online schooling, telemedicine, working remotely, attending online meetings, virtual events, online grocery shopping, etc. Providing that the way we organized information can have a strong impact on users it’s on our best interests as User experience designers to create an efficient structure in order to get our job done: make our user’s lives easier. The term used is Information architectures which refer to the means by which we get a pile of disorganized content to something that is more structured, and recognize how information flows between users and products or services.

As of this topic needed to convey information in a way that was clear for the readers, I decided to put together a mind map that will demonstrate with examples the LATCH — 5 famous ways to organized information by Richard Saul Wurman.

“Information may be infinite, however… the organization of information is finite as it can only be organized by LATCH: LOCATION, ALPHABET, TIME, CATEGORY AND HIERARCHY”

- Richard Saul Wurman

When we organize information in different ways we get to see different outcomes of information about the relationships they have accordingly. These ways to organized information may appear independent from each other but in reality, Designers tend to combine them all the time since people find information in different ways sometimes search, browse, or most commonly a combination of both so it’s best to give the user all the tools necessary to find quick and easy what they want to find.