Informaton Architecture and User Experience
At Auros we try to keep our combined IA and UX
process as efficient and flexible as possible.
Though doubtless worth the effort, the full UX
journey is a long one, and we understand that not all clients have
a budget that will allow this. By approaching each site as a unique
challenge, and adapting our approach to suit, we can deliver the
maximum business benefit within the available time.
A brief overview
The key to a successful new site design is our
understanding of your business, your goals, and your customers. We
like to run at least one full-day workshop with the major
stakeholders of the site, and find out as much information as we
can, using this combined with our own research to build an accurate
picture of what the site should do, and for whom.
With this information agreed we can move on to
defining the user experience - personas, scenarios and analysis of
your competitors. This enables us to start to get some idea about
how the site will work and what it should contain, which is where
the more traditional elements of the IA process come in: grouping
content and navigation, defining content and navigation hierarchy
(often called 'card sorting'), developing sitemaps, and creating
wireframes if appropriate. This guidance and information must be
continually evaluated against the initial project goals, and the
personas and scenarios already developed.
Next steps
Once complete, we are then able use all of the
above to progress with both the visual
design, and the behavioural definitions that will drive the
back-end development.
