 Thank you Thank you. It's awesome to be here and since I've only got ten minutes. Well, that's rock I'm unique and I'm here to talk about information architecture Yes, this works And well, what is it? That's the big question We all love WordPress don't we and I don't have to ask you why It's a great CMS and we're all great website builders, aren't we? But when I say I built websites Do I know what I'm building? Actually, do you? What's going on? This talk will be too short to tell you what information architecture is all about but I'm on a mission a mission towards a better structured web and I need you I need you to convince your clients that information architecture is part of that That will be hard because information architecture is the underdog It's not very sexy and it isn't visible But that doesn't mean it isn't important If you take a look at these skeletons Apparently, they're the same they have the same components But once you want to go riding on which animal would you do it? This book on information architecture, which I strongly recommend has got this story Which made me realize that often I'm not too aware on what I'm building and neither is my client It goes like this There's this minister who walks past the construction site And when he walks past he see two guys laying bricks and he asked the first guy Hey, man, what are you doing? The guy looks at him bit disturbed. So like well, can't you see I'm laying bricks It's going like oh, yeah, obvious and he asked the second guy the same questions. They're like What are you doing? And the second guy's ask answers Well, I'm building something great. I'm building a cathedral and Clearly impressed with the answer of the second guy the minister goes home and he can't sleep and he's thinking about it And he decides to go back the next day to ask this guy some more questions because he really inspired him But when he gets to the construction site only the first guy is there And he goes like oh Where where's your partner? Where did he go because I want to ask him some more questions And the guy looks at him while he's laying rakes and he said that's fool He thought we were building a cathedral, but actually we're building a garage So when you're building a website ask yourself the following question Are you building a garage or are you building a cathedral? Or are you just laying bricks? And when you do so do you use the iter method? I think this is right Or do you use some form of research or testing? Because remember you are not your user WordPress helps us with the basic of installing a CMS But it doesn't and cannot help you with organized and good content and And that content needs to be findable and understandable for its users So if we move on to the definition of information architecture I'll go for the very short one because what you need to know is that it makes information findable and understandable and To do so we need some basic concepts of information architecture Which are information of course that needs structure It needs to be organized and it needs to be labeled You probably all agree that Findability is a critical success factor and John made a set it earlier on if a website can't be found well, there's no use putting stuff on it and System will fail if the users can't find what they need But when you design don't design it just for users use it for the organizations and the people managing the content as well So why is it important? we suffer from major information overload and However, this is not new But you can't imagine the growth of information has really sped up with the introduction of personal computers and the internet and The findability techniques that were Developed 15 years ago are not very effective today And when we look at information environments like websites There are not lifeless static constructs Rather, there's a dynamic organic nature to them in both where information systems and the broader context exist And when you look at these three circles of context Users and content you can use these in information architecture to Find the balance and help them ask us the questions you need to develop a good information architecture And when we talk about context We talk about business or organizational context and this is unique to each organization and the websites you build well, the information architecture reflects this unique context and You don't want that to look like the context of your competitor. Do you? Next talking content That's when we look at the ownership who owns the content in what format does it exist? How do we structure it? Is there any metadata in what volume? Does it exist and do we need more volume in the future and how dynamic is it? Will it grow all very quickly and Finally, what I think is most important are the users And when we talk about users Remember, we talk about real people like you and me. It's not an abstract term and These people have different information needs. I'd like to emphasize this remember you are not your user And what you think is right? Well, your user might think different So the final part of this talk is about how to do good information architecture and I'm sorry. I Don't have an answer to that But when you look into your latest WordPress projects be critical and Not only if it's a large-scale project But only also with smaller projects and don't be tempted by your clients to get into a rush and do concessions Because most of your clients think information architecture is abstract and they want to jump to the visual part of graphical design too quick And when time and money are on a tight budget Where you have to make choices of what to include? And again, these three circles will help you do so Good research means asking the right questions and it helps your user answer for questions. They have themselves When they go to a website, they have a question like am I in the right place? Does it has what I'm looking for and if not is there anything better or anything else and After that they ask, what do I do now and it needs to be clear user research is very important Because in the end the users are the ultimate judges of your website and You can do some uses analysis by checking on content performance Visitor information and search analysis and I think the relevancy plug-in is a good way to find out what people are searching for on your website and Always be testing even if you only do one test on a friend of your website That's better than not testing at all and you could use for instance this free card sorting method Which is online but on optimal sort or do a navigation stress test that you can find on that instance websites You have to overcome resistance as well Because people don't really want to spend time on information architecture and common arguments are like We don't have time or money or we already know what you want But if you dig into the information system really good, they will have a website that actually work and it will save them time in the end And finally, I think development and information architecture strategy is important because it can help expose gaps in business strategies and content Collection and it will force people to make choices. They've thus far managed to avoid So nearly there I've collected some resources for you and you can always check WordPress TV check on information architecture to learn more And my website has collected some resources as well and I'd like to invite you to follow me on Twitter Because this is way too short and I'd like to keep the conversation alive. So I've created this hashtag WPIA and Yeah, hook me up and to connect offline I brought this swag the WAPU game that you can play all together and discuss the benefits of WordPress We'll have so thank you for your attention You