I have recently stubmled upon a very interesting discussion, initiated by a fairly controversial article by Mark Hurst of Creative Good. In his piece, titled “The Page Paradigm”, Mark provides some radical reasoning regarding fundamental principles of Information Architecture process as we know it.
Here’s a Cliffs Notes version of the article:
- Users come to the Web site only when they have a goal
- The goal is very specific
- On a page, users click something that appears to take them closer to the fullfillment of their goal
- If they don’t see anything of such sort, they click the Back button on their Web browser
- Users don’t care about where they are on the website — they care about achieving their goal
- Therefore:
- Painstakingly fitting all of the pages into a neat hierarchy is not as important
- Consistency of the navigation is not important or necessary
- What’s important is making sure each page takes the user closer to accomplishing their goal
Naturally, anything that challenges the two pillars of information architecture, content structure and navigation consistency, should (and did) cause a flurry of responses.
Some said that Mark oversimplified the problem. Some were conflicted. Others offered a “there is no spoon” philosophical exercize suggesting that navigation actually doesn’t exist.
I must say, I was in a bit of a shock after reading the article. However, I have to admit that Mark’s argument is valid. Consistent navigation and neat hierachy are not the objective of the information architecture process. They are merely tools, two of the many. The objective of the process is designing a user experience that aids the visitors of the site in achieving their goals.
In a way, this view is the opposite of oversimplification — it implies that a site with consistent navigation and impeccable structure may still fail at helping the users find what they want.