architecture diagram on the program user

#Architecture diagram on the program user how to#
#Architecture diagram on the program user software#
#Architecture diagram on the program user professional#

#Architecture diagram on the program user professional#

Or at the very least, easy to manage.ĭraw.io, used in the video above, is completely free for personal and professional use and automatically plugs into Google Drive.

#Architecture diagram on the program user software#

There are plenty of software applications that allow for building an IA, but few are simple and quick enough to make the experience enjoyable. This model isn’t perfect, but it organizes app hierarchy clearly and delineates what the user either sees or does at any given point. In other words, the most important factors to building your IA are where individual components of the architecture are placed (hierarchically), and how they’re labeled and displayed. With a standard flowchart, the shapes follow specific requirements (rectangles are processes, diamonds are decision points, etc.) however, following that nomenclature isn’t a requirement. There are two major requirements for actually constructing IA: organizing it through a visual hierarchy (that is, a hierarchy of features, functions, and behavior) and creating a legend for displaying different types of features, interactions, and flows.

#Architecture diagram on the program user how to#

The challenge when building IA is in understanding how your app or website actually works from the user’s perspective, and how to organize that information into a readable, legible format. Let’s dive into a basic video to see how an IA is built.Īs part of the UX process, IA design follows very similar patterns to flowcharting: Add shapes and connect them with lines in an organized fashion to a single document.

With IA available, it becomes significantly easier to make key decisions for new features and implementations, to understand timelines for product changes, and to follow user behavior through multiple processes. Having a single document that delivers a simple and understandable representation of how the application or website works is vital for developing new features, updating existing ones, and for seeing what is possible considering the existing product. Just like a blueprint, IA provides designers (as well as product development and engineering teams) a bird’s-eye view of the entire product. We’ll use the blueprint reference often because the purpose of both documents is nearly identical. There is no set limit to the size or shape of IA nevertheless, it should encompass the generalized structure of the product so anyone (theoretically) should be able to read it and understand how the product works. The level of detail is up to the designer, so IA may also include navigation, application functions and behaviors, content, and flows. Information architecture (IA) is, like a blueprint, a visual representation of the product’s infrastructure, features, and hierarchy. What Is Information Architecture, and Why Is It Important? However, developing one isn’t as simple as putting a list of features together and mapping out how they work-let’s investigate the process. And just as blueprints are the most valuable document for an architect to use in the construction of a building, information architecture can be the most powerful tool in a designer’s arsenal. Similar to building architects using a blueprint to construct every part of a house, from physical structures to more complex inner workings like electrical and plumbing, information architecture describes the hierarchy, navigation, features, and interactions of a website or application. Defining every avenue and path that users can take through an app or website, information architecture is much more than just a sitemap to show what page leads where. Listen to the audio version of this articleĪs a standard part of the UX process, designers create information architecture when building products.