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When creating the information architecture of a website, users are often overlooked in favor of internal politics and organizational thinking. On larger websites, each departmental silo wants its own section of the site, and they often fight to ensure their section is featured in the main navigation. Even small sites suffer from problems with information architecture as business owners focus more on what they want to say rather than what users want to know.
In most cases, stakeholders are the worst people to decide on the information architecture, so I want to share an alternative process. However, before we can implement this process, we need to explain why our stakeholders should not be defining the site structure. To do that, we need to teach them about mental models.
Understanding And Explaining Mental Models