---
name: information-architecture
description: Use when structuring and validating product content and labels.
---

# Information Architecture

Out of scope: menu styling or page spacing when grouping, labels, hierarchy, and findability are already settled; use `navigation-controls` or `interface-layout` for those decisions.

Organize content around user needs and product context. Treat any proposed taxonomy as a hypothesis until validated with representative users or behavior.

## Workflow
1. Clarify users, key tasks, content inventory, constraints, platform, and existing terminology. Separate supplied evidence from assumptions.
2. Identify the structural question: grouping, labels, hierarchy, cross-links, or findability. Draft a small number of plausible structures and explain tradeoffs.
3. Choose a method that answers the question: start with a content audit when inventory or ownership is incomplete; use an open/closed/hybrid card sort for grouping or labels, a tree test for findability in a proposed hierarchy, and task observation for contextual routes. If the inventory is already reliable, begin with the method that matches the largest unresolved question. Do not use a card sort to claim a structure is findable or a tree test to claim the wording is preferred.
4. State participant profile, task/sample limitations, success measure, and unresolved bias before interpreting any supplied results. Never invent research outcomes or claim statistical certainty from anecdotal data.
5. Recommend the next validation step and record what would change the taxonomy. Keep navigation polish separate from the underlying grouping decision.

For method selection and evidence labels, read `references/ia-methods.md`. Hand off menu layout to `navigation-controls` and broader discovery to `ux-discovery`.