Information Architecture Series: Part 3 - Who is your target audience?
A challenge associated with information architecture is understand the needs of the target audience. The target audience can range from the customer team being used as a collaboration environment to share information amongst themselves, to an internet site presenting information for the world to see. You need to know the target audience and the expectations of the audience. Of course you start by asking the customer questions like: Is this site only being used by the team? Will management ever need to access this site? How far up the management chain will this information need to be accessed? Are there other work teams that you interact with that need access to this information? What are your target audience’s expectation for the information? You have your answers from the customer. So, let’s go get started! Sike! The risk with just taking the customer’s word for it is you may end up in conflict or worse, missing a needed item. Once you have dis