# Information Architecture ## Introducing Information Architecture > [!tip] Definition Information architecture (IA) is a design discipline that is > focused on making information findable and understandable. > > - Places made of information > - Organized for optimum findability and understandability. ### The problems that information architecture addresses - In the past, the information is embedded in and tied to its container. A one-to-one relationship between information and container. - Then comes the "Rip-Mix-Burn" campaign. Information had dematerialized. - Challenge: Information Overload - Information is decoupled from both the artifact and from the contexts. - Digital media are part of a system that can gather other information as well. - Such decoupling has also made reproduction and distribution cheaper and easier. - Consistent semantic structures across different channels -> such must be abstracted from actual implementations - Balance between structural coherence (high-level invariance) and suppleness (low-level flexibility) ## Defining information architecture > [!quote] We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its > stones. > > Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Basic Concepts of IA - Information - Structuring, organizing, and labeling - Finding and managing - Art and science - _Information Ecology_ = Users + Content + Context