Information Architecture

What this skill is for

Information architecture (IA) is the structural discipline that determines what exists in a system, how it is grouped and related, what it is called, and how users traverse it. IA is invisible to users — they do not see the taxonomy — but it determines what they can find and what mental model they form of the space they are navigating.

Load this skill when:

• Organizing more than a handful of concepts, commands, or content items
• Users need to navigate or find things within a system
• The structure of an application, CLI, or TUI is unclear or growing inconsistently
• Command names, subcommand groupings, or help text organization feels wrong
• A redesign requires reorganizing content that users currently cannot find
• Labels or category names are causing user confusion

Do NOT load this skill when:

• The problem is a single view with no navigation requirements — go directly to interaction-design
• The problem is about visual presentation of a known structure — that belongs to visual-interface-design or the appropriate surface skill
• The content or commands are already well-organized and the problem is purely about how users interact with them — that belongs to interaction-design