Now more than ever it is crucial to bring other voices into the design process. This is especially true for information architecture, which is becoming increasingly abstract as we design structures for digital products and algorithms for unpredictable information spaces. The design process thrives on engaging multiple perspectives, and one of the best ways to do this is through collaborative workshops.
In this talk, we’ll look at three workshop activities you can use to draw other stakeholders into the IA process. Rapid personas is a mad-libs approach to personas to put workshop participants in the right mindset. Requirements on a scale is a voting activity that encourages the team to talk about trade-offs and compromises in designing navigation. Finally, build the nav is a group brainstorming activity to define the purpose of navigation.
At the end, we’ll zoom out and talk about how these activities illustrate essential principles for bringing others into the IA process.