Everyday Information Architecture

If you work on the web, you should read Lisa Maria Martin’s Everyday Information Architecture. Information Architecture isn’t even my primary lane, but I feel like I learned so much that will help me be a better developer. I’m deeply impressed with how Lisa Maria Martin shares her process with skill, authority, and humor¹ within the constraints of a short book.

What I appreciated the most was how Lisa takes a lot of the things that web teams do intuitively (or out of habit) and gives them a clarity of purpose, a structure, and a process: Here’s why we do audits and how we generate inventories. Here’s different ways we structure content. Here’s common ways users try to find content on your site. Here’s why spreadsheets will save you and drive you mad, often at the same time.

Through it all, Lisa keeps an eye on the primary goal — to create better experiences for users, both the browsing/searching public and the content authors tasked with bringing their sites to the world. I’m going to be pushing this book into the hands of my teammates with evangelistic fervor.