Chapter 7. Mobile Information Architecture

Your information architecture (also known as IA), is the foundation of your mobile product. A well-engineered product with good visual design can still fail because of poor information architecture. The truly successful mobile products always have a well-thought-out information architecture.

From a simple mobile website to an iPhone application, the mobile information architecture defines not just how your information will be structured, but also how people will interact with it. This is made especially tricky when you consider that different devices have different capabilities and therefore different interaction models. Take the way people interact with their devices: for example, a touch device on which the user literally points and clicks, or a more basic device on which the user uses the directional pad to navigate to the desired location.