Building Taxonomy and Information Architecture
Quick start
Collect or infer:
- •Content inventory (what exists or will exist)
- •User mental models (how users think about the domain)
- •Primary user tasks and goals
- •Business categorization requirements
- •Existing navigation or organization (if any)
Then produce output using TEMPLATES.md. Validate with RUBRIC.md.
Workflow
- •Inventory existing content and identify content types
- •Conduct card sorting or analyze search/navigation data for user mental models
- •Define taxonomy principles (mutual exclusivity, exhaustiveness, etc.)
- •Create hierarchical structure with max 3 levels of depth
- •Define naming conventions for categories
- •Map content types to taxonomy nodes
- •Test with representative user tasks
- •Run the rubric check. Revise until it passes.
Degrees of freedom
Freedom level: Low
- •Default: follow templates exactly
- •Allowed variation: depth of hierarchy (2-3 levels), number of top-level categories—as long as rubric passes
- •Strict constraints: taxonomy must be mutually exclusive; no orphan content; depth cannot exceed 3 levels
State awareness
- •Greenfield: Design IA before content creation; establish patterns early
- •Existing chaos: Audit first, identify clusters, then rationalize
- •Scaling content: Focus on scalable categories, not content-specific buckets
- •Multi-product: Define shared taxonomy layer, product-specific branches
References
- •Templates: TEMPLATES.md
- •Rubric: RUBRIC.md
- •Examples: EXAMPLES.md
- •IA principles: reference/ia-principles.md