IA
Why most information architecture is built around the business, not the user
Most structures make perfect sense internally. That does not mean they make sense to users.
Why information architecture often mirrors the business instead of user thinking, and why that creates friction even when the interface looks good.
In short
Why information architecture often mirrors the business instead of user thinking, and why that creates friction even when the interface looks good.
Why structure often reflects the organisation
It becomes pretty obvious, pretty quickly, whether it’s been shaped around how users think or how the business is set up internally.
More often than not, it’s the latter.
It rarely happens deliberately.
No one sets out to design something that’s confusing or hard to navigate. It tends to happen gradually, almost by default. Different teams own different areas, content gets created in silos, glossaryServiceA service is a component or function that performs a specific task within a system.Open glossary term evolve independently, and over time, the structure starts to mirror the organisation itself.
Departments turn into sections.
Internal language turns into glossaryNavigationHow users move around a website or product.Open glossary term.
glossaryProcessA process is a defined sequence of steps used to achieve a specific outcome.Open glossary term turn into glossaryPain PointA specific problem or frustration users experience when trying to complete a task.Open glossary term.
From the inside, it makes perfect sense.
From the outside, it rarely does.
Good information architecture rarely mirrors the business. It translates it.
How this shows up at scale
I’ve seen this play out at scale working across the NHS.
There wasn’t a single, unified structure. There were hundreds of sites, multiple departments, regional variations, all operating slightly differently. Each one had its own way of organising content, its own terminology, its own idea of what made sense.
Individually, none of it felt completely wrong.
But collectively, it created a glossarySystemA system is a collection of interconnected components that work together to achieve a specific function or outcome.Open glossary term where users were constantly having to relearn how things worked depending on where they landed.
You could see it in how people navigated.
They weren’t moving with glossaryConfidenceConfidence is the level of certainty in a decision or outcome based on available evidence.Open glossary term, they were orienting themselves over and over again. Trying to work out, how does this bit work before they could even focus on what they came there to do.
And that’s the cost of business-led structure.
Key takeaway
When structure mirrors internal ownership instead of user intent, users end up doing the work of translating the system for themselves.
Why users feel it immediately
Users don’t think in departments.
They don’t understand internal ownership, organisational boundaries, or how responsibilities are split behind the scenes. They arrive with a goal, something they need to do, find, or understand, and they expect the structure to support that.
When it doesn’t, they feel it immediately.
One of the biggest shifts on that work wasn’t visual.
It was structural.
What rebuilding around users actually means
We stopped trying to organise things based on how the organisation worked and started rebuilding the serviceInformation ArchitectureImprove navigation, content structure, and findability so users can understand where things are and how to move through them.Open service from the ground up, based on how users approached problems.
That meant going back to basics.
Understanding what people were actually trying to do.
How they described it in their own words.
Where they expected to find things.
Not once, but repeatedly, across different user groups, different scenarios, different glossaryContextThe surrounding conditions that shape behaviour and decisions.Open glossary term.
Card sorting became a useful tool here, not because it gives you a perfect answer, but because it exposes how varied people’s glossaryMental ModelA mental model is the way users understand how a system works based on their past experiences and expectations. It shapes how they predict interactions and outcomes.Open glossary term can be. What feels obvious to one person can feel completely unintuitive to another.
That’s where the work really starts.
What good information architecture really does
Because good serviceInformation ArchitectureImprove navigation, content structure, and findability so users can understand where things are and how to move through them.Open service isn’t about finding a single correct structure.
It’s about creating something that feels predictable.
On the NHS glossaryPlatformA platform is a system or environment that enables users, services, or applications to interact, build, or operate.Open glossary term, that meant introducing glossaryConsistencyConsistency is the use of uniform patterns, behaviours, and visual elements across a product to create familiarity and predictability. It helps users learn once and apply that knowledge throughout the experience.Open glossary term at a level that hadn’t existed before. Shared glossaryPatternA reusable solution to a common design problem.Open glossary term, shared structures, shared ways of organising information so that once a user understood one part of the system, that understanding carried across everything else.
That’s when things started to shift.
Users didn’t have to stop and think as much.
They didn’t have to reorient themselves every time they moved between sections. They could focus on what they came to do, rather than how the glossarySystemA system is a collection of interconnected components that work together to achieve a specific function or outcome.Open glossary term worked.
And that’s usually the signal that the structure is doing its job.
Why this is hard for organisations
The challenge is that getting there often requires pushing against how organisations naturally want to operate.
Different teams want ownership. Different departments want visibility. There’s always a pull back towards reflecting the internal structure, because that’s what feels logical from the inside.
But good serviceInformation ArchitectureImprove navigation, content structure, and findability so users can understand where things are and how to move through them.Open service rarely mirrors the business.
It translates it.
It takes something complex, fragmented, and internally driven, and reshapes it into something that feels simple and coherent from the outside.
What happens when that translation never happens
When that translation doesn’t happen, the burden shifts to the user.
They have to piece things together.
They have to interpret language.
They have to navigate a structure that was never designed for them in the first place.
And that’s where even well-designed glossaryInterfaceAn interface is the point of interaction between a user and a system, where inputs are made and outputs are received. It can be visual, physical, or conversational.Open glossary term start to break down.
Because no amount of polish can fix a structure that doesn’t make sense.
In my experience, the difference between something that feels easy and something that feels frustrating almost always comes back to this.
Not how it looks.
But how it’s organised.
And whether that organisation was built for the business or for the people actually trying to use it.