Why most information architecture is built around the business, not the user

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, servicesglossary×ServiceA 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 navigationglossary×NavigationNavigation is the system of menus, links, and cues that lets people move through a product and reach what they need. It exposes the underlying structure, and is how most users experience that structure.Open glossary term→. Processesglossary×ProcessA process is a defined sequence of steps used to achieve a specific outcome.Open glossary term→ turn into journeys. From the inside, it makes perfect sense. From the outside, it rarely does.

Reorganisations make it worse over time. Each one leaves a trace in the structure, because the sections created under the old shape are rarely revisited when the shape changes. What users navigate ends up being a record of how the organisation used to be arranged, not even how it is arranged now.

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 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 systemglossary×SystemA 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. They weren't moving with confidenceglossary×ConfidenceConfidence 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, working out how does this bit work before they could even focus on what they came to do. That's the cost of business-led structure.

The cost is easy to underestimate because it is distributed. No single moment of reorientation is expensive. Repeated across every section, every visit, and every user, it becomes the largest single tax the systemglossary×SystemA system is a collection of interconnected components that work together to achieve a specific function or outcome.Open glossary term→ levies, and it never appears as a line item anywhere.

One of the biggest shifts on that work wasn't visual. It was structural. We stopped trying to organise things based on how the organisation worked and started rebuilding the information architectureservice×Information 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. Card sortingguide×Card SortingOpen, closed and hybrid card sorting compared: how to learn the way users group and label content, and when each variant is the right one.Open guide→ became a useful tool here, not because it gives you a perfect answer, but because it exposes how varied people's mental modelsglossary×Mental 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.

The vocabulary work is often the most immediately valuable part. Internal terms are precise, agreed, and frequently not what anyone outside the organisation would ever type or say. Adopting the words users already use costs nothing and removes a translation step from every interactionglossary×InteractionInteraction refers to any action a user takes within a product and how the system responds. It includes clicks, taps, gestures, and inputs that drive the user experience.Open glossary term→.

Card sortingguide×Card SortingOpen, closed and hybrid card sorting compared: how to learn the way users group and label content, and when each variant is the right one.Open guide→ earns its place because the disagreements are the finding. Where participants group things the same way, the structure is settled. Where they split, you have located a genuine ambiguity, and knowing about it in advance is what lets you design around it rather than being surprised by it later.

Good information architectureservice×Information 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 platformglossary×PlatformA platform is a system or environment that enables users, services, or applications to interact, build, or operate.Open glossary term→, that meant introducing consistencyglossary×ConsistencyConsistency 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→ that hadn't existed before: shared patterns, shared structures, shared ways of organising information so that once a user understood one part of the system, that understanding carried across everything else. 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 on how the system worked.

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 information architectureservice×Information 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.

Holding the line afterwards is its own piece of work. Structures drift back towards the org chart because each individual requestglossary×RequestA request is an action sent from a client to a server asking for data or a service.Open glossary term→ to add a section is reasonable and comes from someone with a legitimate interest. Without a named owner and an agreed principle to point at, the translation quietly reverses over a couple of years.