Although information architecture is one of those touchy-feely, new media buzz words that often gets bandied around by client-impressin', cappuccino-fuelled designers, it's actually an important part of the process of building a site.

It might have a fancy name, but it's useful stuff: information architecture is the procedure of organising a site's content into categories and creating an interface to support those categories. Or, in English, it's the process of working out what you want your site to do, how it's going to do it and making sure it's all going to work before you start building the thing.

Sounds easy, eh? Well, not always. On complicated sites it can be a real challenge finding out the best way to organise the content and functionality while trying to keep the client, the techies, the designers, the marketing folk and, of course, the target audience, happy.

But it has to be done: sites can only start being built after the project's structure has been firmly nailed down, making this is a crucial part of the process. Mistakes made here may end up costing a fortune in time and money later.

Check out the links on the left for more info or read my Internet Magazine article, 'Plan your site with information architecture'