To draft an IA, you will need to think about the 3 perspectives (users, content, context). Good IA is usually achieved through an iterative process of drafting, testing, updating and retesting, taking these perspectives into account.

The first step of drafting IA is sorting the content into logical category groups. There are various methods to achieve this, including:

• just thinking about your content, writing likely category headings and sorting your table of contents into a logical structure
• open card sorting – put example content on a set of cards and ask users to sort the cards into groups of similar content; label the groups once users have finished sorting
• closed card sorting – develop a set of categories and put example content on a set of cards; ask users to sort the cards into the predetermined categories.

When you are thinking of categories, put yourself in your users’ shoes. Every user has a different perspective and different way of looking at the world. They are also likely to know less about the topic than the content authors.

Categories are not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but rather depend on the needs and understanding of your users. Any category that helps the user to find what they need is ‘right’.

Some useful tips when drafting categories are to:

• use general definitions and groupings, not technical (eg tomatoes go in ‘Salads’, not ‘Berries’)
• use common terminology, not technical (eg ‘Rain’, not ‘Precipitation’)
• use concrete terminology, not abstract (eg ‘Patent applications’, not ‘Innovation’)
• use categories that are specific enough not to become a dumping ground for content (eg ‘Research projects’, ‘Training programs’ and ‘Community outreach’, not ‘Our work’).