Aren't Site Maps and IA Models really the same thing? (Tuesdays with Joe, Episode 04)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ก.พ. 2025
- I've encountered an untold number of situations where, upon asking a project team to show me their planned Information Architecture (IA), they show me a Site Map instead.
I point out that this isn't an IA model.
The team looks back at me, confused, and they ask: "But aren't they the same thing?"
Nope. But I completely understand why they believe it is.
That confusion isn't new, partly because people on the UX/IA side of the fence do a terrible job explaining the difference.
A site map, as an artifact, does have value. It can certainly tell us whether or not all screens are present and accounted for. It can also tell us how a user may move from one screen to another.
But having a site map does nothing to ensure that the content surfaced on those screens is important to those users.
We've created this artifact, but that doesn't mean we know whether or not the organization and navigation of those screens will make sense to those users.
In this week's episode of Tuesdays with Joe, I'll explain (simply and clearly) the true difference between a site map and an IA model. I guarantee you'll never confuse the two again ;-)
More where that came from: www.ux365acade...
6 years later and this information is still very important to me. Thank you for this.
Awesome! Happy to be of service. 👊
Hi Joe,
Your strategy to explain things is awesome. Thanks for your time to give this content.
Hi Joe,
I'm your fan! I love the way you put things with simplicity and concreteness. IA is 'Why' and Sitemap is 'What'. Brilliant!
Thank you Ritesh! Thrilled to hear you're finding this stuff useful.
thank you sir ❤
This is the best description ever! Thanks a ton!!
Hi Joe, thanks for the info. How do you document IA? I understand the distinction between “how” for IA and “what”for site maps. But when you want to show the IA to stakeholders, it often looks very much like site maps. Do you have examples/templates of documenting IA, focusing on “how” as you mentioned?
The best thing to do is to not make it visual at all - instead use a traditional numbered text-only outline in a Word or Google doc. Mind mapping type visuals work as well, but just text and lines, no shapes. The minute you have boxes, people think “pages.”
Hey Joe, This is great but I always get this question: What set of deliverables can be considered to do a complete IA? Do you have any thoughts on it?
Anand, I've always used a visual map as the end deliverable, although that work usually is socialized via whiteboard work and Word docs first. The final deliverables look like these IA examples, which you can download: www.givegoodux.com/resources/ (scroll to see the IA deliverables link). Hope that helps!
Thanks for sharing but it didn't help me because I've seen some saying the IA is the same as sitemap, others saying there are 3 different categories of maping (IA, sitemap, and UI navigation), and now you are considering the sitemap as the UI navigation map. I am confused with all this different opinions. Neverthless I will give a thumb up for the video.
I didn't say it's the navigation map; I'm saying it represents the information that navigation could contain. Think about it this way: the IA is conceptual; it's the mapping of information only, not a physical representation of how many screens or pages are present, or how they're related.
Everything else related to physical site or app structure - no matter what it's called - is how that IA manifests in physical form.
Don't get hung up on terminology.
He only explained that in 1min and 11 sec 😂. Genius
I do my best to be quick and to the point. 😁