name: interface-architecture
description: "Design or critique information architecture, navigation, taxonomy, labeling, screen structure, content priority, findability, search and browse strategy, and information hierarchy."
Interface Architecture
Use when information structure, navigation, or screen priority is the design problem. Navigation is one expression of IA; work from structure first.
Separate The Decisions
Analyze separately:
- Conceptual model: user understanding of domain.
- Content model: objects, attributes, states, relationships, lifecycle.
- Taxonomy: categories and grouping logic.
- Labels: user-facing terms.
- Navigation: movement through structure.
- Search/browse: recovery when navigation fails.
- Screen hierarchy: primary, secondary, supporting, hidden.
- Wayfinding: location, origin, next actions.
Common UI Surface Checks
- Forms and transactions: object lifecycle, question order, grouping, review step, confirmation, and where users recover from mistakes.
- Search and browse: query intent, result metadata, filtering criteria, sorting, no-results recovery, saved state, and reset behavior.
- Lists, tables, and dashboards: comparison model, row/card identity, summary versus detail, density, grouping, and decision threshold.
- Settings and admin: scope, ownership, defaults, inheritance, permission boundaries, and reversible versus irreversible change.
- Content-heavy screens: purpose, source, freshness, reading order, summaries, help placement, and next action.
- Onboarding and setup: prerequisite knowledge, progressive disclosure, permission timing, skip/retry paths, and handoff to the first real task.
Diagnostic Questions
- Does the structure match user mental models or internal org structure?
- Can the user predict where a target item belongs?
- Are labels mutually exclusive, familiar, and scoped?
- Is the primary path visible without burying secondary paths?
- Are search, filters, and sorting designed around user criteria?
- Do no-results, empty, archived, hidden, permission-denied, and filtered-out states explain where content went?
- Does the screen expose one clear next action for the current task?
- Does the hierarchy survive mobile, long text, localization, empty states, and dense data?
Validation Methods
Match method to uncertainty:
- Content inventory: when the scope is unknown.
- Open card sort: when grouping language is unknown.
- Closed card sort: when category fit is uncertain.
- Tree test: when findability of a proposed IA must be checked.
- First-click test: when screen navigation priority is uncertain.
- Search-log/support-ticket review: when users already reveal missed labels.
- Cognitive walkthrough: when the path through structure must be checked step by step.
External guidance can inform structure; only local user language and task evidence can confirm labels and grouping.
Output
Produce:
- Architecture diagnosis: the structural issue in one paragraph.
- Decision map: conceptual model, content model, taxonomy, labels, navigation, hierarchy.
- Recommended structure: proposed grouping and priority.
- User-facing labels: with rejected alternatives when important.
- Findability risks: where users may look first and fail.
- Validation plan: tree test/card sort/first-click/usability test/log analysis.
- Implementation notes: only conceptual; do not drift into CSS or Figma steps.
For reusable IA or taxonomy decisions, use design_intelligence.decision.v1 from references/contracts.md.
Red Flags
- Top navigation mirrors departments.
- Every feature is same-level.
- Search compensates for bad structure.
- Labels mirror database nouns.
- Novices and experts are forced through the same path.
- Empty states do not teach content location.
- Hierarchy is size-only rather than task-based.