Hierarchy of Information

3.8 Hierarchy of information

Number 7,  Information hierarchy: well by now I am sure you have a lot of different types of information about the user, the brand, what the user wants? What does the user need? What is the user frustrated about? What are the user goals? So it is important to collect all this information, segregate it properly and put it in an order in which we understand which set of information is more important than the others.

So what is the information hierarchy? Information hierarchy is sort of taking the most important information to the least important information in a descending order. It is important to do this because the most important information needs to be showcased much more than the least important information in the designs. So when we create the navigation flow in next step we are going to take this into consideration, we will make sure that the information which is the most important is taken higher up in the navigation flow and subsequently this will also tell the UI designer that okay this is the most important information so this needs more prominence in the platform than others, so these are some of the things which you can actually consider while creating information hierarchy.

The first thing of course is financial goals, every brand, every company that you are working for is striving towards a set of financial goals. It is important to make those goals clear to the user and the user is on board. The next information that needs to be considered are the primary goals of the business, the primary goals may or may not be financial goals, the primary goals let’s say can be increasing the user base, if that is the primary goal then the referral program needs to be higher up in the information hierarchy.

The third option is product information, I am sure we now know exactly what the user wants? What does the user need? So this needs to be aligned with the product information, the product information needs to have all the details that would make the users not only comfortable but they would convince the users to buy or interact with that particular product.

The next thing that needs to considered are of course discounts and offers, we live in the world of discounts and offers, if we don’t show discounts and offers in the right place our users will never be able to see I and hence we are going to lose out on business, so any offers, discounts needs to be highlighted and showcased in the information hierarchy chart.

Next is user onboarding guide, when you have a new user it can be confusing moment for that particular user because that user is just getting used to your platform, so the kind of information that you are going to provide to that user to make that person comfortable is very very important so that is the topic that needs to be acknowledged and noted and thought about in the information hierarchy chart.

Lastly, any sort of business information about the company, about the founders, the vision of the company, including terms and conditions, referral programs, these are all information documents which go up in a platform especially in a digital platform, they need to be accommodated for as well.

Next, creating a feature list, once we have the information hierarchy it is important to make a list of the features as well, if you don’t have the features list you will not be able to do a navigation flow in the next step. So before we go to the next step I would actually showcase a template that I have created which would help you to make an information hierarchy. This is a template.

Now there are only five levels of importance at this particular template. Please feel free to add any more levels of importance depending on the kind of design that you are doing, so now remember the online ice-cream delivery store that I had conceptualized. I will take all the information and put it in an order of ranking.

So the most important information that I think should be there in my platform is showcasing the flavours of ice cream so that the user gets interested. Primarily this particular online store is selling ice-creams so if the user does not get to see all the different flavours that this particular store is offering they are never going to be interested in buying from that store, the product in this particular place comes first.

Next, showing offers and discounts, remember my target clients are college students and young working professionals. For them, offers and discounts are very very important, this as a whole is true for the company as well, I need to make sure that offers and discounts are properly showcased and tagged with every product category or basket.

Fast delivery and good quality packaging is something that I need to showcase because remember I am selling ice-creams, ice-creams need to be delivered fast and need to be delivered in such a way that there is no chance of any spillage, so these sort of information would help me earn the trust of the users.

Next I need to talk about payments here, I need to tell my user that these are the different types of payment options that I have so don’t worry whatever ice-creams you are buying from me you can pay me in any different ways possible, you can use your debit card, you can use your credit card, you can use UPIs you can use google pay, you can also do cash on delivery if you want to. So buy from me and do not worry about the payment.

Last, combos that I am selling, so this is more of a softer communication but I am also selling not to one individual but in a lot of cases to groups and that would help me increase my customer base and my resource management. It would have an immense impact on my economic growth as a company as well, so selling combos is something that I have realized from talking to my users from doing my primary research that people do not always want to buy one option but multiple ones. So that’s about it with information hierarchy from my end please feel free to actually create your information hierarchy according to the topic that you have chosen.

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