Information Architecture

While doing a wayfinding project I got better understanding of information architecture. Its about prioritizing an information and presenting it in a sequential structure for a simple and linear flow. A very rational and calculative process from both the ends, here not just designers has to be smart but some of it is also expected from its users. For instance if someone is leaving to Pune from Ahemdabad by his car then he better ask for the next nearest destination rather than asking for way to Pune at Ahemdabad highway. In such case it wont be a designers fault if he face any difficulty. Till Mumbai he can be easily guided by highway signboards and just before reaching Mumbai he can see a signboard showing way to Pune express highway directly. Or else he can opt for GPS system too, possibly smarter and quicker but though on same principles of navigation.

In information architecture we make a system as per classification in primary, secondary and tertiary levels. We classify the priority of information and then as per their need we put them to their hierarchy. Suppose if you want to meet a friend of yours who stay at Santa Cruise, first we need to know is their any direct local transport to their and if yes then which will be affordable and smarter. Then after reaching at nearest railway station or bus stop you need to know a famous and nearest landmark to your friend's house. After reaching their we inquire about his building then at entrance we look for his floor and then flat number. Ting tong!

Then I thought about our postal address system, as per info architecture in our addresses the country should come then state, city, lane, building, floor and flat number respectively but then it will be difficult for the sender (MANGO man) to write an address in a reverse order. So that the postal department have a concept of pin code. PIN stands for Postal Index Number and the code is 6 digits long. The first digit of the PIN code indicates the region in which a given post office falls in. The second digit indicates the sub-region, and the third digit indicates the sorting district within the region. The final three digits are assigned to individual post offices.
Then the other problem came to my mind was the date format. We follow the dd/mm/yy which also has to be in reverse order but after googling the date format I came to know that there is a format which is yy.mm.dd called Big endian form which is said to be followed followed in Asian countries, Hungary and Sweden. YYYY-MM-DD is an ISO 8601 international standard and DD.MM.YYYY using dot as separator with this sequence has been defined by ISO 8601. I really amazed when I saw a ISO certification of date format, obvious but still.