Lisa Martin

When we organize information, we change it. The order in which it appears, the content that precedes or follows it, the ways we expand or condense it—everything we do to arrange information will alter its meaning.

It’s that time adds meaning. When a piece of content was published changes how it’s understood.

Categorical organization is often more flexible and robust than location or alphabet. It’s excellent for breaking down large data sets into smaller, more usable, more findable pieces.

In other words: things don’t fit, because we made design decisions based on assumptions.

You can’t organize what you don’t understand.

To build a new and improved system, you must first understand the strengths and weakness of what came before.

Thinking back to Chapter 1, we know categorization is one of the LATCH methods for organizing information.

Categorizing content is a process of criteria matching, which means we have to answer two questions:

What are the criteria for the category?
Does the content match the criteria?

In real life, we don’t perfectly define all categories up front, then assess content against that rigid structure one piece at a time. The process of categorization is much more fluid—we move back and forth between defining the criteria and vetting the criteria, seeing how the details fit in the system and how the system must change to accommodate details

Users coming to your site—especially new users—don’t necessarily know the big picture of your system or the granular details of the content within it. They may see your site as an overwhelming space with too many choices, or a narrow alley with few visible pathways. They don’t know where you’ve put the peanut butter.