Information Architecture

IA Principles

VA.gov and the VA Mobile App follow established IA principles to create intuitive user experiences. These principles guide content organization and navigation design across all VA digital products.

1. User-centered design

• Conduct user research to understand how people categorize and search for information.

2. Sense of place

• Always provide a sense of place by utilizing design components and content to ensure visitors know where they are within the experience and where they can go next.

3. Consistency

• Use a consistent organizational structure and labels across different touchpoints - digital and physical.

4. Prioritization

• Limit and prioritize information to ensure its easy to find at time of need, reduce cognitive load, and allow visitors to explore more detailed information at their own pace.

5. Findability

• Present information in the right place and in the right way to meet the mental models and needs of visitors.
• Offer multiple ways for visitors to find and access information in order to meet various mental models and help them easily find the information they need.

6. Focused navigation

• Use clear navigation menus and labeling to ensure visitors understand the types of information it leads to.
• Provide clear CTAs and focused pathways to and through information to reduce cognitive load, friction, and burden.

7. Scalability

• Design a flexible IA and organizational system that allows content and information to grow and evolve over time

When to think about IA

Thinking about IA is important throughout the planning and design process. These are some of the more critical events that should trigger a conversation about the IA of your information.

• Launching a new feature or content on VA.gov or within the VA Health and Benefits app
• Adding a new category or subsection to the VA Health and Benefits app
• Adding a new subdomain or subdirectory to VA.gov
• Rewriting or redesigning a feature or content and needing to split or merge pages or screens
• Improving the findability of an existing feature, content, or screen
• Removing a feature, content page, and/or screen
• Changing the UX of global navigational elements or on page/screen buttons or actions

IA Resources

VA.gov IA Team

For questions about site-wide information architecture and content organization on VA.gov, contact the VA.gov IA team.

IA standards and guidance

• Guidance on the use of subdomains and subdirectories
• URL standards
• Guidance for creating user flows

Site maps

• VA.gov sitemaps for key areas of the health and benefits experience of VA.gov
• VA Mobile App - Detailed sitemap 2.0