The number one employee complaint about the intranet is “I can’t find anything.” Or it’s the related cousin complaint, “The search engine sucks.”

Both problems relate to ineffective information architecture. An ineffective information architecture leads to confusion and frustration and an over-reliance on the search engine to magically solve all problems. Over course, if content is not well-stored (e.g. properly tagged, labeled, categorized, etc.) then the search engine will also fail. But most users would prefer to navigate a site’s content categories and home page links. Search is more of a crutch.

“Information architecture (IA) is essential to a successful site,” says Cathy McKnight, a consultant with Toronto-based Prescient Digital Media.

“An IA provides the blueprint to follow before you dive in and pull your site together. It is the science of figuring out what you want your site to do, what information you want it to provide and how people are going navigate to that information. It is so important, that IA gurus join The Information Architecture Association to share in each other’s guru-ness.”

Cathy offers some great insight and suggestions in Information Architecture - the science of site layout Content in the Web 2.0 World