Information Architecture : Ways to Identify Goals

Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is a story-telling approach to identify goals. You can better visualize and describe an outcome and you get good information on the meaning of the goals.

Ask your client to describe an ideal outcome in story form. You can dig deeper by describing what happens before the story, explore the middle further and identify what happens after it finishes.

Scenario planning in reverse describes what a failure looks like in story form. This is used as the starting point to figure out how to address the likely points of failure.

Pain Points

Identify current points of pain by asking what is going wrong and see if you can get to the bottom of why it is happening. As you discuss the pain points, you can identify consistent patterns, discuss underlying issue and turn it into a goal.

Backcasting

Start with an end and work backwards to identify what you need to do to get there.

The end positions are describe in scenario form and may describe a few different outcomes you are trying to reach. You can create a scenario for an ideal future, an acceptable outcome and something in between. Look at what is needed to reach each end point and tease out the issues. You can also identify intermediate goals that are most achievable than one big end-goal.

Reference

A Practical Guide to Information Architecture by Donna Spencer