Screenshot images in this post are from the latest Apple iOS 7 Human Interface Guidelines.

Don’t borrow without thinking it through. I know a lot of graphic and UI designers like to recycle designs done by well-known products. If you are a designer, I encourage you to look at the user interfaces and guidelines critically — even if it’s a company you admire for having a history of good design.

The user interface recommendations, as shown in the screenshots in this guide, may be good enough for some target users. But these same guidelines may not work well for other type of users in other contexts.

General issues

The Human Interface Guidelines show general issues in:

• Font colors. Sometimes font color clashes with background color. It makes it harder to distinguish words without an extra effort
• Low contrast between type and background in some user interfaces
• Low contrast between application buttons and backgrounds in some user interfaces
• Light font weight increases the low contrast issue

See-through layers. Keep in mind that see-through colors add a layer of unintended information to the user interface. It may work in this product but needs to be reconsidered for other users and contexts.

White space: “Add plenty of white space”…but not in all areas? This is especially an issue with the bottom row, in the image below, since it’s so close to the menu bar at the bottom of the screen. People with fat fingers know what I mean. I’ll be the first one to click on (31+Inbox).

System Icons

The Apple brand seems confused and diluted here.

• The amount of colors and intensity of the colors adds to the visual clutter and clashes with the above-mentioned goal of “calm and tranquility” (see text next to the calendar image above)
• The icons are not integrated with the Apple brand as expressed by the hardware
• Cartoon-like illustrations are mostly absent from the Apple brand (see “Newstand” icon in the image below)
• There is inconsistency with the level of abstraction used in the illustrations. Some icons are rendered in realistic details and others take an abstract interpretation
• There is a lack of consistency in the use of brand colors and brand motifs
• There are colors used here that are not consistent with the colors used in other Apple brand areas

Have you ever searched for something within a website but the “Search” feature didn’t find it?
But you were sure the content was there.

Maybe you went to a website, shopped around and found something you liked, but you didn’t buy it at the time. A few days later, you come back and it’s nowhere to be found!

Search engines may get you to a website, but once you’re there — you’re on your own, or at least, you’re at the mercy of the website’s search feature.

Issues with internal search can, over time, cost an eCommerce company millions of dollars. Yet, I often see many companies with broken internal search features.

Information architects can help improve an internal search feature, so that you can find what you’re looking for within a website.

One of the things information architects do, is identify, and link terms that identify information about your products, services, and other important content. We periodically study search analytics to learn about the evolving terminology people use to find what they want.

We can accomplish quite a bit by studying search analytics and other data but we can also conduct user tests to observe how people search for things. These type of tests can lead to eye-opening moments as we sometimes discover unpredictable ways people search.

People’s search behaviors constantly change and evolve thanks to a lot of factors like: emerging technologies, economics, stage in life, physical abilities, time constraints, etc.

For a business, having someone who focuses on improving the search feature, also translates into the discovery of new business opportunities and warnings about changing consumer behavior that may lead to profit loss.

Marketing departments benefit from learning about the changing vocabulary of the consumer. They can use this knowledge to evolve their collateral and messaging, so it speaks the language of their prospects.

Where do information architects come from?
Information architecture is a branch of Library and Information Science. Librarians, the first professionals that enjoyed using digital networks, have been studying digital search patterns and ways to improve searchability for a very long time.

Today, serious information architects attend graduate school to learn how to improve search results, so digital systems and people are able to find the information they need to meet their goals.

Think of your information architect as an internal SEO (Search Engine Optimization) professional for the searches users do within your website. If you are wise, you may also ask them to help you with your external SEO, to help improve any existing efforts.

Businesses need to think about search seriously. At the end of the day, all the money you spent on marketing, promotions, advertising and external SEO, may go to waste, if your visitors don’t find what they need.