Have you ever built a product that makes perfect sense to the development team, only to discover that users struggle to find what they need or approach tasks in ways you never anticipated?

Unfortunately, people using your software don't necessarily understand the world the same way you (or your domain experts) do. They might use completely different terminology, group things together that you've deliberately kept separate, or look for something in a place that seems utterly illogical to everyone involved in building the system. And when that happens, it's tempting to assume the users just don't understand how things work.

Information Architecture (IA) gives us some useful ways to investigate these differences. By exploring how people categorise information and the language they use to describe it, we can uncover assumptions that have quietly made their way into our software. Sometimes the problem is simply a confusing label or an awkward navigation structure, but sometimes what looks like a usability problem reveals something more interesting about how we've understood the domain itself.

In this hands-on workshop, we'll explore practical IA research techniques and how they can complement domain discovery. We'll look at some of the common mistakes people make when organising information, then put some assumptions to the test through exercises that demonstrate just how differently people can interpret the same set of concepts.

You'll learn how to:
- Recognise common Information Architecture mistakes and the assumptions behind them
- Use card sorting to investigate how people group concepts and what terminology makes sense to them
- Run tree testing to find out whether people can actually navigate the structures you've created
- Identify inconsistencies between users' mental models and the way your software represents the domain
- Use what you've learned to make better decisions about terminology and information organisation

You'll leave with practical techniques you can use in your own projects, and perhaps a few more questions about some of the decisions you've already made - because a model that makes perfect sense to everyone in the room isn't necessarily the model that makes sense to everyone outside it.

This is a variation on my established workshop: Information Architecture for Development Teams. It is specifically designed to appeal to an audience familiar with Domain Driven Design.