Steven Hart
Information Architect
PEI Group (1): From document library, to intelligence platform
PEI Group has valuable content and data, but interrogating it is laborious: a structural problem that UI can only fix to an extent.
I modelled an asset class as a knowledge graph in Neo4j to show how it could give new insights into the connected objects (investment firms, articles, data, people and events) of the PEI domain.
Then I designed page templates that showed how the new intelligence could be surfaced, and demo'd a design vision for the product to the senior leadership team.
This was a self-initiated proof of concept which won support from the Head of Design and Head of Data & AI at PEI Group.
Gatwick Airport
Airport websites can appear more complex than they need to, because they expose every service equally: flights, parking, shopping, hotels, security, terminals.
This work structured an online experience around a simple organising principle, relevant to all users of the airport: the flight number.
Barclays Bank Corporate Banking
Redesigning corporate client onboarding at Barclays by working 'upstream' — mapping data flows and process dependencies before designing the interface.
PEI Group (2): Designing for discovery and understanding
When content and data are organised by business group or type of content, it leaves the user with too much work to do.
I defined a content strategy and navigation schema to fix that and make content more discoverable, and more useful.
Screwfix
Optimising the shopping experience of a large and complex catalogue by removing decision friction, without changing the underlying business systems.
About me
I’m an information architect with over twenty years’ experience in UX and product design.
My focus is the layer beneath the interface: the structures that determine what a product can know, express, and do, and the design foundations for products and platforms that sit over those structures.
That means working with domain models, taxonomies, knowledge graphs, and the controlled vocabularies that make complex information coherent at scale and easy to design effective frameworks around.
What I do
Product strategy and vision
UX architecture; interaction design
Structure content and navigation for complex systems
Design taxonomies and controlled vocabularies
Model domain concepts and relationships
Align data structures with real user goals (or vice-versa)
Define interactions that make complex systems usable
How I work
I start by understanding how a domain works, mapping the key concepts and objects, how they relate, and how they generate meaning for users.
From there, I define structures that support both user understanding and platform capability.
A note on AI
AI systems are only as effective as the structure of the information they operate on.
When content and data are organised around clearly defined entities and relationships, both people and AI systems can retrieve more accurate information, generate more reliable outputs and surface patterns that would otherwise remain hidden.
This makes information architecture a critical part of building useful, trustworthy AI-driven products.
Steven Hart
Information Architect