Design principle: Organizing information

Ordering information alphabetically is a great way to provide random access to data. It is one of the best ways to organize information when the amount of data is big (Dictionaries, encyclopedias, book indexes for example).
It is also a good fall back when the information can’t be sorted with another method.

Time is a great way of categorizing events that have happened over a fixed time duration.
Use it to present and compare events over a fixed time duration. It allows us to observe and compare changes that occur in that time frame.

Using categories is a great way to organize information when it needs to be sorted by similarity or relatedness.
But keep in mind that this has a certain degree of subjectivity in it: people don’t always group things the same way. Also, be careful with the number of sub-categories that might appear.

Organizing things by hierarchy is helpful when the information can be organized by comparing things across a common measure (small to large, lowest to highest, etc.)