After a year of working as the Project Coordinator in the Interactive Department, I’ve finally made the move into another discipline: Information Architecture. It really was more of a demotion- I’ve gone from being everyone’s boss, to having two Senior IA’s above me. I’m in week three of my new roll, and I’m really enjoying not having a clue what is going on with the rest of the agency or having to deal with those pesky job jackets.
So what is this new thing that I’m doing?
As defined by the Information Architecture Institute, IA is the art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability.
Elevator pitch:
“Information Architecture is about structuring information to make it easy to find. When it’s easy to find products on your website, people will buy more. When it’s easy to find information on your Intranet, employees will save time and have the knowledge they need. Information Architects are specialized in understanding problems that people face when looking for information and designing ways to fix those problems.”
The easiest way I have found to describe the role of the IA is with the following analogy:
Let’s pretend you are building a house. You need three things: an architect to design it, a contractor to build the thing, and a designer to make it look pretty. The architect doesn’t care how it’s built or how it looks, just how it works and how the people who are going to live it are going to use it. That’s what the IA does for websites. The IA acts as the user advocate, determines how the site will be used and organizes all the information that needs to be on a site into intuitive little buckets.
In the grand process of web site creation, we are the step right after the project is awarded to the company. We come in and create user profiles (examples of people in our target audience that will be using the site), the site map, process flows (how the user is going to use the site to accomplish each task) and wireframes. (I draw stick figures of websites all day.) First the IA develops the functionality. Then the Art Director puts a skin on it and makes it look pretty. Finally the Developer comes in and makes it work. Tah dah! You have a website.
Other titles for IAs include Usability Engineer, Interaction Designer, and User Experience Designer.
Currently IA is a very web-centric discipline. Almost all IAs work on web sites (though some are working on mobile/wireless, CD-ROMS, database systems, etc.). Because of this, most IAs are hired by companies with a large enough web presence to support a full-time information architect, or by service firms that create web sites for clients.
Think about everything you use on a daily basis: the phone, your computer, the remote, a stapler. All of these were designed in someway by someone with the user in mind. And after they finally perfected the design, it hasn’t changed much over the years. If a new phone is designed correctly, you should be able to pick it up and figure out how to use it without much thought because of your experience with other phones. Just like you should be able to use a new website you come across because it has been designed based on standards that have developed over the years.
Learn more:
Wiki description of Information architecture.
10 questions about information architecture.
Check out my del.icio.us bookmarks on the topic.
