Lisa Hutchins: Information Architect

All these things are done with the user firmly at the centre of the process which might mean doing extensive user testing to find out what works and what doesn’t, researching how competitor and ‘online neighbours’ do (and don’t do) the job, spending time with Google Analytics and other statistics packages, thoughtfully doodling designs on bits of paper, building semi-functional prototypes and having intense conversations with colleagues to champion the needs of the user among their many competing priorities and those of the client.

To be an information architect you need to be patient, organised and someone who can switch between detail and the big picture without losing sight of either. You need to have excellent people skills and to be able to negotiate with all kinds of other IT professionals to make sure your expertise is used to best effect in the site design. You need to be a skilled listener and to hear the things people aren’t saying as well as the ones they are. You should be able to rise above office politics and get people from different camps talking to each other. You need to be quietly assertive as well as creative and to have that ability to come at a problem sideways which leads to your finding innovative solutions to difficult problems. You need a passion for the subject of usability, the ability to evangelise for it and the aptitude to keep abreast of technical developments across a wide range of technologies. And you need to be mentally tough enough to constantly sell the importance of your work - as a champion of users - to the sceptical and downright cynical. Anyone wanting to know more about this fascinating subject should read Information Architecture and the World Wide Web by Morville and Rosenfield which is a well-regarded, readable textbook on the subject.

An information architect might work for a large organisation with a big website to run, or (probably most often) they might move between a series of contracts as their skills are needed. I am freelance and work on general website development, bringing my content and information management skills to the table alongside my partner’s design and coding skills. One of the biggest challenges I face is convincing the people who write the cheques of the value of my work. It’s obvious what the designer and the coder do - they make it pretty and they make it work. You would be amazed at how many people see the content as a bolt-on extra that follows on from the design rather than seeing that usability and content inform the site’s look and feel. And the information structure - if I do my job well, it is seamless and invisible. A large part of the challenge I face is to make the invisible both visible and compellingly relevant to non-specialists.

The sort of tasks I might carry out during my working week are as follows. I could be handling incoming enquiries to establish what potential clients want, whether we can provide it and whether we both have a similar understanding of what that work is worth. I might be preparing a formal written pitch for a potential client or even a tender document if we are approaching a larger organisation for work. A lot of these discussions are done by phone when a client can explain to me what they need and I can discuss our approach. It’s also a great way to learn about a client’s business or organisation and find out what they think their users will be looking for. We are careful only to accept projects we know are fully within our scope (or the scope of certain collaborators we trust implicitly to work with us) and where the clients are positive and enthusiastic about their project. If they are clearly doing it because they feel they need a website but aren’t really invested in having a good one - that can never end well. Similarly if they have an unrealistic idea of what our work is worth. This means that, for one reason or another, we can end up rejecting as much work as we accept.

I might be project managing - dividing a project up into tasks with deadlines for us and for the client (such as supplying images, logos or written materials or signing off aspects of the project) and entering the elements into project management software. I might be doing research about design trends, the websites in a certain category or usage statistics. Because we use WordPress and I am expert with it I tend to build the page structure and set up things like categories myself rather than handing it over to a developer - that’s something I really enjoy doing. I may have my head buried in really detailed research, or be thinking of methods that will gather the data I need with the resources I have available, or trying to have big, general ideas about top-level design features.

I may be writing the user documentation to go with a new website or maybe talking a user through the WordPress interface. They may have an urgent problem that needs troubleshooting so my partner and I might be communicating with them via email or telephone to solve it. I may have to talk direct to their hosting company to deal with server-side problems and get issues resolved or do routine tasks like set up email accounts and get server-side software updated. There’s a big aspect of customer service and dealing directly with clients in this job. I might be researching different customisations (known as plug-ins) that we might advise a client to use or possibly working with my partner to thrash out aspects of visual design that we can both agree on.

I might be writing or editing written content - the kind full of keywords that search engines like, although I’m not a SEO specialist and I’m not interested in doing that full-time. Another content task I might be doing is migration - taking the stuff off an old website and repurposing it for a new one, writing anything that is needed along the way. I may be working out which social media services are most relevant and allaying a client’s fears about using them. I might be setting up Twitter accounts or Facebook pages and getting everything to talk to everything else. I might be organising documents into a document library, tagging and categorising them. I might be adding press releases to a client’s blog. I might be writing posts for the company blog or getting busy on Twitter to try to keep in contact with our local businesses. I may be going to a conference, networking or training event or making sure our own website is functioning properly and up-to-date - important shop window that it is. And then there are business administration tasks such as finance, record-keeping and compliance to carry out.

You can read Lisa's full account in her original blog post 'A Day in my information professional's life'