This article is from the February 2004 issue of Update.
At the Online Information conference in December last year Facet Publishing, in association with TFPL, launched Information Architecture: designing information environments for purpose. Peter Morville, one of the leading practitioners of information architecture and the author of the preface, was there. The book is a collection of contributions from authors with a range of different disciplines and experiences, edited by Alan Gilchrist and Barry Mahon of TFPL.
A feature of Online was the attention that was paid to information architecture (IA). Indeed the interest in the keynote speech from Peter Morville was so great that the audience resorted to sitting on the floor of the conference room.
There is of course still much debate about just what ‘information architecture’ is, echoing similar discussions on ‘information science’ over the last half of the 20th century. It is to their credit that the editors of the book allowed their contributors considerable scope to interpret the title, as this will undoubtedly stimulate debate.
During the conference I gave a paper entitled ‘Information Resources for Information Architects’, which I hoped would complement the references given in the book, and this article is based on that paper.
Books
Not surprisingly there is a rush by publishers to take advantage of the current interest in information architecture. A basic collection of books would usefully include:
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L. Rosenfeld and P. Morville. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. 2nd edn. Cambridge: O’Reilly, 2002.
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J. J. Garrett. Elements of User Experience. Indianapolis: New Riders, 2002.
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C. Wodtke. Information Architecture: blueprints for the web. Indianapolis: New Riders, 2002.
All the authors are in the forefront of the development of IA methodologies and good practice in the US, and are active members of the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (see below).
A more unusual but very thought-provoking view of information architecture is given by Roger Evernden and Elaine Evernden in Information First (Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann, 2003) .The subtitle is ‘Integrating knowledge and information architecture for business advantage’ and in it the authors set out to provide a toolkit that enables an organisation to create a clear picture of the way that information and knowledge are used within the organisation and in so doing build an enterprise IA that encourages the development of an information-based culture. This is an excellent book, full of practical examples, and includes the diagnostic and modelling tools as an appendix.
Asilomar Institute
The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (AIfIA) was launched in the US in November 2002 largely through the initial efforts of Christina Wodtke (Senior Design Manager for Search and Marketplace, Yahoo) and Louis Rosenfeld. Its mission statement is to ‘advance the design of shared information environments. We support a global community infrastructure that connects people, ideas, content, and tools. Through research, education, advocacy and community service, we promote excellence within our field and build bridges to related disciplines and organisations.’
The working definition of information architecture adopted by AIfIA is:
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the structural design of shared information environments;
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the art and science of organising and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability;
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an emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
However, AIfIA is at pains to qualify this on its website: ‘Are these definitions definitive? Absolutely not. Our craft is new and still taking shape. We’re clear on the center but fuzzy at the boundaries. This inherent ambiguity challenges us to think deeply and seek diverse perspectives.’
The range of material on the AIfIA website is already considerable (have a look at the Tools section) but of even greater note is that almost from the outset AIfIA set out to be an international organisation. There are more than 400 members from nearly 30 countries. AIfIA has an active translations programme where volunteers translate not only core material from English into other languages, but also the emerging range of non-English material into English.
Web resources
The range of web resources encompasses websites, wikis and blogs.
The IAWiki (www.iawiki.net/) is not only a good source of information on IA but also a good example of a wiki in action. Although developed nearly 10 years ago, wikis are still somewhat novel in providing editable web pages that, in effect, represent a dynamic FAQ site. If you want to find out more about wikis the best example is the wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) which now has nearly 200,000 entries.
Of the many blogs with IA interests among the best are:
A very valuable web resource is Boxes and Arrows (www.boxesandarrows.com) which is in effect a peer-reviewed e-journal on IA in all its diversity. The biographies of the editors of the site illustrate well the diversity of the people involved in seeking to develop IA practice. The papers are short and range from the deeply philosophical to the immediately practical. Recent articles include: ‘Executive dashboards’; ‘Designing customer-centered organisations’; ‘Don’t test users — test hypotheses’; ‘The devil is in the wireframes’.
The last title may merit some explanation. Wireframes are used to create the initial information architecture of a website or an intranet, and there is a lot of interest in software and other techniques that can offer rapid prototyping of websites.
There are two other web resources to round out this section. Jesse James Garratt is the author of The Elements of User Experience, one of the must-reads in IA and he has compiled a seemingly comprehensive list of IA resources (www.jjg.net/ia/). However, all is not what it seems, as it was last updated in June 2002. As a result it is a useful start but a potentially dangerous place to finish hunting down IA resources. Just one of the omissions is Peter Morville’s own site (http://semanticstudios.com). Although most of the content on the site is written by Peter himself, the range and perception of his contributions to IA still make this an essential stopping-off point in the IA journey.
Discussion lists
AIfIA has its own (http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/aifia-members) and there is another useful list at http://www.asis.org/AboutASIS/SIGEmailLists/ia.html.
Conferences
The reference to ‘Asis’ above leads me to the American Society for Information Science & Technology (Asist) IA Summit (www.iasummit.org), now in its fifth year, which takes place 27-29 February in Austin, Texas. This event has rapidly become the definitive event for IA practitioners, though it was quite a leap of faith and investment for Asist in the initial years of the event. However, IA is not just the province of the US; in February there is a conference taking place in Denmark (www.dfdf.dk/ik/ia/index.shtml).
Although information architecture was featured heavily at Online last year (and will do so again in 2004 I am sure) the UK Online User Group of CILIP felt that there was a need to initiate an IA event in the UK, and this will take place in London on 3 March. The event is being supported by AIfIA and the speakers will include Alan Gilchrist and Roger Evernden. Full details can be found on the new Ukolug website (www.ukolug.org.uk).
Martin White is Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd (www.intranetfocus.com).