9 Questions with an Information Architect
October, 2006
ISITE Design Senior Information Architect Caton Gates put down the mouse for a few moments to share some observations and thoughts on the fascinating world of information architecture. Caton is a seasoned web usability expert with more than 10 years of experience helping companies large and small solve usability and information architecture challenges.
What exactly is an Information Architect?
As an information architect, my role is to help clients explore what they want from their website, find the best ways to accomplish their goals and translate that into a set of documents that the rest of the team can use as a reference. As with "real" architecture, these plans are representational illustrations of the finished project. Depending on the nature of the project, I might be called in at several points during development to clarify points, rework a solution, or and test the website as it gets produced.
So, Why should businesses care about IA?
At the risk of sounding overly self-important, if organizations don't care about IA, they're not being duly diligent. Do they want their site or application to be usable? Do they want it to be an experience that encourages sales, return traffic or adoption? There are few instances in which offering up a clunky, unfriendly interface with hard-to-find information really supports a brand or helps the bottom line. Don't get me wrong -- just having an IA phase is no guarantee that a project will be a success, but not having it certainly doesn't help. If you believe in making a detailed plan, then you should believe in the merits of an information architecture phase.
Have any IA horror stories to share? Give us some dirt.
I don't think I'm at liberty to share any recent ones. Our clients are reading this, right? ;-)
There was a project several years ago, back in the height of the bubble, where a client had invested in a crazy-expensive content management solution that we were required to work with. I'm pretty adaptable, but that particular CMS had some significantly weird shortcomings, like not being able to use text links in managed content. We found creative workarounds, but it would've been simpler to maintain and a much better experience for their users if we hadn't had to. If the client had worked with us to define the user experience first and then selected the most appropriate technology, a lot of pain could have been avoided. Not a bad lesson.
What's an IA challenge that you solved that is especially cool? Cool as in high fives around the office and a standing ovation from the client.
In recent work, I'm pretty proud of the way our Flash-based eLearning solution works -- both for students and content creators. Student-side, I'm just pleased with the way our interactions work. They're slick, accommodate a wide range of content types and requirements, and can be used to teach almost anything. Under the hood (and behind the scenes for most people), we've architected a pretty sassy XML structure that controls some fairly complex behaviors. While technically advanced, it is really quite logical and human-readable.
I should say here that ultimately, it's all down to the quality of your development team, both as collaborators and implementers. A good idea poorly implemented isn't worth much, and those of us on the "big picture" side of projects owe a significant debt of gratitude to the folks responsible for reifying the project vision through code.
How are information architecture and usability intertwined?
Intertwined? Like the snakes on a caduceus, like the helices in a strand of DNA, like two hanks of hair in a French braid. You can't have one without the other.
Information Architecture should concern itself with usability more than anything else. Good information architecture flows from good usability (or maybe its the other way around). It's concern for the user that differentiates IA from, say, library sciences-style taxonomies, which produce logically consistent structures but assume that you'll have to learn how to use the system, rather than the system being designed for intuitive use. The Library of Congress system makes sense, given some experience of it and a handy pocket guide, but your average patron couldn't intuit the location of a book in the stacks the first time they walked through the door.
However, usability isn't just an up-front concern. In wireframing out new work, you try to leave a decent amount of room for the creative department and developers to bring their own unique contributions... but, that's where iterative development / QA comes in. Checking in, evaluating the work as it goes from concept to reality and ensuring that it still speaks to the user profiles, still accomplishes the design goals, is part of being an IA as well.
It seems like you can't get through a cup of coffee without someone mentioning Web 2.0 these days. Does "Web 2.0 thinking" change the way you think about Information Architecture?
Depends on what you mean by Web 2.0. A lot of what people associate with Web 2.0 involves using AJAX to handle interactions that would have previously required the browser to load a new page. This type of interaction is game-changing, in that before it came into common usage we had a fairly limited toolbox to play with. AJAX has significantly expanded the ways you can approach a user-interaction, making for a much more application-like web experience. In exploring the internet, you encounter new and unexpected ways of solving old problems almost daily.
Web 2.0 can also refer to sites that rely on content generated by users, that's also managed and organized by users. We used to talk a lot about "building communities," but communities are built and strengthened by meaningful interactions, and on the internet that means a fair amount of reading and writing, generally focused around a shared interest. Allowing lightweight contributions, like tagging, rating or cross-referencing a content item lets you benefit from the wisdom of the masses without asking too much of them. People are growing more used to this type of collaboration, both as content consumers and contributors. So, if I'm working on a project that could benefit from user-generated folksonomies, for example, it's well-worth building support in from the beginning.
What site today has an IA you wished you developed?
Apple. If only because I can't count the number of clients who've said "I want a site just like that," even when they really, really don't.
What advice do you have for aspiring Information Architects?
You are your own best subject, in that you'll never be inside of anyone else's head more thoroughly, no matter how decent your testing protocol. So, pay close attention to your own reactions. At the same time, remember that you're unique, and are very likely not representative of your target audience. You may just know intuitively when something's wrong, or designed badly, but that doesn't mean that you know what's right, or that what's right for you is right for everyone. That way lies hubris.
Where do Information Architects hang out online?
The above are all good for articles, and will sometimes link to interesting examples, but I hang out all over the place. The most inspiring stuff tends to get dugg, boing-boinged, MeFi'ed, and otherwise trumpeted across our fair series of tubes.
Thanks for your time Caton. Fascinating stuff!
