Information Architecture (IA)
Peter Morville spent some time in the library this summer looking for research related to information architecture. He just published a , categorized by broad topics like navigation and search. Useful stuff, but heavy reading at times.
Lou Rosenfeld , this time focused on search.
Gene Smith has collected quite a few . If you can’t get to one of , or if you’re wondering if you should go, this is a great place to wrap your head around EIA.
Lou Rosenfeld offers up his set of . Much more useful for evaluating findability than Jakob and Rolf’s original usability heuristics that were developed in DOS days.
“The is a cross-organizational, multi-disciplined effort to establish a standard for all public broadcasting content (radio and television), in order that metadata might be more easily exchanged between colleagues, software systems, institutions, community partners, individual citizens, etc. The Project will be a “touchstone,” a single, streamlined standard to which other database structures, including those of PBS, NPR, major producing stations, and other asset/content management systems will be “mapped.” It can also be used as a guide for the onset of an archival or asset management process at an individual station or institution.”
The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture .
AIfIA members now have the chance to share experiences with leaders in the field through the institute’s new mentoring program. The IA mentoring program aims to improve the skills of current and future information architects by providing them with the opportunity to be mentored by an experienced IA. Mentees must be AIfIA members, but mentors do not.
is Peter Morville’s contribution to the UX roadshow circuit. Boston, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. will all be Fall stops – $695 US for the day for early registration (reasonable compared to IA Summit workshops, still spendy for students and folks out of work).
Of course, with PeterMo findability comes to the fore: "The biggest problem on today’s web sites and intranets is findability". That’s true more often than not, and the workshop looks like it provides good groundwork for up-and-coming findability specialists.
One of the challenges for people offering workshops is balancing depth with broad appeal. I’d be interested to hear any thoughts from workshop alumni for Adaptive Path, Rosenfeld & Krug, or others…was the workshop too general? Or was it too specialized or over the heads of attendees?
In the May issue of EContent . He begins to ask two questions: “Why do Enterprise Content Management (ECM) projects take so long to implement? And why do they fail with such alarming frequency?” He quotes both Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville and stresses in his own words:”...there are no textbooks for practicing IA in large, decentralized environments made up of content silos” and “There is a bit of a tendency in the IA community to over-invest precious energy in KM-esque intellectual debates about ontologies and topic maps, when thought and research could better be applied to more pressing issues, like how to build compelling business cases for a corporate EIA team”.
There is still a possibility to attend one of the Information Architetcture seminars with Steve Krug and Louis Rosenfeld held in Washingthon, DC and Seattle. Louis is talking about enterprise IA and Krug about usability problems and “how to make low-cost/no-cost testing an everyday part of your company’s design process”. More details at
The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture () is pleased to announce the opening of the , an international collection of the best articles, books, blogs, guides, reports, and other resources related to the field of information architecture.
The IA Library was developed by Joanna Markel and Jeff Tang, two graduate students at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. Chiara Fox, Austin Govella, and Peter Morville provided support and served as mentors.
“Jeff and Joanna designed and built a fully-functional user interface and content management system for the Library. That’s quite an accomplishment for a single-semester independent study project!” says AIfIA’s president, Peter Morville.
The IA Library’s collection is still very much under development. We are adding new resources, particularly in languages other than English, to create a more well-rounded collection. In addition, AIfIA is actively seeking a volunteer Library Director to oversee the continued development of this important public service.
If you are interested in volunteering to help with the IA Library, or if you know of a resource we should include, please send your suggestion to .
To explore the Information Architecture Library go to:
Here's a zen question from the weird, wired world of the Web: Can there be an architect of something that will never exist in a three-dimensional form? This is Ben Levin's zone. His business card says 'User Experience Architect,' and the title isn't something cutesy dreamed up by a human-resource consultant who has been to too many motivational seminars. In the Web world, this is a common job title in the field of usability - the interaction of humans and computers.The article gets a few things wrong here and there but it's interesting nonetheless to see how our profession is depicted in lay terms.
There are lots of handouts and presentations from the 5th IA summit available . Most in power point but also in word and PDF and for example Jared Spools presentation "14 things users want to know" is published as a .
Lars Garshol, Development Manager at Ontopia posted a - topic maps, ontologies, taxonomies, and more. Well worth the read, since it's a clear explanation that separates similar concepts that too often get muddled.
This year's IA Summit, themed "Breaking New Ground," seemed to have the right mix of new and returning folks, a nice variety of interesting and well-attended pre-conference workshops and several tracks of presentations to suit the IA of every flavorThoughts on presentations from and from .
There's a new that's open for participation until March 31, 2004 (). It's is focused on UCD & HCI but has a number of questions where Information Architecture can be selected, and it's fairly comprehensive in many other respects.
I think that it is beneficial for both practitioners and hiring managers to have accurate, realistic compensation information, and hopefully participating in this survey will help.
FYI, more salary and compensation info is available at the .