Comments on Opening Pandora's Box: Special Deliverable #1

wuwen guo — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 03:51:18 GMT

希望有机会合作.
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andrea vos — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:59 GMT

I’ve been working in IA / Interaction design for more than 10 years and the strangest thing is that the more experienced I get, the more I’m convinced any idiot can do this work. This depressed me for quite some time; why am I doing this work and how long before they find out I’m not that good? But now I discovered that most of the choices we make that are blatantly obvious to us (e.g. to not create one pulldown with all the dates going back to last year, but to create a day, month and year pulldown to work together, smart eh?) are really not that obvious to others. They really need experts like us who work with their common sense all day (and all weekend, and all night) to point out the obvious. so now I’m not that depressed anymore, and would be even happy if someone would reinvent Visio to make it userfiendly! ;-)

(sorry for spellingmistakes, I’m Dutch… )

Lyle — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:18 GMT

Great, well written article Dan.

I also feel that we should think of IA and UX as fields that will grow and evolve rather than die out.

I posted some thoughts on this to my site a while back. Here an excerpt:

“IA projects in the future will continue to get more complex, and integrating multiple sites, content, and workflow-intensive applications will require an experienced information architect with real training.

“In the end, big, critical and risk-intensive projects will involve usability professionals and information architects with significant training and experience. Less experienced practitioners—usually trying to play many roles—will take care of the smaller, simpler efforts. We shouldn’t worry about this.”

My whole post: Practicing Usability in the future
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com/2002_02_24_crocolyle_archiv…

Thanks for the positive viewpoint—I’m looking forward to the next installment!

Dan — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:18 GMT

John, indeed you are correct. By “designer” in that context, I was referring to the specific field of graphic design. I should also have been clearer in my second paragraph: the process of documenting information architecture is creative, as is information architecture itself.

jz — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:18 GMT

I hate to pull a small part of a quotation out of context and run with it, but “Good information architects do not have to be good designers…”? That half sentence reeks of incongruity so badly that it was difficult to pay attention to the rest of your article. What are IAs doing, if not designing?

Knowing you, Dan, I think your point is probably that one needn’t be extremely skillful at GRAPHIC DESIGN in order to practice information architecture well. If so, fine, agreed. But I’ll again assert that IA is a design profession inasmuch as it is concerned with the conceiving, envisioning, and planning of a desired goal, with a particular set of constraints as considerations. To think of IA as separate and distinct from design is, in my opinion, a dangerous mistake that sacrifices much useful history, knowledge, and experience from which practioners of IA might be informed and improved.

Dan — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:18 GMT

Chin up, Joe! Yes, things can look grim—it is only a *glimmer* of hope after all—but keep in mind the landscape is changing. Although user experience disciplines, like the ones you mention, have been around for years it is only more recently the the diluge of information is hitting users. While it was easy to sweep those disciplines under the bottom line, so to speak, the glimmer of hope suggests that with more complex information needs, users will become pickier…

Today, I spoke with some people from a large network appliance company who said they are using “knowledge managers” (I would call them enterprise information architects) to help coordinate the production and dissemination of information digitally. If that’s not hope, I don’t know what is!

joe — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:17 GMT

I liked this quotation:

“Glimmer of hope: Information systems will quickly grow more complex, and continue on that trend.

As audiences face increasingly difficult information landscapes, our outputs will become more valued, our role will become clearer and our community will grow. A world rich with information demands concise documentation. Without it, the value of the information itself diminishes. With companies spending more money on information and knowledge, they will expect the systems built around them to be useful and efficient. The role of the information architect becomes abundantly clear in this type of environment.”

I liked it, but I don’t really believe it. Though it gave me warm fuzzies, on reflection my dark mood returned. Having been both a tech writer and user experience doodah for 11 years or so, I’ve seen companies and clients create ever-complex systems while they reduce (yes, reduce) their staffs in documentation, user assistance, and product/project design. Sadly, I envision IA following so many other disciplines into exile in the Land of Broken Toys…or Dreams…or User Experiences.

Still, I very much enjoyed your take on the situation. Let’s light a positive voice like yours rather than railing against the darkness, like mine.

christina — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:17 GMT

Actually we named it for a deliverable that applies to any aspect of structural (planning) design. Not just IA, which I think “Taxonomy Today” would be… boxes and arrows come into play in IA, interaction design and even strategic visualizations (good article on that in this month’s HBR, btw.”Charting Your Company’s Future ” www.hbr.com)
But that’s just semantics. I look forward to seeing what you gots to say about the pictures we draw….