Who Should Be the Information Architect?
The information architect of a large, complex
web site should be two things: someone who can think as an outsider and be
sensitive to the needs of the site's users, and at the same time is enough of
an insider to understand the site's sponsoring organization, its mission,
goals, content, audiences, and inner workings. In terms of disciplinary
background, the information architect should combine the generalist's ability
to understand the perspectives of other disciplines with specialized skills in
visualizing, organizing, and labeling information. As it's very difficult for
someone to retain all of these characteristics, you'll have to make some
compromises, but it's important to consider them as you search for that elusive
information architect.
1. Thinking Like an Outsider
Because information architecture is largely
about the big picture view of the organization, its goals, and its politics, a
logical choice for the architect role is a senior person who knows the
organization as a whole and who isn't involved exclusively within the
activities of one department. A senior person can often think like an outsider
even though being on the inside, and has enough clout to enlist other
departments' resources when necessary. One drawback to choosing a senior level
manager is that he or she may have so many other responsibilities that the work
gets delegated out to staff, thereby negating the original goal of using a
single, organizationally savvy person.
Another approach is bringing in a true
outsider: a new hire or a consultant (we typically function in the latter role,
but we are trying to avoid biasing our discussion too greatly). The great thing
about outsiders is that they can get away with asking naive questions
considered suicidal by insiders, such as "Why does your organization have
two completely separate order fulfillment departments? The web site will
confuse users if they can order products in two different, unresolved ways. Are
there any politics going on here that we can get past to improve the site's
design?"
Further, an outsider can ensure that the
organization chart isn't the site's architecture, and challenge confusing
orgspeak labels: "‘Total Quality Product Dissemination Systems'? Oh, you
mean ‘Product Shipping Options.'" The drawbacks of bringing in a true
outsider are that they can be expensive and can lack sufficient knowledge of
the organization to do the job, thus delaying the project's progress.
2. Thinking Like an Insider
As many organizations can't afford to
outsource information architecture services or move a head honcho into the
role, the responsibility often goes to an insider who is not a senior level
manager. Sometimes this is ideal; it's the people in the trenches who often
know the most about an organization's processes, and how to get things done
within that organization. For example, who knows an external web site's
audiences better than a marketing specialist, sales rep, or product manager?
Who knows an intranet's intended audiences better than a human resources
specialist, corporate librarian, or switchboard operator? How many senior level
managers can describe every step of their organization's fulfillment process,
from product ordering to computing sales tax and shipping charges to warehouse
picking to delivery? Someone needs this knowledge to mirror the process on the
web site.
The problem with a lower-level person is that
his or her knowledge may be too specific. Additionally, such a person often
lacks the political base required to mobilize cooperation from others in the
organization. A possible solution is to make information architecture this
person's only job responsibility. This could allow him or her to step away from
original duties and focus on the broader needs of the organization and the
users of its site.
3. Disciplinary Background
Since information architecture is a relatively
new field, you can't just post a job description and expect a flock of
interested, competent, and experienced candidates to show up on your doorstep.
Instead, you'll need to actively recruit, outsource, or perhaps become the information architect for
your site. If you are looking for someone else, you might consider the
disciplines listed below as potential sources. If you're on your own, it might
be worthwhile to learn a little bit about each of these disciplines yourself.
Or, if possible, find someone knowledgeable about them to work with you and
complement your own expertise. In either case, remember that no single
discipline is the obvious source for information architects; each presents its
own strengths and weaknesses.
3.1 Graphic design
Most people who have written about and
practice information architecture are graphic designers by training. This is
not surprising; as mentioned, graphic design is much more than creating pretty
pictures. It is geared more toward creating relationships
between visual elements and determining their effective integration as a whole.
On a page, printed or HTML, these elements include white space and typography
as well as images. So graphic designers traditionally have been focused on the
architectures of individual pages of information, which can be a weakness when
building a web site.
3.2 Information and library science
We've found that our backgrounds in
information science and librarianship have proven very useful in dealing with
the relationships between pages and other elements that make up a whole site.
By definition, librarians deal with organization of and access to information
within information systems and are trained to work with searching, browsing,
and indexing technologies. Forward-looking librarians (recently described as cybrarians) see that their expertise
applies in new arenas unrelated to providing access to printed information
stored in traditional libraries. So librarianship is an important discipline to
turn to for information architecture expertise. Just remember that librarians
are also prone to get lost in details, a weakness that can distract from
determining the big picture of a web site.
3.3 Journalism
Journalists, like librarians, are trained at
organizing information, but in a different setting. If your web site delivers
highly dynamic information, like a news wire or a push technology-based
service, someone with a journalism background might have a great sense of how
to best organize and deliver this information.
Because of their writing experience,
journalists are also good candidates for architecting sites that will have high
levels of edited content. Occasionally, journalists who move into information
architecture find themselves intellectually constrained by their experience in
organizing information for print and other traditional media.
3.4 Usability engineering
Usability engineers are experts at testing and
evaluating how systems work. For information systems, they measure such
criteria as how long it takes users to learn how to use a system, how long it
takes them to find information in a system, and how many errors they make along
the way. Of all the disciplines we list, usability engineering is probably the
most scientific in its view of users and the quality of their experiences with
information systems. Keep in mind that usability engineers concentrate on
measuring a system's performance, not in designing or redesigning a system. (Of
course, measurements of a site's performance can greatly determine how redesign
should proceed.)
3.5 Marketing
Marketing specialists are expert at
understanding audiences and communicating a message effectively to different
audiences. This skill is especially valuable not only in designing externally
oriented web sites, but also for intranets, which often have multiple audiences
with very different needs. Marketing expertise can ensure that the message is
presented in a user-oriented manner and not buried in organizational jargon. If
your site is geared especially toward selling products and building
brand-awareness, someone from your organization's marketing department might do
the trick. The drawback to marketing-based approaches is the danger that they
are more geared toward selling rather than helping users, and so may not be
appropriate for certain types of web sites and audiences.
3.6 Computer science
Programmers and computer specialists bring an
important skill to information architecture, especially to architecting
information from the bottom up. For example, often a site requires a database
to serve the content; this minimizes maintenance and data integrity problems.
Computer scientists have the best skills for modeling content for inclusion in
a database. However, unlike librarians or usability engineers, computer
scientists aren't necessarily trained in user-centered approaches to designing
information systems.
So, an information architect might come from
one of many different disciplines. He or she will certainly need to know at
least a little about every type of expertise involved in the entire web site
design and development process, because his or her work will affect every part
of the process. The architect also needs to be the keeper of the big picture as
this process unfolds and the details of design and production become the main
focus of all involved.
Perhaps the most important quality in an
information architect is the ability to think outside the lines, to come up
with new approaches to designing information systems. The Web provides many
opportunities to do things in ways that haven't been done before. Many sites
are pushing the envelope of design, architecture, and technology. While it's
tempting to create a site that mirrors the same old things that an organization
already does in other media (e.g., product brochures, annual reports), this
approach could severely damage your site's chances for success. If a site
doesn't rise to the occasion for its users, it won't fare well in head-to-head
competition with other sites. This medium is more competitive than any other. One
click, and a site becomes one of thousands that the user visits once but never
returns to. It's the responsibility of the architect more than anyone else to
prevent this outcome and ensure that the user encounters a site designed to
take best advantage of the medium.
4. Balance Your Perspective
Whomever you do use as an information
architect, remember: everyone (including us) is biased by their disciplinary
perspective. If possible, try to ensure that other disciplines are represented
on your web site development team to guarantee a balanced architecture.
Also, no matter your perspective, the
information architect ideally should be solely responsible for the site's
architecture, and not for its other
aspects. It can be distracting to be responsible for other, more tangible
aspects of the site, such as its graphic identity. In this case, the site's
architecture can easily, if unintentionally, get relegated to secondary status
because the architect is concentrating, naturally, on the tangible stuff.
However, with smaller organizations, limited
resources mean that all or most aspects of the site's development - design,
editorial, technical, architecture, and production - are likely to be the
responsibility of one person. Our best advice for someone in this position is
obvious but worth mentioning: 1) find a group of friends and colleagues who are
willing to be a sounding board for your ideas, and 2) practice a sort of
controlled schizophrenia in which you make a point to look at your site from
different perspectives; first from the architect's, then from the designer's,
and so on.
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