Wildly Appropriate

The Impending Death of Information Architecture?

Nov 22, 09:23 AM

In response to a meme that Christina Wodke introduced on her Elegant Hack blog about the bright lights of the IA world such as herself and Peter Morville and Lou Rosenfeld all becoming uncomfortable with the fit of an old pair of bluejeans called IA...Joshua Porter foresees the immanent demise of IA. Here's a snip from his posting:

Yes, indeed. IA as it has lived will soon die. Not because it wasn’t valuable, not because IA’s didn’t do great work, but because the Web is moving on.

The problem is that IA models information, not relationships. Many of the artifacts that IAs create: site maps, navigation systems, taxonomies, are information models built on the assumption that a single way to organize things can suit all users…one IA to rule them all, so to speak.

Porter invokes Vander Wal and Shirkey and talks about the inadequacy of various aspects of Polar Bear IA... and while I'm not sure I disagree that the climate on the interwebs of today is too hot for Polar Bear IA....Porter is (I think) over-reaching quite a bit in how he's interpreting what Christina was saying about the fit of the IA pants. I'm not sure she was saying the practice of IA no longer fits all of us who practice it. I think she was saying that she and some of her A-list pals were chafing at the fit of what they're now interested in and what their past practice as IAs has entailed.

A while back I half-jokingly lamented to Peter that I love being called an Information Architect and didn't know what I'd do if and when our clients and employers stop calling us IAs. Peter's response: don't sweat it - you can always tag yourself as an IA and subvert/augment your title from the bottom-up :)

P.S. I think Porter is dead wrong about IA being about mapping information and not relationships. That's a false premise: info and relationships aren't binaries like that, right?

 

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