I mentioned to someone the other day that I felt the term 'Digital Transformation' was problematic. Although each word is easy to comprehend the term is vague enough to conjure up different meanings for different readers. These potentially ambiguous terms are all around us in the tech world - I don't have to look further than my own job titles (Business Analyst, Solution Architect) for more examples.
With that context, I attended an event today on 'Information Architecture'. When I first read about the event a week ago I assumed that it was related to Big Data, or data storage, or something similar. I researched a bit and found out that it was more in the User Experience (UX) domain, and related to structuring content for websites and other media. Intrigued, I signed up.
This post is meant to introduce the concept of Information Architecture (IA) to those who have not heard of it, and to present my own definition of what it means and why it's valuable. Bear in mind that I have exactly 4 hours of experience with IA (today's conference) so I'm sort of an anti-expert. However, I only get one chance at summarizing initial impressions and as IA professionals would probably agree, data on first impressions is valuable.
I admit I had trouble finding a good definition for IA. There are lots of websites talking about it and lots of examples of what's 'in scope' but I was looking for the most concise answer to the question what is it? After my IA boot camp today here's what I came up with:
Information Architecture is the discipline of classifying, categorizing, and communicating information through content, in a way that controls how that content is received and interpreted back into information by individuals and society at large.Central to this definition is the distinction between information and content. Information is something I know, something in my head - the idea for this blog post, for example. Once I've written it down it becomes content - how I've chosen to represent the information. When you read the post, it passes through your own filters and biases and becomes information again, in your own head. What IA as a discipline tells us is that by carefully structuring the content (and the discovery of that content) I can control, to some degree, how you interpret it.
What we're talking about here isn't new, even if you haven't really heard the term IA before. Carefully crafting content to control how information is received has been going on probably ever since we've been able to communicate with each other. That wasn't much of a revelation for me; what was revelatory is the idea that I'm practicing IA when I'm working on a website whether I know it or not.
A crack graphic designer and user interface expert can make a website beautiful; a brilliant UX professional can make it functional; but without thought as to how to properly categorize, label, and structure content we won't have a website that's effective. Well, it won't necessarily have the effect that we want it to have.
I encourage anyone working on a website (or other content intended for broad consumption) to take a look at some of the IA resources out there. There are recorded talks, books, and websites that will help you understand the impact of seemingly innocuous choices on your messaging. Whether you choose to refer to it as IA is up to you but know that there's a wealth of information available to help your content have the desired effect.
And no, the irony of the fact that I had a hard time figuring out what 'Information Architecture' meant at all was not lost on me!
