[Sigia-l] IA Practice Maturation

[molly wright steenson]

hm. i've worked in all the places you folks are talking about. started in 
nyc, spent five years in san francisco, worked in munich /london for six 
months, then moved to chicago in 2001.

a few scattered thoughts:

in 1999, bertelsmann's media academy brought me to germany to speak at a 
two-day seminar on content strategy. it's the type of seminar that would be 
tremendously fruitful to attend in the US, but even here, such things on 
that topic are still somewhat few and far between. a number of german 
journalists involved with net issues attended the conference, as well as a 
few folks from metadesign and pixelpark (for those of you who know berlin, 
sabine fischer was at meta at the time as the head of their interactive 
group. she and boris groendahl organized the seminar).

in 2001, i moved to chicago. chicago's lucky to enough to have its heavy 
connection to experience and interaction design through IIT's institute of 
design and people like shelley evenson, john rheinfrank, parrish hanna, 
marc rettig and challis hodge (and man, a lot of other brilliant folks who 
i didn't list because i'm making this list really quickly). not a bad group 
of folks to have around town.

the way i see it, back around 1995, in the web world there were 
programmers, designers and producers (which was everybody else). we 
splintered to the extent that in our field, we had insane numbers of roles 
(experience strategist, experience architect, visual designer, design 
planner, interaction designer, information architect, user interface 
engineer, user researcher, usability specialist, project manager, content 
strategist, superhero, astroman). this never really made sense to our 
clients -- way too much detail for their needs -- so they've glommed onto 
something.

here in chicago, it's almost as though that "everybody else" role that used 
to be played by producers is now the domain of the "information architect" 
(which i put in quotes on purpose). the good news is that clients know they 
need someone to get through their information, that functional requirements 
don't help them figure out the best paths and ways to navigate, that 
somebody needs to set the roadmap.

there are other places where there's more sophistication in the practice on 
a whole, and sure, it probably has something to do with geography. there 
are a lot of internet geeks in san francisco. we all used to live not 
terribly far from one another and for years, we all saw each other at the 
same parties. so of course there's been the opportunity to extend the reach 
of the practice on a day-to-day basis. we've got some great communities 
like that in chicago as well -- they're just smaller (and possibly to my 
mind, newer, though i could be mistaken... i've only been here a year).

lately, i've started to think of the different experience design and IA 
communities as geographically close to me, even though the people are all 
over the place. the reason? if i've got a question, these groups are where 
i'll turn, just as i might turn to someone sitting next to me (or borrow a 
cup of sugar from my neighbor). the nodes of geography are really useful 
for deepening, but we do it online too.

molly


At 03:36 PM 4/17/2002 -0400, Louis Rosenfeld wrote:
>My experience with Europeans interested in information architecture can't
>compare with Eric's, who has actually worked in Europe (where though? it's a
>big place).  And when I taught in London last November, I expected that same
>1-2 year lag, at least among continental Europeans.
>
>But I was surprised and impressed by the breadth and depth of experience of
>my seminar attendees.  Sure, this was only about 80 people, but I'll be very
>careful not to assume a lag among any audience from now on.  The London
>group sure wouldn't have let me get away with it!
>
>BTW, East Coast and West Coast IA:  what about Midwest IA?  Quite a bit has
>emanated from little old Ann Arbor, Michigan. :-)  Lots from Chicago and
>other places too.  If we're going to limit ourselves to the US, I have a
>hard time seeing how we can leave out everything between the coasts.
>
>cheers
>
>
>Louis Rosenfeld
>www.louisrosenfeld.com
>information architecture consulting
>
>Content Management Symposium, Chicago O'Hare Marriott, June 28 - 30.
>See http://www.asis.org/CM
>_______________________________________________
>Sigia-l mailing list
>Sigia-l at asis.org
>http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l