[Sigia-l] The fuzzy line btwn IA and Design

[robert.dornbush at ps.ge.com]

I felt compelled to post in response to Thomas' post:

<<Snip>>The question that came up constantly was "Is the 
design true to the IA?" Comments like "The IA has the primary nav along the 
left-hand side. The design has it running across the top. Both seem to make 
sense." were being asked.  I generally let the designers be fairly liberal 
with their interpretation of wire frames and stay focused on asking 
questions like "Is the priority of the information still consistent w/ 
what's shown in the wireframe."

So here's the Big Question: What does it mean for a design to be true to the

IA? What do you do to help ensure that the IA vision is reflected in the 
final design?

-Tom

Thomas Donehower<</>>

The key overlap point between IA & Design, in my experience, is layout.
Give the Designer plenty of freedom to choose font, color, presentation &
expression technique, etc.  Let the IA determine "relative weight and
importance of content & functional elements on a web page" as well as
defining workflow and data nesting.

Collaborate with the designer as much as possible; but if the designer
chooses to rearrange the workflow by his/her artistic arrangement of the
buttons, widgets, hyperlinks, etc...then we as IA/ID/UX have a problem.
Best case scenario, you have a good working relationship with a designer who
has a good sense of IA & Workflow, and you are therefore willing to
compromise on synergistic "improvements" to your original workflow &
hierarchical schema.  Worst case scenario, the designer wants to make up the
workflow as he/she goes along, thus tossing your IA out the window.  Even
worse, the client (who likely doesn't understand IA), falls in love with the
design comps and you (as IA) end up simply documenting (after the fact) an
architecture that was driven entirely by visual arrangement. That would be
the time when "The Design is not true to the IA."

In my years of IT experience, I have divided my time equally on both sides
of the UI Architecture / Graphic Design cultural debate; so I think I am
qualified to say that, graphic design should follow interaction design, and
not the reverse.  This is especially true on "web enabled" applications
where form follows function [we're talking about giant-sized, submit form
intensive, transaction based, B2B applications here] , there is likely NO
graphic designer involved, and beware the HTML developer who fancies himself
an HTML "Designer."

<<flame suit enabled>>


Robert E. Dornbush, Jr.
UI Architect / Interaction Designer
GE Power Systems
robert.dornbush at ps.ge.com
uiarchitect at earthlink.net
desk - 678 844 4625
cell - 678 640 9980

"Ceci n'est pas une pipe"
 - Rene Magritte (1898-1967)