[Sigia-l] [spam] Retraction re: "IA" value posting

[Thomas Vander Wal]

From: "Ziyz"
To: "Thomas Vander Wal"
Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2002 4:18 PM

[from an offline conversation]

> "Thomas Vander Wal" wrote:
>
> > Many thanks for this insight.  Do doctors use a modular approach when
they
> > have the surgery design meetings?  (I am now very curious.)  By this I
am
> > mean do they have set subprocedures and roles that need to be played
within
> > the surgery that are roughly canned?
>
> Yes, utterly. That's the reason I deliberately used the term choreography.
> Some surgical procedures take 5-8 hours or longer, with the participation
of
> multiple surgeons doing a finite set of procedures before handing the task
> to the next guy. Can you even imagine doing that without 'design' and
> choreography?

This is much to what I was guessing.  A surgery is a produced event that is
choreographed with players performing their specific roles to lead to a
success.  As the development of an information application (a Web site is
one instance of such application that all require the same skill sets only
separated by different proportions of these skill sets) requires a mix of
skill sets from the artistic to the scientific ends of the classical
spectrum of learning.  Each element is to be balanced.  The role of IA falls
between these two extremes and could act as a fulcrum.  The IA, through use
of social science skills (library science, cognitive science, social
anthropology, etc.) builds and information structure upon which those with
the artistic skills (visual designers, experience designers, etc. [use of
the term design as it has been propagated from the design communities, which
is where my and others confusion stems]) extend the work to reach the end
goal.  At the same point the programmers with background in computer science
develop the technical components that provide the structured information to
the presentation layer.

The whole discussion of the "design" term seems very logical for information
architects to dive into.  Many IA's are lovers of etymology and semantics,
this is inherent in our work as we build the classification and categorical
structures from which information hangs in an information application.  We
spend a lot of time working with the shading of terms as our clients see
them (top down) and as the users of the application and information perceive
them (bottom up).  The term design has a broad spectrum of meanings with
prejudicial understanding for different users.  Understanding the context of
such a term with many definitive understandings across this broad spectrum
is important.  I seem to find (YMMV - your mileage may vary) IAs come to the
table from other disciplines ranging both extremes of either side of the
fulcrum upon which we sit.  Some even encompass both ends of the spectrum
very well and are able to see and know how each end of the spectrum sees the
other end of the spectrum.  The ends of the spectrum often seem to push away
the opposing end of the spectrum.  We as IAs tend to bridge this gap and
tether the ends together.

This discussion of "design" has brought out many of the varied ends of the
spectrum, as the plethora of the exact same discussions have before it.  To
discussions tribute has not been caustic, which is an IAs attribute as we
often bridge this gap.

All the best,
Thomas