[Sigia-l] IA and medium

[Saffer, Dan]

<snip>Is an IA only a librarian with a fancy title?</snip>

Gee, I hope not. No offense to those with their Library Science degrees out there, but the library science part of my job (indexing, labeling, categorizing, etc.) is really only a (relatively small) portion of my job. Much more time is spent on information display, interaction design, and overall experience design.

<snip>What makes an IA not a librarian?</snip>

The difference is in having to manage both business and user requirements. Maybe I am over-simplifying it, but the nature of being a librarian is to provide users with access to information as easily and logically as possible. And while this is a noble goal and calling, it only takes into account one user goal (finding information) and not the myriad of others the internet provides (buying things, selling stocks, online banking, gaming, etc.) and totally ignores the business goals (making sales, retaining customers, automating customer service, etc.) of those who pay our salaries.

Certainly, librarians have business *issues* to deal with, but the challenge and artistry of what we do is in making the users' goals mesh with the business goals to provide a useful, desireable, and usable interface, while working under the limitations (and possibilities) of our (interactive) technology. Librarians do not (to my knowledge) operate in this arena at all.

Dan

d a n   s a f f e r  .  sr. ui architect
datek | big think    .  dsaffer at datek.com