[Sigia-l] IA and interface design

[Andrew Hinton]

Without interfaces, what IA's do has no context, no impact, no meaning.
So we have a symbiotic relationship with those who specialize in interface
design. In the absence of an interaction designer to collaborate with, we
usually end up doing it ourselves, because we're the closest thing.

Probably the main reason why we talk about them as different roles at all is
that these days, with such large projects, one person can't do all the work,
and it's extremely rare to find someone who is equally good at both anyway.
(Hey, we used to have webmasters who could handle both of these things _and_
the code.) 

We're all organs of the same organism, no?

I think some of the IA's I know just get very frustrated with Designers who
don't seem to understand the symbiosis works both ways!


 

::adillon at gslis.utexas.edu::wrote on 5/24/02 1:17 PM:


> An interface is a boundary between entities, but it is also a communication
> channel. The interface any user experiences is multi-leveled. There is the
> physical interface (keyboards, screen, stylus, mouse etc.)  and (at least)
> the conceptual interface (how the tool enables a task to be performed and
> represents objects and events to the user).
> 
> How one organizes information (layout, structure, content grouping etc) has
> real impact on how the user will experience this technology and in that
> case, it is a vital component of interface design. To imagine one can do
> interface design without paying attention to these issues is difficult, or
> at least, it is difficult to imagine how one could really design in a
> user-centered fashion if one did not consider the user response to these
> structures and try to develop structures and layouts that are cognitively
> compatible.  
-- 
:: s y m e t r i ::
andrew.hinton ÷ information.architecture ÷ ahinton at symetri.com