[Sigia-l] Re: Usability in fancy clothes

[Ray Sharma]

Coming to the conclusion that IA is the integrator between the
Stakeholders, Content (& Users), programmers and design, bringing sense
to the information being portrayed through a product.

As an IA I work to ensure the programmers, database people etc are able
to do their job. However, I am not thought of as a programmer or treated
like one (sometime it's even made difficult to work with them!), despite
having to understand somewhat how the technology will handle the
information. At the same time, and what I see many stakeholders identify
as more important, I work with the interactive/graphic designers in
presenting that information.

In my experience, I am asked to identify flow and create wireframes (not
exactly IA) however while doing so I have needed to understand the
information and its structure thus performing the role of an IA. What I
have found is the stakeholders want to understand the IA and to do so
they want to see it in the form of Sitemaps, Content Mappings, Item
Types and wireframes. As a result I must be proficient in Usability to
ensure the information I am presenting will work for the intended
audience and designers can design from it (or at least add their design
elements to the wireframes!). 

So to raise the debate I do not feel IA is Usability or dressed up in
it. 

Often stakeholders (in the current climate and age of IA), need to
quantify what the IA does and measure their effectiveness. What they
want is to see stuff that makes sense to them and not know that you had
to sort 1500 items of content into meaningful relationships (remember
they don't really want to see what a programmer does to get to a working
product, they just want a working product). In order to do this we must
present this information in usable formats for those handling it
(programmers, designers, users, and stakeholder) meaning we must often
provide total solutions from raw content to final presentable and usable
information. 

Just a small task really - having just completed the IA on a local
government website!

As time goes on the will become more and more defined, IA will find its
own space next to programmers, databasers', Usability People and
designers relieving some of the pressure we face and helping to add
clarity to the role - one would hope anyway.

Ray Sharma