[Sigia-l] I Want My GUT of Information Architecture!

[Chris Chandler]

<Richard_Dalton at Vanguard.com> wrote:


> A couple of questions:
>
>  - How did you know the site was successful after it went live?


A lot of people registered at the site.

The marketing team saw value right away.

They also understood roughly how the thing worked, and were able to impress their bosses with it.

They were so very happy they gave the company more work.



>  - How did you know it would be successful before it went live?


Honestly? Mostly because what was there before wasn't sooo good.
But also because it was a basically decent team experience -- I heard at the conference that 70% of software projects
fail, and I believe it -- I guess because the client expectations, business requirements and scope of work, were mostly
in harmony.





> These two questions are critical if I/A is going to exist in a business
> environment and we'd better have some processes, methodologies, first
> principles, past experience, etc, that allows us to answer them without
> the fallback "well we'll usability test it" answer (I believe usability
> testing has a lot of value - but i'd rather get as close to an effective
> solution as possible before testing).



I like to get to the best design solution I can before testing too. I'm always stunned when people punch holes in them.



> IMHO this falls far more into the
> definition of "science" than "art" (although I acknowledge that its not
> black and white and that not everything can be 'measured' - there is, and
> should be, an element of creativity - but it should be just that, an
> element - not the foundation).


Thank you for acknowledging that its not black and white.

My IA does exist in a business environment, and it's foundation will always be creativity.

-cc