[Sigia-l] Information-centered Design (was I Want My GUT of Information Arc hitecture!)

[Hilary Marsh]

At 2:55 PM -0500 4/3/03, Matthew Rehkopf wrote:
><snip>
>The future web will not contain "sites" built around business goals and user
>needs. Instead, it will be structured around information nodes connected by
>relevance to other nodes. IAs will develop and maintain these nodes,
>concerned only with the relevance of content.
>
>How is this different? Let's take an example. Today, we build, for example,
>furniture sites for companies building or selling furniture; separate sites
>for each brand, on and on they go, too many to list here. We build them for
>businesses that have one thing in mind - to make money; big surprise.
>Businesses control this information; our current job is to make it easy for
>furniture buyers to find what they are looking for (User-centered design may
>only exist to make content easy to find on *my* site), and that activity
>makes us all proud. However, there are many others sites on related topics
>like: building furniture yourself, reviews of furniture, styles of
>furniture, etc, but this information is controlled and developed by others,
>again thinking of only their own business goals, and, thus, disconnected
>from the rest of furniture sites.
>
>In the future, there will not be these independent brand sites. There will
>be *one furniture site* where all the brands will post their products. Why?
>Because we consumers will go there for all the other relevant information,
>including reviews, photos, stories, etc. etc. The Web will empower the
>individual to create and own information, taking it away for the
>organizations that used to own and control it in the past (those
>organizations for which we are all now slaving). IAs will help this happen,
>working independently of businesses to allow for the free exchange of
>relevant information in one central and easily-accessible location. The
>individuals word will soon become more powerful than the institutions'.

This is a wonderful vision, but it's not always financially possible. 
In an e-commerce situation, there are two audiences to please: the 
customer buying the merchandise, and the manufacturers providing the 
merchandise. Without manufacturers, there are no customers, and 
therefore sometimes the manufacturers get their own way...their own 
mini-stores, which is basically what we have now.

I worked at a cosmetics e-commerce startup in 1999, and we had this 
exact dilemma. It was awful for customers, but we had no choice. 
Consumers are faced with this annoyance in physical stores all the 
time -- the pink shirts aren't all in one place in a department 
store, for example, but stored with that designer brand's other 
merchandise. And the manufacturers haven't been at all interested in 
modifying that behavior online.

IMO, I don't think IA will ever trump sales in a company's 
priorities. That might be worth keeping in mind....

--Hilary
-- 
Hilary Marsh
president
content company inc
plan  *  create  *  manage
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