[Sigia-l] The 3 Factors of I/A

[jess at cognissa.com]

Like a Venn diagram, with Users, Content, and (Business) Context, with IA
in the middle? Like so? **

http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000024.html

Here the focus is on disciplines and skills, but said skills are what
create the architecture.

(As pointed out elsewhere, technology really should be added to the mix,
too.)

I think your suggestion is valuable in working on a bottom-up definition
for what IA is (rather than a top-down description), but that it may be too
simplistic to capture the nuances of IA. See my rant on being too simple 
here:
http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/images/010813b.gif

Simple is fine as long as it's just a gateway to the complexity that's part
of reality...

One thing to hook this model into reality is IA components. The polar bear
book 2 talks about them, and so does Lou here - 
http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000057.html

I've thought about mapping these to users, content, context,
tech...thoughts yourself?

For your list I'd wonder about -

   - Similarity of Content  (based on what? similarity is driven by users
and the business. Apples going with apples is fine, because users
understand that. But on a stock photo site, maybe it should be Granny Smith
with other green things, and Red Delicious with other red things. Which to
choose depends on user and business goals.)
   - User Tasks (User Goals are more valuable)
   - Business Goals (definitely)

Which is why I finally ended up focusing on *value* as the intersection of
user goals + context, business goals + context, with the offering (content)
and delivery (tech) serving as the currency and medium for interaction and
exchanging value. And why I started talking to clients about
"value-centered design" instead of "user centered design" about a year ago.

http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000172.html
http://www.interactionary.com/files/value_centered_01.gif

Finally - goals aren't architecture. If we think of architecture as an
artifact, we see them reflected in the IA, but they aren't the blueprints,
the facets, the labels, etc. nor the realization of same in a production
site or app.

best,

Jess

** I'm actually pretty uncomfortable with this a model for IA though - or
at least, an exclusive model of only Information Architecture. There's a
lot of disciplines that work at that intersection, and a lot of artifacts
that are produced to support it (e.g. good visual design, interaction
design, knowledge management, etc. all really support and grow from Users,
Content, Context + Tech.)


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