[Sigia-l] RE: first principals

[Peter Merholz]

> Actually, I did do this to "ping" the community. I found the (lack of)
> response interesting.
> 
> First of all, if I had said this two years ago, I would have gotten shouted
> down.
> 
> If I had said this a year ago, there would have been spirited debate.
> 
> Now a couple of half-hearted whazzups... oh how you have changed...

Who's this "you"? 

A year and a half ago, I suggested that information architecture *is*
"LittleIA":
http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0111/0231.html

Now, people, in their desire to be involved in everything, rankled at such
suggestions, saying, "No! We're Big IA!"

What's been interesting to see in the last 6 months or so is how much the IA
community is focusing on little IA, and, I think, accepting little IA as
what they do.

A scan of subject lines over the last few months shows terms like Labeling,
Classification, Categorization, Breadcrumbs, Site Mapping, Search Results,
Controlled Vocabulary, CMS. There have been some interaction design posts,
but threads are remarkably brief.

This relates to your statement that IA is concerned with information
retrieval. I think it met little resistance in part because the field of IA
is evolving to a more specific point. I think folks are recognizing that the
bigger issues are being handled in the muddy waters of what is termed "user
experience."

However, I suppose I do take issue with the particular "information
retrieval" label. IR has suggests a too-focused task, that of simply
retrieving information. I would argue that information architecture is
concerned with supporting *any* information-related task that people might
have, and that we probably bring the most benefit in terms of how we help
contextualize information, give it meaning through relationships.

--peter