[Sigia-l] RE: Apple and Pears

[Benjamin Speaks]

I won't take on your personal experience with the Studio however I also know
a few people from the Studio (and later Sapient) and you are not in-sync
with their opinions.

I would say that your comments about the AIGA (and it's leadership roster)
"who coddles designers who value form over function" is totally off base and
demonstrates a considerable amount of professional arrogance.

Anyway, visual design is also far more then creating pretty pictures"
(another oversimplified and shortsighted opinion) and a designers looks at
user requirements, technology, business requirements, and classification
systems (just like an IA).

I wouldn't say that the graphic design community is less involved in IA but
that because the "tools" and techniques advocated by the information
architecture discipline require a low threshold to learn, manage, and
utilize (from that standpoint I say would say that the IA community did
something right) thus many got the concept pretty fast (How many articles
can be written about the thematic implementation of a wire frame or a site
flow?).  Most good designers I know are very active in developments in the
other related user experience disciplines.  Many design programs now offer
IA related courses as part of their curriculum.  I wonder how this will
impact the field in 5 years?

Please tell me which elements of IA are so complex that it makes it
impossible to tack onto an existing role (please refer to your comment that
if IA was a subset it would be part of usability).

Yes a lot of companies went out of business over the past three years. So
fine go ahead and blame the market instead of shortcomings in their business
model.

Ben Speaks

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Merholz" <peterme at peterme.com>
To: "SIGIA" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 12:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] RE: Apple and Pears


> Having worked at Studio Archetype, I feel obliged to pipe up here...
>
> > But I tend to think that a lot of people overlook the contributes of
AIGA
> > and the graphic/visual designers as being some of the real pioneers for
IA.
> > Many visionaries (like Clement Mok) made immense contributions to the
> > discipline and yet are hardly referenced because they did not "pitch"
> > themselves as having a LIS foundation.
>
> Um. This statement is utterly incorrect. Christina, as evidenced in her
> post, has been going on about "West Coast IA", which would be the approach
> that folks like Studio Archetype and Vivid Studios took. And, in fact,
past
> discussions have dwelled on how "West Coast IA" took precedence over Polar
> Bear IA, and was, initially, much more successful.
>
> Folks like Studio Archetype and Vivid Studios were very much influenced by
> Richard Saul Wurman's approach to "information architecture", which
stressed
> the visual representation of information. Studio Archetype began as a
> graphic design company, and evolved to develop more complex design systems
> that required an appreciation of the information needs.
>
> Now, the reason they did not "pitch" themselves as having an LIS
foundation
> is because they didn't.
>
> I also think the reason they're decreasingly referenced is because, as the
> field matures, it becomes clear that those graphically-oriented beginnings
> are not well-suited to the direction that IA is taking, which involves
> understanding and portraying relationships within complex information
spaces
> that simply goes beyond what can portrayed in a pretty diagram.
>
> > However, the design studios (like
> > Studio Archetype) were the market trigger that permitted IA to flourish
in
> > the mid to latter 90s (and thus contributing to the survival of the
skills
> > today).  The IA pureplay shops (like Argus) bombed commercially because
of
> > overspecialization and focus on LIS (ever read the titles of some of the
> > consultants over there?
>
> If you can point to another "IA pureplay shop", then maybe I'd take this
> point seriously. But I don't think Argus "bombed" because it was an IA
> pureplay shop. A lot of companies "bombed" around the same time that Argus
> did, including the folks that acquired Studio Archetype, Sapient. (Though
> Sapient is still around... But Scient? Viant? IXL?).
>
> And while I agree that folks like Studio Archetype contributed to the
market
> success of information architecture, I would argue that Argus has had as
> much of a contribution, not through the success of their consultancy, but
> through how they helped Spread the Word.
>
> (I would also argue that the consulting company probably most responsible
> for the 'success' of information architecture is probably Razorfish.)
>
> > To this day I am amazed that AIGA didn't absorb the domain of IA and
thus
> > make it a subset of visual design.  I think they were feeling generous
(and
> > still are) as such a move would not be beyond their capabilities.
>
> This statement here expresses such a lack of understanding of information
> architecture that I don't know where to begin. It also reflects a lack of
> understanding about the AIGA.
>
> There's no way that the AIGA could simply "absorb" IA, in that people
> practicing IA have no desire to be absorbed by them. By and large, IA
> practitioners are suspicious and wary of the AIGA, since it continues to
> coddle visual designers who value form over function.
>
> The AIGA has tried to extend a branch to IA (and other disciplines, like
> interaction design and usability) through the Experience Design community
of
> interest. The jury is still out on how successful this has been.
>
> > So yes I agree with a loose definition of the role.  Actually, what
would be
> > the downside of pitching IA as a subset of [usability, interaction
design,
> > visual design, or whatever] that an individual cross trains in to
improve
> > the overall experience of a product/design?
>
> Because there are elements of information architecture that are too
complex,
> require too much training, rigor, etc., for it simply to be tacked on to a
n
> existing role.
>
> And, frankly, if anything ought to be the "subset", it's usability. But
> that's a whole different thread...
>
> --peter
>
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