[Sigia-l] Findability is dead, Long live ummm... Meaning?

[Livia Labate]

> Jesse James Garrett said:
: throughout human history, meaning has always been communicated
: through structure -- why should electronic media be any different?

Precisely, it should not be different - Jesse stroke an important point of
conflict: structure *communicates* meaning, but it does not *attribute*
meaning to the information. A likely problem to this understanding is that
some believe structure 'adds/removes' meaning to/from information, when in
reality it works as a 'channel' - thinking in reverse may be helpful to our
understanding: a structure has the power to MISLEAD a user, but misleading
doesn't *remove* meaning from the information, it just leads you to wrong
information. The 'right' information will still exist elsewhere, the user
just isn't getting to it. When the structure LEADS the user to the right
information, it simply worked well - no increments to what the information
represents. or is. or means.

I hope that made sense.

> Peter Morville said:
: I guess Jesse is advocating that we embrace a broader definition
: of IA that includes the content itself and not just the structure
: and semantics that help people find that content :-)

I agree that IA is extensible to further lengths, but as Stan Lee taught us
'with great power comes great responsibility' and the corporate world taught
us that with great responsibility comes blaming and finger pointing. The
creation of standards for ethical practice which JJG mentioned, are
extremely important in this context because the minute the 'black hat IAs'
start using it for 'evil' or simply by doing crappy IA jobs, responsibility
will turn into guilt. As generically as the term may be employed.

Even if IAs work are well meant & done and someone else that was part of the
team (i.e: a programmer, a copy writer, an interface designer, etc) joins
'the dark side', blame will go to the IA, because that 'broadness' brought
all the responsibility over the results. This is why Information
Architecture is for everyone, not just for Information Architects alone.
This means distributed responsibility, ethical behaviour and project
strength, not shared guilt in the end.

(I would appreciate some argumentative comments about this)

> Peter Merholz said:
: As an "outie" (a consultant) I find myself somewhat concerned by
: Jesse's point [We are artisans, too often trying to get by with the
: methods of engineers]. I agree with the fact that many creative
: professionals deal with the squishy and produce good work. But none
: of them produce work akin to the output of an information architect.

(related to what I mentioned before) turning IAs into some sort of
'information deity' whose accomplishments are above everyone else's, makes
it nearly impossible to sell what we do (apart from falling into the guilt
trap), because is translates our work as do-it-all's, not
do-lots-of-things-strategically.

I don't feel Peter went so far as to provide AIs with holy status, but it is
very easy to let that happen if we start thinking our work is more relevant
than others'. Our produce is indeed not 'fixed', but thinking this produce
is the work of Information Architects alone seems a bit diverted from
reality. Again, Information Architecture is not just for IAs. I would say
"none of them individually produces work akin to the output of information
architecture"



Livia Labate
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