[Sigia-l] IA by Origin - Where do IAs come from?

[Todd R.Warfel]

One of the biggest issues is that IA/UX has yet to be defined, to a 
reasonable extent, buy both the industry and academia.

As far as the industry is concerned, I've seen IA responsibilities 
range from focusing heavily on gathering business requirements to 
"typical" IA roles of information models, wireframes, flow diagrams, 
and site maps. And I'm seeming taxonomy becoming more and more common - 
this is more of a traditional IA/Library Sciences role. I'm seeing it 
more and more now with large libraries of assets that require extensive 
meta data models.

While this could be attributed to the type of work I'm doing, I don't 
think it's that uncommon across the industry. Especially since I'm 
seeing this from corporate to academia.

More below...

On Monday, May 19, 2003, at 11:53 AM, Livia Labate wrote:

> 1. Have you ever hired college students to perform IA work? (Even if 
> it's
> just menial, minor or boring - but IA related); have you ever worked
> anywhere where they were hired them for this role? What were the pros 
> and
> cons?

No - all across the board.

> 2. Do you know any college students with no prior IA market 
> experience, who
> express interest in becoming IAs? Where are these people?

Yes. Typically in art or CS. However, I've seen them from Ergonomics, 
Psychology, Marketing - just to name a few.

> 3. What are they (if they exist) being paid? From a recent discussion 
> at
> Sigia-l (http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0305/0201.html "Short 
> term
> freelance IA needed" thread), USD30.00 is pretty laughable for most 
> people,
> but seems to be enough to hire a college student who is starting out.

I wouldn't trust any application I've worked on to an inexperienced, or 
novice IA. However, I would consider hiring them on as a Jr. to be 
mentored by someone with experience. But that would only come if a) I 
had a larger shop (not a small studio) b) could afford to do so based 
on time, money, etc.

> 4. Lastly, if students that have IA as intended field of work ARE being
> hired, is it ever as a "Junior IA", or some other position that would 
> allow
> career growth or at least some perspective to prosper in the position? 
> This
> means: are any businesses encouraging IA formation? OR are they being 
> hired
> temporarily to do intern-like work, with no responsibilities or 
> long-term
> involvement?

As the industry has taken a down-turn, I think the best recommendation 
is to get some real world experience prior to graduation. This might 
come in the form of summer internships, or working on some project from 
one of your professors via a grant.

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel

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