[Sigia-l] History of "Information Architecture"

[David Heller]

Also, lets not confuse the bigIA from the littleIA.

BigIA gain huge momentum in the 90's due to the web's climb to stardom. West
and East coasters alike (none polar bears) started using IA to mean UX and
thus took the job to mean both disciplines in most cases.

Now that due to the great work of AIfIA there is a slow and steady narrowing
of the meaning of IA back to its little form (my personal hope and
interpretation) I think we will start to see how the original titles of
Product Designer, UI Designer, Interaction Designer, etc are going to start
to come to the fore again as is appropriate for their specific roles and
expertise.

-- dave

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] On Behalf Of
Challis Hodge
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 10:36 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] History of "Information Architecture"

> Christina came back from her own SIGIA absence to write:
> 
> > In short time I think IA has become more respectable than
> it's elder
> > brother, interaction design. How did it happen?

Beth responded:
> Ouch! I don't mean to be small minded, bitter, or semantic,
> but I'm not sure how well grounded this is in truth. What 
> are your measures for making this assertion? 

I can see why someone might take the "ia has grown more respectable
than" view and I'm glad to see folks excited about their profession. In
reality though, information architecture is relatively new. Companies
are dealing for the first time ever with many issues that require ia
expertise. As a result of this newness it is given a much higher
profile. Suddenly, if you want to extend your headcount you rename the
positions you want to fill information architect. We designer types are
chameleons anyway right ;-)

Once companies acclimate, things will settle down and the next new
thing(s) will be in the spotlight. At that point we'll see that the
other traditional design disciplines, including interaction designer,
are still there practicing away. In fact we may see a few of them take
off their ia sheep skins when things settle down. 

-challis


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