[Sigia-l] Re: New Web Accessibility & IA Organization in Boston (Listera)

[Listera]

"P.J. Gardner" wrote:

>> How do you 'design' information, separate from its interface?
> 
> This is why I remain a lurker on this list.  It's this kind of nit-picking
> about terminology that makes this list less useful than it could be.

> After all, it is not in the words.

If that's all you can see, it might be.

I doubt very much that you 'design information.' In other words, if I give
you 10TB worth of corporate info/data, I doubt very much that you'd be
allowed to 'design' that.

You'd be allowed, however, to design interfaces of access to it. A database
architect/admin could (re)design info/data by literally changing it, i.e.,
normalize, denormalize, restructure, retype, etc. A DB architect can
(re)design that 10TB worth of corporate-wide info/data into twenty 500GB
departmental DBs and doc repositories. That would be information design, as
you act on information itself. As a 'designer' you work several layers of
abstraction above that. You don't really 'touch' info/data, you channel it
into interfaces, with which endusers get to experience it.

More than a mere "nit-picking about terminology," use of 'information
designer' betrays a certain lack of understanding of the separation between
info/data and its interface, a notion that's fundamental not just to design
in general but also to modern programming.

This is not an uncommon mistake; I'm sorry the distinction seems to have
escaped you. 

Ziya
Nullius in Verba