[Sigia-l] RE: Web Standards and I.A.s

[Thomas Vander Wal]

Lyle,

Yes, we largely agree.

In short Standards impact IAs very little, but having developers that use
Standards provides an IA the ability to have their vocabulary for the
information structure adopted and integrated into the semantic structure of
the pages or application screens.

The benefit is much clearer communication across disciplines.  Most IAs that
I talk with have problems with their work being adopted and their input
being desired through out the life cycle.  I know as an IA, which is the
primary hat that I wear even with broader responsibilities, the work we
perform is and should be the foundation for the information structures.

My formal education in the 80s drove this home as an communication major
focusing on organizational communication (enterprise communication
structures, advertising, PR, communication management).  There is very
little in IA that was not covered in that environment, hence IA has been the
foundation of my approach to nearly everything I have done in my
professional career, the only thing that has changed is what people call it,
the growth in the community around these skills and toolsets.  Building
taxonomies, ethnographic studies to build persona, etc. are the foundation
for any development and I have been working to build this mindset into all
the developers I work with.

Standards can be and should be a common language for IAs to communication to
the designers and front end developers.  Many who develop with Web standards
also use the semantic capabilities in their attributes, which adds greater
granularity to just the proper tags.  For example a site built on an IAs
taxonomy that identifies sub-headers can be facets, categories, or external
nomenclature can see the designer or developer use <h2
class="facet">Region</h2> to distinctly add semantic understanding to the
presentation layer for the information.  This permits other users to modify
their CSS to only view the facets in the interface or to mechanically scrape
the facets.  This provides for our work as an IA to be used not only in the
information storage and retrieval, application development, enterprise
information taxonomy, but also the front end application layers.  Our hard
work as an IA can now be used as the foundation for a common and clear
communication across all information disciplines in an organization.

I am not disagreeing, but extending the view.

All the best,
Thomas

On 4/8/04 12:23 AM, "Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com"
<Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com> wrote:

> Thomas,
> 
> You seem to have taken my terse comments as a dismissal of Web Standards
> - sorry if I wasn't clear enough.  You make some good points, and I
> agree with the spirit of what you've said.  My points were the
> following:
> 
> 1) Information Architecture goes beyond Web (sites and applications on
> all types of platforms and devices)
> 2) Web Standards do little to standardize the practice of IA or the
> Information Architectures that Info Architects create.
> 
> I did NOT say (and wouldn't say):
> 1) IAs shouldn't embrace Web Standards
> 2) Standards don't matter
> 
> I'm a strong proponent of web standards and have championed validation
> and compliance on internal development teams, with tool vendors, and in
> public forums.  Web Standards helped make the web what it is today, and
> only by leveraging standards (official and de facto ones) can we
> continue to build powerful platforms for information technology in the
> future.
> 
>> Web standards are for the top level presentation structure and
> presentation.
>> IAs, at least most I know work on information structures, which are
> the
>> foundation for web sites, applications, enterprise information
> systems, etc.
> 
> Markup languages indeed provide some structure for content.  HTML's Hx
> headings for example - but heading tags don't provide a *heading system*
> for an information system, they only provide a way to delineate what is
> a heading and what level of heading it is.  As I'm sure you know, IA
> involves much more than document level structure.
> 
>> Taking the
>> taxonomy we developed for the structural elements in our evaluation of
> the
>> information and having that taxonomy for the structure used by the
>> developers and having that vocabulary used by developers is actually
>> practicing what we IAs preach.
> 
> You make a good point that IAs who can speak a common language with
> developers are more effective.  That's very true in my experience - but
> that concept also applies beyond developers.  The common language might
> be technical (programming language, web standards), methodological (RUP,
> UCD, project management) or business (marketing, branding).  What
> "common language" is most important for an IA to speak: Java, RUP, Brand
> or ROI?  What should an IA's first language be?  A technical one or a
> business oriented one?
> 
> CSS Zen Garden is an awesome site (and an example I've been using in a
> class I teach for some time) - but in my opinion CSS relates more
> closely with Interaction Design and Visual Design than Information
> Architecture.  IA is more than interaction and visual style.  Do IA's
> practice ID and VD (unfortunate acronym that one)?  Sure they do, but
> CSS is still just a tool in a toolbox.  It's like a scalpel to a doctor
> - it's useful, but in and of itself it doesn't make the doctor very
> effective - as a matter of fact, it can do more harm than good in the
> wrong hands.  Which brings up my next point: I can develop applications
> that validate against every standard that exists, but that doesn't mean
> that the IA is a good one or that the system is very usable or useful.
> 
> The upshot of all of this is really that web standards are great - good
> IAs will promote and comply with standards.  But they are not a silver
> bullet.  And if I'm "picking the right battles" - I'm going to battle
> for IA practices and User Centered Design and leave the "we need to be
> 100% 508 compliant" battle for a much later day, even though I care a
> lot about accessibility.  The reality is that 508 compliance has a lot
> less business value (in my industry) than building a good navigation
> system or search system - and we are always working with limited
> financial, time and political resources.
> 
> Web standards are too low level to really be considered a major *IA
> tool*.  Most architects have to develop their own internal
> (project/application/enterprise) standards and patterns for IA
> components and systems.  Those standards may be implemented and coded
> using technical platform standards like Web Standards, but those
> technical standards only help just so much.
> 
> 
> 
> Most building architects won't argue against electrical building
> standards, but you'll never convince anyone that building standards make
> it easy to design a good home or office building.  And sure, architects
> need to be able to talk to the construction folks using a common
> language, but it's probably more important (to a successful end product)
> that they be able to dialog with the folks who need the building built
> or who will use it.
> 
> IA work goes beyond document structure (i.e. markup), interaction, and
> visual styles and addresses with bigger structures (e.g. taxonomy) and
> semantics -- Web standards don't go very far in those areas.
> 
> I think we're in "violent agreement" on this one.  You're saying the
> glass is half full and I'm saying it's 90% vacant (even though it
> validates).  :)