[Sigia-l] The IA in RIAs

[Stew Dean]

At 10:40 23/12/2004, Peter J. Bogaards wrote:

>But what is the influence of RIAs on the field of IA? What has the IA 
>field to offer to this new design space. Or, should we rephrase IA into UX 
>for this matter?

Information Architecture is a subset of user experience, design, just as 
visual design is, to put it in simpler terms. I am a user experience 
specialist who just so happens to do IA most of the time.

The area of rich Internet applications is not that new to those who have 
worked on function rich applications - it just allows us more freedom in 
terms of what we can do for the front end.  It's best not to over 
complicate things - apparent simplicity is the key.

All interfaces either use space or time to communicate ideas (techincal 
term is space multiplexing or time multiplexing). In the case of web we've 
been focused on space with time relating to pages.

In real terms it just means more work on wireframes and continuing working 
closely with front end technologists and visual design.


>Within a page-based space, UX relates to design fields like information 
>architecture, interaction design, interface design, and visual design. But 
>will these field be enough?
>
>Should we connect RIAs with the design of CDROMs, multimedia, and 
>interactive videos of 15 years ago?

Web has never been disconnected from interaction design, it just got a bit 
specialised.  But more time based interfaces have never gone away. Kiosks, 
Interactive TV, Mobile Phone interfaces and Computer Games are here and 
now. All the user experience skills are interchangeable between these an 
the web.

>  Should we look for inspiration in fields such as TV graphics, special 
> FX, animation, game design and data graphics/visualization and see if we 
> can link it to IA?

It always has been by user experience design. The information 
architecture,  I feel, is not separate from the function of the experience. 
This is why, really, we are more function architects than information 
architecture. (but I don't want to get into a name argument as people 
understand  the term information architect!).

>Lots of questions I have. Maybe this community can come up with an 
>inspirational and compelling roadmap for the IA of RIAs.

First let's ditch the term RIAs please :)  The world needs less three 
letter acronyms.  I have worked on more than a few 'microsites' that tend 
to be flash based and can say wire frames and story boarding already have 
RIAs covered.  I'm not sure what you mean by 'compelling roadmap' - could 
you decode this for me?

Cheers

Stewart Dean
User Experience Consultant.