[Sigia-l] What makes an IA good at what they do

[Donna Maurer]

Resent 'cause the silly thing bounced, first for a strange title then to 
resend as plain text, which it was anyway

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Interesting thread. Raised a couple of thoughts for me (I'm not 
quoting them because  they came from the whole thread) 

On wireframes: 
If your colleague thinks that you draw wireframes, s/he doesn't 
understand what you  go through to get to that particular deliverable. 
Yes, anyone can draw a wireframe, but  there are fewer people 
whose wireframe represents a well-structured, highly usable  
information system. I'd be horrified if a client ever said "What, we paid 
$xx for that!" -  my site map and wireframe deliverables always come 
with process, description and  rationale information. The picture is 
just the representation. 

On HF folks: 
there is no reason to think that a HF person would be a good IA. It 
may be the case  that some HF people have some of the skills to do 
IA work, but it isn't inherent in HF,  and HF training really has little 
relevance to IA beyond the fact that it is user-centric  (and not all IA is 
user-centric either, but I can go into that separately). At least that's  
my perspective practicing IA and a studying HF... 

On visceral processing: 
Someone (Sean?) said "Wire frames are simply the result of a 
visceral process". This is an interesting statement. I can see that 
there may be a tiny  level of visceral processing in IA development 
(relating to our innate abilities to  categorise), but the development of 
an IA deliverable (site map, wireframe, whatever)  should be much 
more behavioural and reflective (if you follow the  
visceral/behavioural/reflective theory of processing). 

On tangled messes of chain: 
Sean said "If you actually enjoy sitting down with a knotted up mess 
of chain and  unknotting it, you might be an IA ;)". I must be an IA - 
my other hobby is weaving - I get  a  tangled ball of yarn, unknot it 
and weave it into something structured and beautiful!  Nice metaphor 
here for the sites I have been working on (which start off much 
messier  than the worst yarn I have ever untangled ;) 

Donna