[Sigia-l] at what point does IA et al. become meaningless

[Louise Hewitt]

Hi all,

Just a 2p on the point of IA for smaller projects:

I recently moved from working in-house on a vast Info ecology in the
government sector to working with a client who builds brochure sites
for small local businesses.

It's early days, but I'm finding that the big lessons I had at the
big-house are making it possible to streamline production and bring
clarity to the little fishes.

What I find particularly interesting is that I know have the role of
'project manager'. These sites are so small (really only about 5 flat
pages with some contact info). I come in, talk to the client about
their goals and existing content, suss out their audience and research
some competitors, build a quick structure, map in the content, apply
the labels, spit, polish, etc.

The agency is using it's own CMS for all the sites, so thats the
development covered, and I liaise with a designer who skins it all
using CSS. Works out peachy for everyone and it is a method that
brings IA right into the heart of the design process for the smaller
client without requiring a budget spend on IA as a task. I'm involved
from conception to post project support and so the IA is solid and
supported right through.

Our conversations with the client about content are done online using
HTML wireframes, so at once they are discussing the labels, text,
images, prioritisation.

Could this be a nice model for the future? As the sector grows and
more and more people are skilled in IA, it would be nice to think that
this kind of trickle-down would be commonplace.

To the original point, it means that the IA is never meaningless it
works for everyone. As these things will become the final elements of
a site then I don't think that the 'IA' as such can be considered to
be redundant at handover, even if the actual HTML wireframe gets
chucked. It seems a bit like saying that printing newspapers is a
waste of time because they're thrown in the bin at the end of the day.
The knowledge they contain is passed on.

OK, so that was more 4p, but I work from home now and get a bit
carried away when I get started.

Later,

Lou.