[Sigia-l] What makes an IA good at what he or she does?

[Emma Dawson]

As someone who would not call themselves an IA - I have to say that IA
work takes a particular perspective on how people work, and then tries
to structure information around that - and the limitations of a
computer/browser.

My background is in Information Science and I spent three years working
as a Librarian before taking a contract position as an IA.  And to be
honest I've never done a wire frame.  I spent my time auditing a very
large, existing site - identifying 'content objects' that could be
separated, defined using XML, and fed into a CMS.  Later I worked on the
taxonomies that were going to be uploaded into the CMS and used to index
all those objects - those lists covered everything you might want to
know about 'content objects' from the types of file, the brand
associations, locations, time periods, subject headings, and proper
names.

A good IA, to me is not just someone who can see the larger picture of
'computers do this' and 'humans do that' and we can design this in the
middle to make it work...  an IA is someone who can look at almost any
communication vehicle and see it in terms of information bites (or
content objects).  This makes it possible to re-order them in order to
change or refine the message, to classify them, to see associations and
patterns across larger sections of the data and make them accessible to
users.

One of the things that sticks with me from my time in university is the
concept of the Knowledge Gap... in general someone seeking information
has a lot of knowledge up to a certain point and beyond that there is
grey space where they don't know something and on the far side of that
space is often a task they need to perform.  They know that they don't
know what they need to know to carry out that task.  In general this
means they start looking for information on their side of the gap or on
the task side of the gap (what they know).  And they rely on the
information sources they choose to lead them from what they know... all
the way through to what they don't know... and out the other side to the
task they need to carry out.

Now as we all know there are many ways to do most things, and many ways
to approach most things, and many places where anyone could have a gap
in their knowledge.  The skill of a good reference librarian is being
able to talk someone from what they do know through to what they are
trying to do, and therefore isolate the missing information/knowledge
and then guide the person they are helping to the correct place in the
database (library).  

The skill of an IA working on a web site is to break all the
information down to 'chunks' that the user can comprehend, and use to
mark their place - something like:

'know that, know its relevant or not relevant' 
'don't know that, seems relevant, expands on something I already know'

'don't know that, back up a bit'

 - the IA then needs to define and systematically use the wide variety
of associations and relationships that exist between concepts or
information chunks in order to create a web site that leads people with
all sorts of different approaches to things over their particular
knowledge gap and into the task they need to perform.

We develop tools, ideas, databases, taxonomies, websites, intranets,
etc. based on making this easier and more possible.  Just remember that
the skills involved are applicable across a huge range of information
mediums.

Emma Dawson

>>> "Laurie Gray" <lgray at humancentrictech.com> 12/02/04 16:13:29 >>>

I was recently challenged by a colleague to define what makes us good
at
what we do. His argument was, anyone can draw wireframes - what makes
what you do different, and better? 

I have some ideas but I am curious to hear what the group thinks. This
particular colleague is very much in support of my work, and the
discussion related on how to sell my skills to other colleagues, who
feel that anyone trained in HF can do IA work.

Thank you,
Laurie

------------------------------------
HumanCentric Technologies
Laurie Gray
Senior Usability Specialist
lgray at humancentrictech.com 
111 James Jackson Ave. Suite 221 Cary NC 27513
tel: 919-481-0565
fax: 919-481-0310
------------------------------------


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