[Sigia-l] The Heart of IA

[david_fiorito at vanguard.com]

I was thinking about the "community" thread.  I have been thinking about 
the boundaries of IA for quite some time.  Whether you fall into the LIS, 
HCI, or general UX camp of information architecture one thing has become 
very clear to me - the heart of IA is the semantic relationship.  Now hear 
me out - I am not just talking about the semantic relationships expressed 
in a controlled vocabulary.  I am talking about the conceptual 
relationship between terms, content chunks, pages, sections of sites, or 
any two entities in any information ecology.

When we set out to define the set of navigation systems for use at 
Vanguard some of the information designers could not understand why and IA 
needed to be a part of the effort, let alone lead it.  As we worked 
through all of the facets of navigation it became clear to everyone that 
designing navigation is not just about HCI.  Designing navigation is about 
the manifestation of semantic relationships as sets of hyperlinks.  The 
creation of solid navigation systems depends just as much on LIS skills as 
it does on HCI, graphic design, and interactive design skills. 

Whether we use words or icons the key to empowering them for our audience 
is to make sure that our sites convey meaning and distinction and create 
understanding.  That requires us, the IAs, to have a firm grasp of the 
semantic domains our sites embody.

Cheers,

Dave