[Sigia-l] Re: [aifia-members] IA research?

[Thomas Vander Wal]

Peter --

I agree with the seemingly stale nature of IA.  I think there are a
lot of innovative things going on, but few are bubbling up in
research.  The whole design field, of which IA is only a part, is
getting more and more splintered.  The last couple of years have seem
splinter professional groups pop-up, increasingly with the same folks
on the boards.  These differentiations are breaking the discussions,
adding different terminology for the same subjects that things split. 
Clients are confused, innovation is trapped in the splinters, great
ideas are compartmentalized, and everybody is suffering.  I completely
agree that we need to be listening to outsiders, everybody should, and
we should stop making groups of outsiders.  IA is only a slice in a
larger design world, see Peter Boersma's "Model-T"
(http://www.peterboersma.com/blog/2004/11/t-model-big-ia-is-now-ux.html)
for a clearer idea how things fit together.

There are incredible volumes of research and lessons learned that are
imbedded in various disciplines that IA has not paid much attention. 
There are wonderful discussions on cross-discipline vocabularies,
which is what the folksonomies are actually solving.  We desparately
need to open our eyes to see other disciplines and build cross-walks
to their terminologies and build on their experiences.

For the last couple years I have been talking about the need to stop
designing for getting the information infront of the user. 
Findability is great, but it is just a start as once people find the
info they are often actually burdend by having information in unusable
formats or not having the ability to use the information easily in
standard formats.  Additionally, the folksonomy-enabled tools allow
people to not only call items they find something that makes sense to
themselves the tools help open up information for others with a
similar vocabulary.  Recalling information for reuse is a huge part of
information reuse and we are in a prime spot to help move this
enabling along.  Part of the limiting is seeing regular folks often do
not work in heirarchies, but more flat term definitions.  As regular
people start adding more information, with out formal systems we are
going to see much more flat terminology structures emerging.

We are moving to a world where more information can be added to the
world around us and even applied to physical items (some are actually
living just fine in this future).  The flood of information, which is
incresingly being added in with metadata in flat structures, has the
propensity to turn from the "scent of information" into the "stench of
information".  Building structures and tools that ease and enable
getting the needed information from all locations and to us when we
desire is the key.

Do we have the right toolset?  Most likely not.  We still are relying
on "navigation" as a metaphor, which only encoruages this "screen as
the dead end" mentality.  We know building with this cul-de-sac
mentality is wrong, but many still embrace it rather than actually
thinking and working toward something that may provide a smoother flow
of information through the user's life.  I have been working on one
means of doing this for the past three years or more in the Model of
Attraction and the Personal InfoCloud, and there must be more out
there or we are really sunk.

All the best,
Thomas

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 23:32:18 +0100, Peter Van Dijck
<peter at poorbuthappy.com> wrote:
> Apologies for cross posting and for pointing to a blog entry and for the
> long link.
> 
> I wrote a long rambling entry about (the lack of) IA research and
> innovation. Are we building a practice and a body of knowledge, or are
> we slowly dying out? Again, apologies for linking, but here goes:
> 
> http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2004/11/21/2167/
> 
> I'd like comments/ideas. Am I the only one who feels we, as a
> profession, need to get with the program? Oh well.
> 
> Cheers,
> Peter
> 
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