[Sigia-l] Role of designer eroded?

[Skot Nelson]

Dan Chamberlain (Services - 6) wrote:
> Hold on. Please, take my question at face value. I just wanted to find out how the IA role fit in with Social Media. At no point did I question the role of a designer.

It seems like commonly this misconstruing of the role of IA in Social 
Media revolves around confusion of job titles, roles and 
responsibilities. In this case the difference between "Information 
Architect" and "Interaction Designer" often comes up.

Social media or not, information still needs structure. When you build 
social media you create a platform within which users create and 
interact with content. The platform isn't wildly open ended: it has limits.

ONE of the jobs of the Information Architect role is to define (and 
design) this structure. The limits within which your users interact are 
a part of its Information Architecture? (i.e. Facebook's decision to 
provide a "box" within with all apps run rather than providing a set of 
tools which full screen apps could insert into their interfaces as they 
see fit, for example.)

The overall deliverables of the Information Architect are still valid, 
though they may look dramtically different than the deliverables of a 
non social-media site.

Interaction Design is more substantial with social media than with 
flatter sites. I almost said "more important" but recanted: it's always 
important, but sometimes it's a bigger job because there's more 
interaction...

The Information Architect may take on tasks which have more 
traditionally been done by an Interaction Designer but that doesn't make 
you less of an Information Architect. (I for one always saw the line 
between those two roles as being about the blurriest a line could 
possibly be and no one's every provide a knife edge sharp distinction 
between them for me, except in VERY specific project contexts.)

Visual Design (or Graphic Design) is another conversation altogether. 
FWIW, I only enjoy working on projects where Visual Design is considered 
equally important to Interaction Design/Information Architecture. 
Without a viable partnership, it's all just a house of cards.