SIGIA-L Mail Archives: RE: SIGIA-L: who's doing cool stuff?
RE: SIGIA-L: who's doing cool stuff?
From: paula.thornton_at_luminant.com
Date: Fri Sep 15 2000 - 23:46:26 EDT
Mary: The times, they are a-changin'. Having spent nearly 20 years in the
Systems Engineering realm and now working in the Interactive Agency model,
I've found that there's a groundswell happening and if the pressure keeps
up, something's gonna blow. I'm waiting for a plane in Chicago, just
leaving a Gartner conference. One statement (ala. Gartner "prediction")
made was that over the next few years (they gave a specific number of
years, I just can't remember it right now) over 80% of all enterprise
development will be Internet-based.
That means that Systems Engineering as we know it today will cease to
exist. We're at the front of the pressure bubble that continues to build.
I had an analyst try and diffuse the potential rate of change. I shared
with him that I just came off of a project of a Fortune 500 company
clearly stuck in the '80s (if you called the Help Desk, they could only
give you direct help if it was a mainframe issue, otherwise they simply
took a message and passed it on...no doubt, manually). Even there, they
were asking us to put together a proposal to help them begin to replicate
our operating/development model inside their company.
Information Architecture will morph into Customer Experience
Infrastructures where the discipline will include touch-point analysis
designers, CRM (customer relationship management) solutions planners, etc.
etc. etc. Forget what you are now and what you want to be "when you grow
up". It's all changing under our feet. Get ready for the ride. Companies
not prepared to shoot the wave are going to get run over.
Paula Thornton
Senior Consultant / Information Architect
Luminant Worldwide, Dallas
888-388-5023
"Mary Deaton" <mary.deaton_at_b3interactive.com>
09/14/00 11:49 AM
Please respond to mary.deaton
To: <paula.thornton_at_luminant.com>, <sigia-l_at_asis.org>
cc:
Subject: RE: SIGIA-L: who's doing cool stuff?
Paula, thanks for this reply. How is what you describe different than
interface design? And I am not talking simply visual interface design, but
design of the whole interface, including visuals, navigation, and
interaction?
I worked on several products at Microsoft, Word and Publisher most
specifically, where the function you describe below was conducted by
people
with such diverse titles as program manager, product manager, and Help
writer. There was nary an information architect among us, or so we thought
at the time.
Fast forward ten years and I just came off a project where all of those
things, again, were worked on by a design team that included a developer,
a
product manager, a program manager, a technical writer, and myself as
everyone else (usability, interface design, interaction design). But I
would
not identify anything we did on that project as information architecture.
I
do not think of software functions as "information" and maybe that is
where
I am getting confused and need help in understanding how people are
defining
information architecture.
Three years ago, I worked on a project where we had to determine how to
make
several thousands of documents retrievable by customer service
representatives in a large insurance company who need to be able to
quickly
answer questions. Of course, we had to create an interface to the
documents,
but first, we had to figure out what all of the documents were, what
categories they fit in, how they were related to one another, which were
used most often and least often, under what circumstances someone would
need
to locate one, when located what cross-references to others were
appropriate, and so on. That, to me, is information architecture.
Mary Deaton
User Experience Analyst
B3Interactive
Weblogs at http://home.mindspring.com/~mmdeaton/default.htm
***********************************
In response to my query "For example, how would an information architect
be
involved in the
development of a word processing tool?" Paula Thornton wrote:
A word processor is a collection of functions. An information architect
could determine which functions were most important to various
"categories" of users (by scenario) and find ways to design the solution
to present those functions, with corresponding attributes preset to their
particular needs (or cue for them to be specified, without letting the
user find out 5 years after they've been using the tool that there was an
option to customize that "thing"). It's still all about processes and
navigation, and the data and information needed to complete intended goals
with the greatest level of success with an optimized level of effort.
In that process, personalization would take on a whole new interactive
perspective where, unlike the Paper Clip (if the darn thing wasn't already
asexual, I'd want to neuter it...other than I think it's cute when it
blinks), giving the "agent" feedback would help to "customize" the tool
for you rather than just sit there blinking wildly at you.
Paula Thornton
Senior Consultant / Information Architect
Luminant Worldwide, Dallas
888-388-5023
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