SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: the line between IA and int
Re: SIGIA-L: the line between IA and interaction design
From: Andrew Thompson (athompso_at_lante.com)
Date: Wed Nov 01 2000 - 15:43:02 EST
True,the entire IA debate is mostly just about labels and it's the skills which
really matter. But I think it examplifies how the web world seems to have
forgotten everything that came before it. I used to be called a user interface
designer and everyone I dealt with knew what that was. I wokred at a firm
focused on client/server and web application UI design. Last year I took 3
months off to avoid total burnout confident that the market was hot enough not
to pose any problems in finding a new job. When it came time to go back to work
I sought out UI designer positions, but only found a few. But there were
hundreds of information architect jobs available so I checked out what that was
all about. I remembered the term from my grad school days in graphic design when
I focused on information design (Richard Saul Wurman, Tufte, and the whole IA
movement). Turns out that an IA position was generally a UI design position.
Same thing, different label. The web world seemed unaware that people have been
designing software for years and it was the UI designer who created the IA and
visual design for these applications. Multimedia designers (CDRoms) did the same
thing. But I guess the term Information Architect sounded hip and everyone
latched on to it, or perhaps they thought they invented the term. Now that UI
design is mainstream I think the various terms will sort themselves out over
time.
Andrew
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