Re: SIGIA-L: Is your IA team an autonomous group?

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Hi Amy and everyone,

As a former Argonaut, we separated IA about as much as possible. That's
all
the company focused on. We did work as closely as we could with client
teams, but that wasn't always possible. And even when we could work
closely
with clients we still spent a lot of time on our own in Ann Arbor
developing
the IA. I think this aided in our "outside perspective" and let us get
away
from company politics and focus on the work at hand, especially content
and
users tempered with business context. We very much worked on developing
the
"blue sky," ideal architecture. However, I think being so separate let us
downplay the politics and some other "business realities" (like the
client's
bandwidth to develop the IA we were developing). We recognized these
forces,
but since the client company was often so different from daily life at
Argus, it was hard to keep their reality in the forefront of our thoughts
and understand the true extent of those realities. As external consultants
it isn't necessarily a bad thing to give clients the ideal goal to shoot
for
and let them figure out how they are going to get there. Part of the whole
reason they bring you in is for that very outsider perspective.

I now work as the lone IA on the design and IA team of the web site branch
of the marketing department. It's very different. I've found that working
on
the inside (rather than as a consultant), it's very nice to have the
support
of the larger web team (which includes designers, producers, usability,
developers). We're working very hard to teach others in the company that
IA
is the foundation (think Jesse James Garrett's elements of user experience
http://www.jjg.net/ia/elements.pdf) that we can build everything else on
top
of. And that the decisions we make are based on testing and deep thinking,
not just a fleeting thought we had in the shower one day. Being part of a
powerful department (marketing) means that we can get the support from
upper
management we need to get the IA done right. Many people in the company
(including in other parts of marketing) don't understand what IA is and
it's
very easy for them to discount it. If we were a separate branch (away from
the web team) I think it would be much harder to get involved in projects
at
the right time and to get people to listen to and understand the value of
IA.

-Chiara Fox

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• Next message: Elaine G. Toms: "Re: SIGIA-L: research on browsing vs. searching"
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• In reply to: Amy Barnes: "SIGIA-L: Is your IA team an autonomous group?"
• Next in thread: Chamberlain, John: "RE: SIGIA-L: Is your IA team an autonomous group?"
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