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SIGIA-L Mail Archives: [Sigia-l] Re: The Value of an IA discussion - from a newbie's perspective

[Sigia-l] Re: The Value of an IA discussion - from a newbie's perspective

From: Peter Boersma (peter_at_peterboersma.com)
Date: Sun Jan 29 2006 - 07:14:37 EST

Kathleen wrote:
> It seems IA's just start out being senior level. There doesn't
> seem to be any mentoring of newbies going on. It seems many
> companies want only senior level people.

Hey, you can't blaim these companies for trying ;-)
But I do believe there is a place for junior IA's.

So I disagree with Dave when he writes:
> As to the statement made that there is no place for Jr. IAs, I would
> say that IA by definition is a position that requires seniority to some
> extent.

This is only true if you see IA as being "Big IA" (or worse, "Holistic
Design" ;-)) as described by Peter Morville in his column "Big Architect,
Little Architect"
(http://argus-acia.com/strange_connections/strange004.html). Yes, an
"orchestra conductor or film director, conceiving a vision and moving the
team forward" needs seniority to some extent, and talent too.

I have personally mentored junior IA's: Former developers, business
analysts, front-end designers and visual designers who all adopted the
Information Architect role. And this wasn't a strict Little IA role either,
focussing "solely on bottom-up tasks such as the definition of metadata
fields and controlled vocabularies", but something in-between. They would
perform content inventories, document content requirements, create
screenflows (sometimes based on established patterns), decide on what
information to show to users in wireframes, and suggest labels for groups of
content items. These deliverables would be reviewed by peers (other IA's)
and fellow project team members. All of them grew into that role to become
the lead IA in larger projects.

I don't see why other senior IA's couldn't do the same.

Peter 

-- 
Peter Boersma | Consultant User Experience | User Intelligence
Vlaardingenlaan 9d | 1059 GL | Amsterdam, The Netherlands
p: +31-20-4084296 | m: +31-6-15072747 | f: +31-20-4084298
mailto:boersma_at_userintelligence.com | http://www.peterboersma.com/blog
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