I like to think I’m paid to be an information architecture, but my job title is Web Content Architect. What, exactly, is one of those? They barely exist. Stick “web content architect” (with quotes) in Google, you’ll see me on the first page. Meanwhile, there are 786,000 information architects. Supposedly. But what is information architecture? Well, you know, it’s taxonomies and metadata. Search, browse, ask – that kind of thing. Pathetic answer. I need time to prepare a coherent one.
Rosenfeld and Morville aren’t much help in this respect. Isn’t it a bit vague to say, ‘we help organise huge amounts of information’. Is that any different to a shelf-stacker? One of the difficulties is the huge grey areas. I’m also passionate about the emotional experience of users. But that’s not really information architecture. So now the plan is to identify clearly what is only information architecture. It will include:
- taxonomy
- search
- guides
- metadata
The trick will be to make people think, ‘how did we ever live without information architecture?’ I will prepare my speech. I will publish it here. It will inspire you.
