Re: NextD takes a slash at "Findability, InformationArchitecture"

..other than the turgid prose, the overall meaning is spot
on.  There is still a narrow, 'ivory-tower' mindset among a
number of practicing IAs which can be largely attributed to
a few, vocal individuals in the past who cared more about
self-promotion than cross-disciplinary collaboration.

As for the pdf format, it makes sense. if i spent a whole
afternoon writing 6-page rebuttal, i certainly wouldn't want
to make easy for others to copy/paste my thoughts out of
context.

Lee
------------
IA Summit 2008:  
April 10-14, 2007, Miami, Florida

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Lee, who in the world are you talking about?
Who are the "ivory-tower"?

I'm big on saying the IA Community has issues around
expansion, but as
someone who has been around both inside and outside the IA
community
for awhile, I don't buy this. I'm sorry, but show me
something real in
that statement.

I also take real offense to this, since I know many of those
who would
be considered in that "tower" personally and they
have done nothing
but reach out.

Lou Rosenfeld co-founded UXNet which is all about
collaboration
Peter Merholz was all about the Expereience Design stuff
early on
which created DUX and brought together the IDEA conference
in an
effort to help collaboration take place
Christina Wodtke has been kickin' ass at B&A bringing in
more and more
complex voices to that zine.
Victor Lombardi has definitely moved from IA to strategic
and business
and brings this back to the IA world over and over again.

Who are these people in the tower?

Seriously, I find this to be irresponsible, which is why
many in the
IA community are so angry at GKvP's article in the first
place. It
comes from a place of really not knowing who is the IA
community at
all.

(I bet this defense of the IA community came as a surprise
to some.)

-- dave


On 4/6/07, Lee Hsieh <lhsiehsimple-clarity.com>
wrote:
>
> ..other than the turgid prose, the overall meaning is
spot on.  There is still a narrow, 'ivory-tower' mindset
among a number of practicing IAs which can be largely
attributed to a few, vocal individuals in the past who cared
more about self-promotion than cross-disciplinary
collaboration.
>
> As for the pdf format, it makes sense. if i spent a
whole afternoon writing 6-page rebuttal, i certainly
wouldn't want to make easy for others to copy/paste my
thoughts out of context.
>
> Lee
> ------------
> IA Summit 2008:
> April 10-14, 2007, Miami, Florida
>
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-- 
David Malouf
http://synapticburn.com/

http://ixda.org/
http://motorola.com/
------------
IA Summit 2008:  
April 10-14, 2007, Miami, Florida

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Lee Hsieh wrote:
> ..other than the turgid prose, the overall meaning is
spot on.  There is still a narrow, 'ivory-tower' mindset
among a number of practicing IAs which can be largely
attributed to a few, vocal individuals in the past who cared
more about self-promotion than cross-disciplinary
collaboration.
>   
I've heard this criticism many times over the years, and I
have been an 
IA for years and I never understand who is being attacked.
Many of the 
vocal individuals in IA are also very involved in community
and 
collaboration, so I can never figure this one out.

Could you please clarify who you are talking about?
> As for the pdf format, it makes sense. if i spent a
whole afternoon writing 6-page rebuttal, i certainly
wouldn't want to make easy for others to copy/paste my
thoughts out of context.
>   
It is no harder to copy content out of a PDF file than a web
page...

Donna

-- 
Donna Maurer
Maadmob Interaction Design
e: donnamaadmob.net
web: http://maadmob.net/maa
dmob_id/
book: http://r
osenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting/

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IA Summit 2008:  
April 10-14, 2007, Miami, Florida

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On 06/04/07, Lee Hsieh <lhsiehsimple-clarity.com>
wrote:
>
> ..other than the turgid prose, the overall meaning is
spot on.  There is still a narrow, 'ivory-tower' mindset
among a number of practicing IAs which can be largely
attributed to a few, vocal individuals in the past who cared
more about self-promotion than cross-disciplinary
collaboration.
>
> As for the pdf format, it makes sense. if i spent a
whole afternoon writing 6-page rebuttal, i certainly
wouldn't want to make easy for others to copy/paste my
thoughts out of context.
>

Hi Lee,

I'm coming to this a bit late but having found and read the
article I
do have empathy with what it's saying. From my perspective
books such
as the polar bear book do strengthen a bit of a myth that IA
is
somehow different from experience design.  There is also a
myth that
Information Architecture is about the organisation of
information.

As an information architect it is context, not content that
is king.
What I do is dependent on the project I work on and, as a
contractor,
I get to work on a lot of different projects with different
context.
To be honest I've not worked on designing any huge content
heavy sites
for a while, although have worked on a couple of large
intranets and
have worked on parts of huge sites but I have noticed a
tendency to
over complicate things. I see processes used, like card
sorting, that
add noice not signal to the user research process (I would
say this is
down to lack of context for the sort not the idea of card
sorting as
such).

I think what I'm trying to say is that as jobbing IA I find
some what
is 'official' said about IA by those who are in the spot
light simply
not to be true. I'm too busy drawing boxes to worry to much
if books
about Information Architecture describe my job incorrectly,
although
it doesnt help much as there is a danger any official course
taught on
the subject will be one step (or even two) removed from
reality -
coming out as a history lesson on library science than a
good guide on
how to architect web and other interactive projects  in
terms of
content, funcationality and experience. There no point
implimenting a
site wide dublin core style catagorisation system if that
structure
doesnt allow for what the user really wants to do and is not
driven by
key user journeys.

-- 
Stewart Dean
------------
IA Summit 2008: "Experiencing Information" 
April 10-14, 2008, Miami, Florida

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