I have finally found a succinct description of what Information Architects do: they are problem solvers.
In the years I’ve worked as an IA I’ve explained on countless occasions what Information Architecture is and why it matters, and I have struggled with the difficulty of making any explanation sound tangible. Finally, here it is: we identify problems and opportunities, and try and solve them within the constraints of the project.
Although relatively new as a separate discipline, the approach and thinking of an Information Architect is ancient outside the “digital world”: from the anonymous early human trying to find a solution to cutting tough materials and coming up with hand tools, to Henry Ford’s commitment to lower manufacturing costs ending up on what we know as the modern factory assembly line, or Steve Job’s development of a malleable touch screen that, depending on the task at hand, can become a keyboard, a phone or an internet browser.
As with any other discipline that deals with human interaction, some of the most striking innovations have been completely assimilated by its users without a second thought: the quiet but amazing success that “customers that bought this also bought that” that separated Amazon from any other online retailer in the early ‘00s, the way facebook started organising the social lives of several millions of people or the way Google took Yahoo over as the search engine that we rely on
Is, then, Information Architecture, Industrial Design for online? Yes, it is. In as much as Industrial Design has traditionally solved problems by creating objects, Information Architecture solves problems by creating new ways to interact with digital objects.
