Designer or Information Architect?
December 15, 2005 | 
29 Comments
I think I’ve said before that there is a pretty fuzzy line between IA and Design on the Web. Heck, on the IAI mailing list they are constantly “defining the damn thing” and it’s been that way for-ev-er. You’d think a bunch of people who make a living classifying and labeling things could nail down their own profession. You’d be wrong.
I know how it is though. I feel that my skills and experience (at least when it comes to that stuff) lie smack-dab in between the two. In my current role I’m tending to lean a bit more toward the “design” side of things and while I really enjoy it, I’m finding out that I’m much more of a strategic designer than I am a visual designer.
That’s not to say what I do isn’t creative — not at all — only that my approach to design is very strategic. For example, I find myself spending much more time trying to understand and define the structure of a page than I do the visual elements.
Nick (Finck, our “IA guy”) would say, “dude, you’re an Information Architect, don’t worry about it.” Which in many ways is true, however I feel as a designer I spend more time thinking about how things look than most IAs would. I also see IA differently than many. To me it’s more of an art than a science. Do you see where I’m going?
In my mind a Web designer has to be a bit of an Information Architect. When I work with Nick I take his stuff and tweak it so that it looks good, but I also put a whole lot of thought into the same stuff he does. I weigh business goals against user goals and I try to envision how people will interact with my designs as well as how they’ll feel about them. In the process I pull his wireframes apart and put them back together again.
A truly great Web design is one that looks great and is strategically well aligned. This is where Web designers and IAs should live. Embrace the grey area and learn to love the fuzzy-line between the two — that’s my advice.
Has anyone else thought about this? I’m curious to know if there are lots of folks out there in the same boat.
Filed under: Information Architecture
Keyword Tags: web+design information+architecture career business
Comments
1. Kyle Johnson said:
Howdy, long time reader, have never posted here though. May I first say your insight and our simplistic designs amaze me. Maybe because I am a large fan of minimalist design as well. I actually liked your blog structure here so much that I had to use some elements and layout structures on my own. Hope that doesn’t bother you. :S
GREAT WORK.
As far as your recent post I find myself wondering that same thing. Although i am fairly new to the business, with the company I work for I have been thrown into the design dept doing a little bit of everything. I do sales, I do programming, design, consulting, and everything else there is to do. I am in the current process ot trying to reform the design dept at my company that is ages out of date. But its hard.
If you want a read on what my perspective is right now and where I would like to get you might find some interest in my Blog Post labeled “The Dream”.
http://designsbyjohnson.com/blog
Once again great work man. Keep it up!
Posted on December 15, 2005 09:02 PM | #
2. AJ said:
Oh, definitely in the same boat. Although it does tend to trend towards first seeing a really bad design (the ugh factor) then recognizing when something is *wrong* with an IA - when you can’t figure out the navigation, or when the behaviour doesn’t hew to standard expectations. It is harder sometimes to imagine how people will use the design, but I see myself as the ultimate “middlebrow” user; neither power nor newbie, so if it seems logical to _me_ at least, then it ought to seem obvious to a majority of average web users.
Posted on December 15, 2005 09:04 PM | #
3. Lea said:
I actually tend to identify myself as a ‘Web Developer’; as I freelance I wouldn’t label myself with something as specialised as ‘IA’ because I have so many other roles.
I don’t use ‘Web Designer’ because it has so many graphic designer implications, and pretty pictures are my weakest suit.
Posted on December 15, 2005 09:14 PM | #
4. Geoffrey said:
Since you are no longer my officemate, I’ve had to take over half of your old job as Information Architect for the time being. And these days, I have to say I’m a little more attracted to the creativity that lies in information architecture than I am in the creativity that lies in “design.” I’m guessing that it’s due mostly to the fact that it’s newer to me, but also because it’s just one more step away from the marketing. ;-)
Posted on December 15, 2005 09:22 PM | #
5. Keith said:
Kyle - First off, thanks for the kind words. Second, I read your post and I can definitely understand where you’re coming from. A very nice dream…
AJ - I see things the same way. I often talk about how I don’t really like computers and I really expect them to work for me – not the other way around. I think this helps me empathise with people and *hopefully* this comes through in my work.
Lea - Then there is the grey area between design and development on the Web…
Geoff - Hey man, missed you at our party! Anyway, I think we may have partially swapped roles! ;0) It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who sees IA as creative…
Posted on December 15, 2005 09:40 PM | #
6. nortypig said:
Well put Keith and I would like to see a lot of designers who are visual designers come over towards the IA direction as well. There is sound common ground there. Nice article.
Posted on December 15, 2005 10:44 PM | #
7. Adam Fellowes said:
It seems that it’s being proven time and time again that the simple things work.
So many times I have a faced a redesign to relaunch a failing product or service where the business hope that it’s the look of their online presence which is pulling it down.
In most cases the problems occur far deeper in the system than the skin on top, if the IA is confusing or the data collected not deep enough then no matter how the product is wrapped up it’s never going to improve.
This shows how nearly all fields of expertise in online for that matter all computer-based development is creative whether it is graphics design, IA, Back end and any others I forgot. Also it never hurt anyone to fully understand how something works and the best way to do that is pick it apart and start again.
Posted on December 16, 2005 01:35 AM | #
8. Rimantas said:
From what I see looks like designers define who things will work and IA and alike
spend their time discussing how they should call themselves, what should they do,
what is IA, what is UX, who are they, where are they. Funny.
Posted on December 16, 2005 03:12 AM | #
9. Tom said:
Don’t forget to throw ID’s into the mix :) I agree that “web developer” is a good general term, and I also used that when I was working on my own. Right now I’m working on a kiosk project, where I am doing scoping, IA, page design, visual design and code production. And we wonder why the lines are blurry - it’s because they are!
Posted on December 16, 2005 04:32 AM | #
10. Wade Winningham said:
I think IA is still a relatively new concept and we’re still defining it as a role. Small companies probably have less need of a full-time IA because they probably don’t have the number of projects to support one. Larger non-tech companies have their programmers, who I’m sure do the IA on their projects, without calling it IA, it’s just part of the development process. They most likely refer to it as ‘doing the wireframes’.
Do most people think of IA as part of another job’s responsibilities? I think more than not, either a programmer or visual designer end up doing it, but that doesn’t mean they should.
Another thing is that IA means Information Architect and also Information Architecture. You don’t have that kind of confusion with a Programmer or Designer. Maybe we should come up with a new term to distinguish them more.
Posted on December 16, 2005 05:13 AM | #
11. Chris K said:
Seems like the consensus is that there is a lot of grey area between the two. They both will overlap in many ways. I consider myself more of a designer, but spend a lot of time on the IA aspect of it. I think its the nature of the beast. You can’t cleanly separate the two. I personally don’t see the need to strictly define the difference (unless its a job posting).
Posted on December 16, 2005 05:53 AM | #
12. candace said:
Well said. I totally agree with you. The point you are making here does make sense.
Posted on December 16, 2005 06:18 AM | #
13. Matthew Oliphant said:
I had an interview last Friday and was asked, “So tell me what you do.”
Well, my answer was I do it all. I write business requirements (with the help of SMEs of course). I do design research. I do the IA. Develop the workflows. Create the visual presentation. Then document it all so the developers know what to code.
The person interviewing me seemed incredulous (tone of voice). To me a great designer lives in the “gray area” and doesn’t worry about if they are IA or a Designer. You can do it all because the skills (to a large extent) are part of a waterfall process.
It’s fine that HR has to call you something in order to know what to pay you ;), but you have to be involved in all stages of Design (in its broadest meaning) or you aren’t doing your job. Depending on your environment, the level of involvement may be different, but frankly I think it is a practise of self-preservation more than anything.
Being able to offer a lot to the creation process make you way more valuable than just being the person who makes the pretty buttons or only focuses on wire frames.
Posted on December 16, 2005 06:49 AM | #
14. vanderwal said:
I bounce in and out of using Information Architect as a title. It is definitely a role that is important to everything I do. But much of what I have been presenting on is IA, but far beyond the desktop browser and looks that the information and structure before it gets into a web page, this has fallen into IA v. 2 (or IA 2.0 as it was deemed at the last IA Summit). I have found that IAs in Europe grasp this very well and need it as it addresses the problems they are facing daily, but in the U.S. it is put more in a technical, design, or ubicomp area rather than IA.
I have been using designer and technosocial architect a lot the past two years as it provides more room for the things I have been working on and now am consulting on. At heart is is IA, but in a much broader sense than those that are wanting to “define the damn thing” (part of the problem with getting to a definition is it means different things to different people, most who agree that they define things as a profession and work on structuring information for people find). IA must be about the use of information, but most in the profession don’t look that far, which limits the value of what they do.
Posted on December 16, 2005 08:18 AM | #
15. Jeff L said:
You are a web developer!
My greatest stengths and joys lie in the front end code - XHTML and CSS. But, if I’m working a job alone, that means I’m also designing, structuring, programming, doing database work. I think the overall genericness of “web developer” is just what’s required.
Posted on December 16, 2005 08:42 AM | #
16. Keith said:
JeffL – While I do know how to code (very well) I don’t consider myself a Web developer anymore. In fact, one of the reasons why we’re looking for people to help out at Blue Flavor is so that I can focus on design, content, strategy, etc. and not coding.
To me there is very little relation between coding (developing) and design. I’m not saying that you can’t do both (although I think people are better when they can separate the two) but I see them as distinctly different.
My process usually begins in my head, moves to paper, then to omnigraffle (or InDesign for Page Description type deliverables), then to photoshop…I’ve usually got all the interaction mapped out and have solidly set the direction…by the time I’m working with code all I’m doing is compromising my designs. ;0)
There is overlap, of course, but at their heart design and development are pretty different. IMHO anyway.
Posted on December 16, 2005 08:59 AM | #
17. Tom Watson said:
Didn’t Nick talk about this last year with his post about the web craftsman? And then you went on that rant didn’t you?
Yeah this discussion is a little different but it all seems to fall in the same vein. Anyway, thanks again for throwing the party!
Posted on December 16, 2005 09:29 AM | #
18. Keith said:
Tom – True. Kind of. The point of my previous post was that we should all understand and embrace the overlap – *not that we should try to be everything to everyone*.
Meaning that a Web designer should have a good grasp of HTML and CSS and understand how a Web site is built. Not that they have to do the building themselves. I honestly believe that if you focus in one area you will do better work. This doesn’t mean that you don’t do anything else only that you are focused somewhere. This has proven itself to be true in my case.
You can be a Web craftsman and be an IA, producer, developer, whatever…it’s just showing you’ve got a good grasp of how other job functions work.
However, and the point of this post, is that when choosing to focus on “design” and “creative” I had expected to be less strategic and less like the IA I was at my previous job. This is not how it is. If anything I’m more strategic and still have to think like an IA. I also came to the hard realization that IA - at least what *I* do - is very creative in of itself.
I’m rambling a bit. If you take anything away from this comment, just take that the idea of a Web craftsman is a good one and that with all the grey area shrouding “Web whateveryouwanttocallit” it’s very important to have a broad understanding while still being specialized.
Posted on December 16, 2005 10:10 AM | #
19. Tom Watson said:
I think I follow what you were shooting for a bit better now and I agree. Not to try to summarize your sentiments too much with an analogy, but I feel it’s a bit like how I’ve been dealing with my RSS feeds and IM usage lately. I’ve trimmed the RSS feeds down and cut out IM entirely to try and focus on particular websites and people (via email) more. It’s allowed me to retain that overall “cloud” of being “connected” to the web design scene but allowed me to actually do more work in the field as opposed to just reading about what everyone else is doing.
…now if I can only decide which direction I’m best suited for in that whole grey shroud…
Posted on December 16, 2005 12:56 PM | #
20. Onno said:
You’re definately not alone. Developing communication through the web means you have to know at least a bit of everything: Design, Architecture, Structuring information, Writing for the web.
Restricting yourself to one single discipline means you might find yourself handicapped one day. But the same goes for being too general. In my experience it’s people who have the overview of the site’s strategic goals, the user’s needs and the technical possibilities, who make an average site a great/good site.
So I shouldn’t worry about what box you’re in, thinking outside that box is the added value :)
Posted on December 17, 2005 12:00 AM | #
21. Beto said:
There was a time where I was tempted to label myself as “jack of all trades” in my business card, since that summarizes pretty well the approach to web design I’ve had almost since I began doing this for a living years ago. My univ diploma says I’m a MFA in Graphic Design, yet early on I began to listen and put in practice what Zeldman, Shea and many others were saying because everything just made *so* much sense in the day-to-day work context. I also started at a time when you had to know your HTML to build pages - that helped to further shape my multiple personalities of designer, coder and IA strategist over time. My expertise in programming comes from the years I worked on places where there was no one else for the task… every design decision was, and still is, is dependent on what IA and/or user experience dictates. One thing cannot be without the other.
One consequence of this is that I became regrettably intolerant of “web designers” who happily focus only on the form factor ignoring the fact that in web design, form follows function every time - no matter how “artistic” it gets to be, since the interaction element is always present. Ergo, it’s not a painting on a canvas. Unfortunately, finding designers who are able to get the “bigger picture” when it comes to web design has proven to be a largely sterile quest, IME.
However, I must confess that sometimes I’d just like to focus in the visual aspects of design instead of wearing too many hats all the time. Talk about a conflict of interest…
Posted on December 17, 2005 07:22 PM | #
22. ..ak said:
I will always consider myself an architect and for full disclosure, I do have a Bachelor in Architecture and real-world experience.
Architecture is about carefully crafting a balance of engineering limits, visual appeal, human scale, budgets, building codes, client wants, timelines and more. The architect works with a team, interacts with the client, and oversees the construction of the design. They are responsible for translating the vision of a client into a building.
I do the same but in a digital world. I take an intangible idea and make it a reality. I’m an architect. I work with people who are experts, some being designers.
Posted on December 18, 2005 05:35 PM | #
23. Jeff Parks said:
As an Information Architect, so I’m more than a little biased in my view here, I see our strength laying in our diversity; resulting in making the profession hard to define. I also believe there is a hell of a lot more that we have in common, than not.
Look at the mountain of information that is out there on the web. How it is organized, how people interact with content, how they find it, regardless of its form, is the real challenge. And each challenge brings it’s own set of unique problems. There is no one perfect framework to cover every circumstance or issue.
There has to be art and science applied to these solutions because it is human beings, and not other machines we are creating solutions for. I haven’t run into too many cloned humans lately that all think and interact the same. The truth is any solution is greatly underacheiving without the insight of an IA, graphic designer, programmer, input from the end user, etc.
I think the real strength as an Information Architect comes from our capacity to understand both the art and science of the profession, while showing the value add of other professionals in creating the final solution; whatever that looks like in the end.
Posted on December 20, 2005 01:43 PM | #
24. The Foo said:
No offense intended, but “Information Architect” is such pompous title to give yourself, or to be given. It’s just another fad / trend that’s doing the rounds in the industry at the moment.
If you design and code websites, you are a Website Developer.
If you design (graphics, UIs, etc) and don’t code, you are a Designer.
If you code (AS, PHP, ASP, C++, etc) and don’t design, you are a Programmer.
What’s the problem with keeping it like that? Most people instantly know what you do if you use any of those titles, including a lot of not-too-clued-up companies out there.
Maybe those titles are just too common for some of the more egocentric people out there?
Posted on December 22, 2005 01:38 AM | #
25. Peter Boersma said:
You’re a User Experience practitioner, and you know it :-)
A couple of years ago, you would have been called a Big Information Architect by IAs and a senior web designer or web consultant by others.
If you have a deep background in one of the UX professions, and go wide in others (so you get a T-shape), you’re a great example of what I call a User Experience practitioner.
See my explanation of this model in “T-model: Big IA is now UX”, here:
http://www.peterboersma.com/blog/2004/11/t-model-big-ia-is-now-ux.html
Posted on December 24, 2005 01:26 PM | #
26. Jens Meiert said:
Actually, “Information Architecture” covers so many topics that you can easily meet ten “Information Architects” and each of them is doing something different (as with me, I’m also a Web Development specialist).
To refer to the term “User Experience”, be it an “User Experience Practitioner” or an “User Experience Manager”, doesn’t necessarily solve this problem, since from my point of view, you then (need to) open to the door to Psychology, Sociology, and HCI (a little bit more).
To keep it short - I don’t perceive the terminology and distinction between Designers, IA’s, and UXP’s as a problem as long as employers and employees know what they want and do.
Posted on December 29, 2005 05:47 AM | #
27. Jeremy Koempel said:
Greetings Keith,
I too believe your article and the nature of the discussion is important and often misunderstood. The distinction between Information Architect and Visual Designer is quite broad though each is supported or enhanced by the other. I tend to think of Information Architecture, Visual Design, and implementation as unique steps in the Web Development process. In some cases each is done by different individuals (such is generally the case in large design houses, etc.) but in the case of the sole proprietor or individual Web Developer, each “hat” is worn albeit in different stages of the site’s development.
As you stated above a successful design, in this case a Web Site, is one that presents its information in a clear, useable, scalable, and relevant manner through an attractive, pleasurable to use interface.
Underneath the “hood” the above statement may translate into a site where the IA, visual design, and programming are implemented in such a way as to enhance and support one another. I would compare this to say architecture in the way an architect might articulate a certain structural element in order to support way finding and the aesthetic quality of a space.
Posted on December 29, 2005 03:55 PM | #
28. emily said:
I think you’ve a real talent for both the IA and Design work.
Posted on January 3, 2006 02:57 AM | #
29. buspar for side effects said:
buspar and wellbutrin snort buspar http://moroz.straponclub.com/buspar/buspar_for_anxiety_drug_info-net.html buspar withdrawl symptoms buspar and alcoholism http://moroz.straponclub.com/buspar/what_is_buspar_dividose.html and …. what is buspar dividose buspar drug sleep http://moroz.straponclub.com/buspar/buspar_zoloft.html buspar and electrical surges buspar discontinuation and increased alcohol abuse http://moroz.straponclub.com/buspar/buspar_lawsuit.html buspar and social anxiety getting off buspar http://moroz.straponclub.com/buspar/buspar_anxiety_medication.html .Thanks.
Posted on January 13, 2006 11:09 AM | #
About The Author
is a writer, designer, etc. in Seattle, Washington.
Hire me
Links
Home | Search | Archives | Subscribe
Random Old Stuff
Song of The Week and syndication?
Hosting provided by:
The highly recommended Dreamhost!
