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ED? Eh.

from the riveting Nathan Shedroff: the v-2 interview (part one of two) and by the way, ED is […]

from the riveting Nathan Shedroff: the v-2 interview (part one of two) and by the way, ED is short for experience design. Cozy little acronym, ain’t it?
“Nathan Shedroff: Well, all of those cultural, psychological, physiological, technical, etc. theories support ED just as well – if not better, in fact – than they do IA/ID. I don’t understand the need to acknowledge them for one and not for another. This is like those IAs who spend so much time splitting all of the responsibilities of information creation into two sets, the set of things they consider nicer, cooler, or more sophisticated, and those they consider basic, dull, or beneath them. Then they label the first IA and walk off laughing with their noses held high and the other set ID.

AG: Sounds to me like when you talk about “noses held high,” you have one or more bad experiences in mind. And I’m not denying that can be important, but aren’t you then simply doing what you accused me of earlier: damning the entire field for the blunders of one or two pompous jerks? Why would I assert that IA is somehow free of such, when anybody who’s read SIGIA knows perfectly well that we have our due ration of bozos?

NS: It’s just that I see it way more than “one or two jerks.” It’s an overall feeling I sense, more often than not, in writings, speeches, and conversations. If it were only a few people I’d just write them off (like certain usability folk). But, in my experience, it’s pervasive.

Maybe I’m just being too sensitive, but things feel a lot different from ten years ago, and not in a good way. Some of the best IAs/IDs I know never participate in the IA/ID community because of the pervasive attitudes and the lack of anything new or interesting going on. I think that the IA/ID community is, mostly, spinning its wheels in terms of growth and development. It isn’t innovating and it is turning more people off than on. Again, my opinion.”

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anyone bag that hard on IA– I wonder who has been poisoning his soup. Last I saw Mr. Shedroff, he was cheerfully breaking bread with Lou Rosenfeld… I personally have many reservations about the nascent field of ED but I have yet to take a public stick to the entire group of people who are trying to build it (though Adam’s fearlessness in asking the hard questions is rather enticing… come on in… the water’s bracing!)

Another oddity in the interview is Nathan’s mixing of Information Design and Information Architecture. I really wish Adam had asked Nathan for his definition of IA, just to set a common vocabulary. I’m not sure if Nathan has expanded his definition beyond his former mentor Wurman’s or not…

Finally I just don’t get these particular arguments. Why argue over the same bit of carpet, when there is a whole world to design? IA designs information spaces, ED designing experiences, IA designs for findability, understandability and usability, ED designs for a positive user experience, thus moving beyond information spaces and interactive to include passive and visceral designed environments. There will be overlap. In the best of cases, the two will learn from each other.

For me, Ed is too big, too undefined to be juicy enough for me– I like to stay more in the realm of the practical than the theoretical. I still do big IA, but it tends to be limited to information spaces– interactive, digital, structural. When I hang with former Argonauts, I’m a generalist. When I chat with the ED crowd, I’m a specialist.

But for other designers, ED is the key and I like watching them go off on their philosophical tangents as they ponder the universe of designed experience like a sophomore art student on his third beer. There is joy there, and it’s all good.

39 Comments

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  1. 1
    JEH

    Is it a correct observation that ED seems to be a general term with a narrow application, whereas IA is a more spesific term but is used about almost everything?

    Could this be because IA is more “popular”?

  2. 2
    Nick Finck

    It seems that there is much debate between the IA community and ED community. I think what a lot of people have failed to see is that 1) we are all working for a common goal and that 2) it’s not about titles, roles, who owns what aspects of what field and who can and cannot do what. It’s about solving problems.

    When you look at the industry as a whole, since we are all here trying to solve the users, the customers or the business’s problems we should learn to respect each other for their contributions to solving these problems and learn to work together and find more effective solutions.

    This whole business of pigeonholing, turf wars, etc. is a bit out of hand. Information Architecture, Experience Design, User-Centered Design, Web Design, Web Development, Usability, Interaction Design, Information Design: These, in my opinion, are all just skill sets. Aspects and tools of the job designed to help us solve problems.

    I see half of the debate starting because of miscommunication and misunderstandings on all parts from every aspect of the industry. Part of it is a limitation of the language.

    How many ways can you define it?
    Someone who creates database schemas a “designer” in the same way an IA may organize information? Are they both “designers?” Can a Designer who understands the core principals of design (composition, color, motion, typography, etc.) work in the medium of the Web if they don’t have a full understanding of how the Web works? Can a Web designer work in the medium of Print if they do not know how the printing process works? What separates a print designer from a web designer? What separates an Information Designer from an Information Architect? What is the difference between an Information Designer and an Interaction Designer? Where does Information Architecture stop and Usability begin? Does Accessibility and Usability overlap? What is the difference between a User-Experience Engineer and an Experience Designer? How many titles job did FastCompany cover in the dot-com era?

    The worlds “experience,” “design,” and “information” are words vague enough to allow anyone the ability to develop any perceivable definition known to man… why argue semantics?

  3. 3
    JEH

    why argue semantics?

    Basic human modisty and the wish not to use a title that comes across as pretentious or you cant justify.

    I was invited to a C# talk a few weeks ago week held by a bunch of “architects” from Microsoft. No fear of being pretentious there.

  5. 5
    Adam

    Nick, I have to disagree. “Experience” vague, sure. But not “information,” which has both a formal definition and a colloquial use not so very far removed from that definition. (I use Bateson’s “the difference that makes a difference,” but that may be too abstract for some.)

    While I agree with you that solving problems is the fundamental issue here, I don’t think it’s at all tangential or trivial to try and formalize what we do, a little. For someone who comes, really, from the intuitive/experiential side of things myself, I’ve noticed that I’m having trouble passing any wisdom on to junior IAs. “But…how *do* you model this persona’s behavior on this section of the site?” is something I hear a lot, and I’ve had little enough in the way of answers except a lame “Use your imagination, and do it often, and once you get some experience under your belt you’ll have a feel for how accurate your guesses were.” In other words, it’s all sort of soft and heuristic: well and good if you’ve got all the time in the world, and a highly-motivated apprentice, but that is an ideal situation.

    So I’ve often wanted either a list of hard-won heuristics, or something approaching a formula to provide for the consistent evocation of positive user experiences. And, of course, outisde of models like Contextual Design, there simply aren’t any. I don’t think it’s so out of line asking that we try to collectively imagine one, but Nathan clearly thinks this is a waste of time – even many IAs think this is a waste of time.

    Of course, I think it’s bizarre that Nathan collapses the meaningful and valid contemporary distinction between information designers and information architects – these are not often the same people, and while there’s some cross-fertilization possible, very different skills are involved. I’m a fair-to-middlin’ IA, but I’d be run down in the street if I tried my hand at Tuftean information design.

    Either way, I think it’s both (a) possible to get a handle on the whole field, and (b) possible to articulate at least the armature of a consistent methodology. That’s what I’m going to try to do, at least, even if I’m the only one.

  6. 6
    Mike

    christina wrote:
    “Another oddity in the interview is Nathan’s mixing of Information Design and Information Architecture.”

    in the very next paragraph christina also wrote:
    “Finally I just don’t get these particular arguments. Why argue over the same bit of carpet, when there is a whole world to design?”

    This reminds me of the Simpson’s episodes where Bart breaks something and immediately shouts “I didn’t do it!” Thanks for the laugh.

  7. 7
    christina

    You’ll note what I said in the next sentence “I really wish Adam had asked Nathan for his definition of IA, just to set a common vocabulary.” I don’t know what nathan is talking about when he talks about IA and infoD. When he complains about IA’s I’m not sure if he means the LIS crowd, the big IA’s, or actual information designers making explanitory graphics for newspapers and coporate reports….

    A painter and a sculpter are not the same thing– they do not do the same thing. Yet they work in the same field, and eiher can try his/her hand at the other’s work, and this is not a cause for worry.

    Information design is like the painter– it is almost exclusively in 2-D. and IA is like the sculpter, and tends to work in 3-d (the time of experience, rather than depth). In the course of the work, they will dip their toes in each other’s purview.

    I think an unclear, badly defined vocabulary marks us as an immature profession (modern design, design in digital media). Fighting over who gets to do what rather than collaborating marks us as immature humans. The interview sits between these two problems, and I admired both the participants willingness to go at it to try to shake out definations and also to understand each other– and if they were really talking about the same thing or not.

    Of course painting and sculpting are typically solitary occupations– maybe film might be a better model of collaboration for us.

  8. 8
    Nathan Shedroff

    Hi Christina,

    I was just pointed here by a friend and thought I would respond to some of the comments you make. In general, I just don’t understand where these definitions are coming from–and they certainly aren’t all agreed-upon. First of all, what is “big IA” supposed to mean? I see this bandied about more and more lately but each time it’s used I get less of a sense of some common meaning among its users.

    Who is defining IA and ID officially (I suspect no one can claim official authority)? When I hear this patronizing distinction coming from people in the IA community that ID is relegated to merely pretty pictures (or, in your terms “explanitory graphics for newspapers and coporate reports” and “2D” solutions) it’s not only infuriating but sad. I don’t know anyone who calls themselves an ID that limits themselves to presentation only, 2D only, or print only. In fact, no IDs I know even make a distinction between ID and IA as they (and I) don’t see any. I only see this distinction coming from the IA community and it is not only curious but exasperating.

    You state that “Fighting over who gets to do what rather than collaborating marks us as immature humans” and I completely agree. This was exactly the point I was trying to make in Adam’s interview and I still can’t seem to make it since it isn’t hitting home anywhere. There IS no distinction bewteen IA and ID. They are historically co-existent terms that most IDs use interchangable but many IAs don’t.

    To be accurate here (and to answer your question), my definition of ID is exactly the same as my definition of IA: care given to the organization and presentation of data in order to make it informing (in other words, “information”). I just don’t understand the cleaving of ever more specific job titles and tasks where none is needed. You don’t see this in other specialties or fields to this level and I think it’s totally unnecessary in this one as well (no matter what it’s called).

    There will always be a lot of variation between individual practitioners and handing out tasks and techniques to this level of detail falls far below the level of significant human differences in skills. We never made any distinction between ID and IA in our company (vivid) because none was needed and it wasn’t a helpful use of time. I know IAs and IDs with high-level, strategic, and product solution-oriented skills and outlooks (is this what is meant by “big IA”?). I know some with skills that excell at presentation and others who work better conceptually. I even know a few who do everything extremely well. But they don’t have to have different titles or job descriptions since they’re all doing the same thing: improving communication.

    Not very many people are going to ever be good at all parts of this field, but they should definitely be aware of all of these aspects and be proficient in them. Cleaving them off into separate titles at this level only makes things more confusing. For example, does a manager need to hire a “big IA” person, a LIS person, an IA, an ID, a user experience specialist, a user tester, AND an interaction designer? No–even with a big team this would be a mess since their responsibilities are almost completely overlapping.

    I don’t understand why this community can’t be respectful of the fact that there are many definitions at work–especially at this early point–and recognize that many people use terms differently. There is no standard and no authority and that is one of the wonderful things about a field at its beginning–despite the possible confusion. There is no historical basis for these distinctions either.

    There is also no difference bewteen IA and ID. One isn’t about pretty, but functional, pictures and the other isn’t about high-level important concepts. One isn’t 2D while the other is 3D. One isn’t more practical and another more conceptual. Finally, one isn’t more critical and the other less so. They are the same thing.

  9. 9
    Adam

    Nathan, something that I think you’re still failing to get is that nobody means any diminution of the difficulty or importance of information design (“…in the Tuftean sense,” which is the community’s default sense, and, I think, the most useful) by distinguishing it from IA proper.

    I don’t read anybody contributing to any of these discussions as saying, patronizingly, “ID is just pretty pictures.”

    Information design, as most everyone I know uses the term, is the marshaling of traditional as well as time-based visual techniques to aid comprehension. IA is (in a somewhat more controversial definition) the structuring, ordering and pacing of informational flow between a user and an artifact to facilitate ease of use or retrieval.

    Different domains, right? Called for at different times, by different “clients,” and in divergent circumstances. There’s no way I could do what even a moderately talented ID could knock out without thinking, just as the topnotch IDs I’ve met have generally and wisely shyed from structuring situations of deep interaction.

    Generalists are wonderful, and strategic generalism is underrated (still), but sometimes what you really, really need is an Allen wrench, not any of the flatheads you’ve got in the drawer and definitely not the flathead attachment on your Swiss Army knife. Saying so disparages none of them.

  10. 10
    christina

    Exactly– two of my *heroes* are Edward Tufte and Richard Saul Wurman– both understood to be two of the greatest information designers of our time. Tufte has shown that information graphics can save or fail to save lies, as well as promote understanding and learning. I hardly call that pretty pictures.

    Were Michelangelo or Picasso greater artists because they could do sculpture and painting than Monet or Giacometti, because they were more able in one medium over another? I wouldn’t say so. Some people are more comfortable in a certain medium, and thus they take it to great heights, others can work across multiple mediums easily. They are rare but they do exist.

    Though I used the most common application for the skillset of InfoD for an example, it was the equivalent to mentioning the most common skillset of IA, organizing the content of websites. In both cases the job is more complex and varied than that.

    In a recent talk on knowledge management, I refer to it as part of the thee keys–

    Interaction Design for Usability
    Information Architecture for Findability
    information Design for Understandability

    If one said one was more important than the other, you would hobble a humans’ ability to move though your design system from data to information to knowledge.

    And even if IA and InfoD are settling into these two separate skillsets (I hesitate to say roles, as I rarely find the skills in the same human)they haven’t settled. So we occasionally need to define them so we can understand each other. A conversation unfortunately between these tightly related disciplines must begin with a controlled vocabulary.

    I would consider, from what I’ve read and from conversations I’ve eavesdropped in over my year on the Ed list that ED is more of a parent discipline, umbrella all the designs I’ve mentioned before as well as graphic design, industrial design, organizational design, (building) architecture and so on. IA, InterD and InfoD could be considered slices across all the different sorts of design– they are skills you acquire or specialize in if you want to achieve one of the desired qualities… usability, fundability, understandability — while Ed considers all and their relationship— and because it is so big that’s why it tends toward theory more, as well as strategy.

    Meanwhile IA tends to be more tactical and applied. the now infamous “big” IA term that is used within the smaller community of practicing IAs tends to be the three skillsets used in unison to design effective information systems, the small IA concentrates on findability. If you wanted to see everything through IA glasses you could call ED “giant IA” Hopefully this is an exercise in trading goggles.

  11. 11
    christina

    Mike– Nathan also did one… “I can’t understand why the community can’t realize there are many definitions at work” followed by “There is no difference between IA and ID”

    Again, our key to conversing is to at least understand what the other is talking about and what we mean when we use these terms. Clearly you and Adam are not using the same meaning for those two terms. This makes the arguments/debates almost useless since you aren’t meaning the same things. When Adam says “Citrus are the key to the whole problem” he means Agriculture is the key, when you reply “Citrus are just one piece” you mean “Kumkwats are just one piece”…. which is why I asked for definitions in the first place.

    nathan, your last paraagraph almost undid all the good that was done in the proceeding parargraphs–I think you and I nearly completely agree on everything. We just are running with different terminology.. and actually we aren’t too off on that, since for me IA is “big” IA, which includes infoD (and interface design, which I also consider an aspect of information design).

    Still, (arguing with myself now) I would find it unusual to find someone who knows how to create a controlled vocabulary and effectively present a dataset visually. They are both deep skills, taking years to master, and if they are not mastered, the danger of bad design and poor experience are high.

    So to answer the earlier question of should a company hire all these folks? No, but they should try to hire for all these skills, if all these skills are needed to make them successful.

  12. 12
    Nathan Shedroff

    Adam:

    The thing that your failing to get is that the comments you and Christina think are appeasing and affirming are actually pretty patronizing. I don’t think you mean “any diminution of the difficulty or importance of information design” though you couch it in the “Tufte sense.” The community (information architecture) you then refer to as valuing information design is the very same community that has decided to define ID in its own terms and not acknowledge how the ID community already defines itself (which is synonymous with how IA defines itself. I realize that all new communities strive to separate themselves and that converts are often the most active of a group, but you don’t have any authority to define what ID is (or isn’t) and it’s rude of the IA community to do so (not to mention strategically-motivated).

    Relegating ID to just the presentation and not the concept or organization is, in fact, relegating it to just “pretty pictures.”

    You say “Information design, as most everyone I know uses the term.” Well, then you need to get out more. Evidently you know a lot of people in the IA community and that’s great, but no IDs I know make any distinction between what they do and what IAs say they do.

    It’s good that you recognize what your skills and interests are but there are people who do both “visual techniques to aid comprehension” and “structuring, ordering and pacing of informational flow” many of them call themselves IDs. NOT different domains, actually. Different techniques, perhaps, but the same goals, overlapping skills, and many of the same people.

  13. 13
    Nathan Shedroff

    Christina,

    Richard Saul Wurman would consider himself an Inforamtion Architect (he might, in fact, use both terms because he created the IA term and he is responsible for the popularity of both).

    You say “I hardly call that pretty pictures” yet that is exactly what you’ve called it: graphics, separating it from the conceptualization and information structuring in the rest of your post. Everytime you make a distinction between IA and ID you relegate the latter to graphics (or visuals) and that is the problem.

    I’m surprised that you define IA only in the realm of websites. IA is a field that existed before the Web and will exist long after it evolves into something else. It is a function in all media. IA also is much more important than merely “findability” to cleave it so thinly is to reduce it far short of its applications.

    I do agree with your characterization of ED as an umbrella “approach” (my term) and more strategic than tactical. However, this is really more my definition than, let’s say, the AIGA ED group (much to my frustration). The AIGA group overlaps much closer with the IA skillset (as you and Adam view it) and widens only slightly from there.

    You’re right that Adam and I have different definitions of IA and ID but I think it’s more than that. The IA community has a different definition that the ID community and the problem is that the ID community used much the same definition that the IA community does (actually, probably even a bit more expansive). The IA community on the other hand has defined both terms to its own end and is trying to force the ID community (already established) to use the definition it has sanctioned for it. The point I’m trying too make that to do this is not just wrong, it’s rude, and the justifications for it end up being patronizing. To use your agriculture analogy… The ID community has been defining what it does as agriculture and has a long tradition that precedes a new group of people that have come in to define a subset of what the IDs call agriculture and call it orange growing. In turn the IAs (the orange growers) are defining the agriculture people as navel orange growers and don’t seem to understand that the navel orange growers are a little miffed to a) have someone else defining their business (which predates the orange growers) and b) having this redefinition be so limiting and inaccurate.

    As for the difficulty finding “someone who knows how to create a controlled vocabulary and effectively present a dataset visually” I can give you a whole, long list of names. You might start with the book Information Architects by Richard but there are many more in many media.

  14. 14
    Nathan Shedroff

    Christina,

    Richard Saul Wurman would consider himself an Inforamtion Architect (he might, in fact, use both terms because he created the IA term and he is responsible for the popularity of both).

    You say “I hardly call that pretty pictures” yet that is exactly what you’ve called it: graphics, separating it from the conceptualization and information structuring in the rest of your post. Everytime you make a distinction between IA and ID you relegate the latter to graphics (or visuals) and that is the problem.

    I’m surprised that you define IA only in the realm of websites. IA is a field that existed before the Web and will exist long after it evolves into something else. It is a function in all media. IA also is much more important than merely “findability” to cleave it so thinly is to reduce it far short of its applications.

    I do agree with your characterization of ED as an umbrella “approach” (my term) and more strategic than tactical. However, this is really more my definition than, let’s say, the AIGA ED group (much to my frustration). The AIGA group overlaps much closer with the IA skillset (as you and Adam view it) and widens only slightly from there.

    You’re right that Adam and I have different definitions of IA and ID but I think it’s more than that. The IA community has a different definition that the ID community and the problem is that the ID community used much the same definition that the IA community does (actually, probably even a bit more expansive). The IA community on the other hand has defined both terms to its own end and is trying to force the ID community (already established) to use the definition it has sanctioned for it. The point I’m trying too make that to do this is not just wrong, it’s rude, and the justifications for it end up being patronizing. To use your agriculture analogy… The ID community has been defining what it does as agriculture and has a long tradition that precedes a new group of people that have come in to define a subset of what the IDs call agriculture and call it orange growing. In turn the IAs (the orange growers) are defining the agriculture people as navel orange growers and don’t seem to understand that the navel orange growers are a little miffed to a) have someone else defining their business (which predates the orange growers) and b) having this redefinition be so limiting and inaccurate.

    As for the difficulty finding “someone who knows how to create a controlled vocabulary and effectively present a dataset visually” I can give you a whole, long list of names. You might start with the book Information Architects by Richard but there are many more in many media.

  15. 15
    christina

    Actually, Nathan, I think you are giving short shrift to Information design, then. Consider the vast amount of chart junk there is out there, it’s clear that ID (in the Tuftian sense) is more than pretty pictures– you have to understand the dataset to a deeply to be able to then make it accessible to other folks to understand. Like graphic design, which is communicating visually, ID is communicating data visually so that it assist the movement from acquisition of data to knowledge… and it’s crap if the one creating the design does not take the time to comprehend data and its context, organize it and then finally present.

    I use the term ID in the Tuftian sense because from what I’ve seen Tufte is one of the few who have recognized how very difficult and how extraordinarily important that is, and that ID is more than pretty pictures and that it does require the kind of work we both admire. I’m working wiht an interface designer who blows the socks off others because he takes the time to understand the tools he’s presenting and their relationship and context of use. Design for understanding is at least as difficult as design for information retreival (IR)/findability and certainly at least if not more important.

    The role aside, the skills that that process of ID engenders– deep thinking, understanding, communicating concepts clearly to an audience you also understand deeply– then lends its self to other activities, such as interface design or IA, and we get midlevel generalists. Other skills (mostly craft/tool related) don’t cross over as easily and take a long to acquire, and thus we get deep specialists. IA (in the Morville/Rosenfeld sense, which currently seems to be the widest-used definition), however, is more about organization for retrieval. IA (in the Wurman sense) shows the connections between these practices plus others such as wayfinding… and umbrellas them all under IA.

    Which brings it to me– I don’t confine IA to websites, though websites gave IA a huge hand up– the Wurman use of the term had semi-languished until the birth of the web which presented so many problems that IA could help solve. But is IA confined to the web? I doubt it– IA’s I know have a habit of redesigning coffee shops while they stand in line, reorganizing bookstores while browsing and are starting to poke their nose into their brother software’s business… IA’s who flourished in the dotcom days now are looking for jobs. I don’t think their heads will grow emptier just because their job is not a website. The skills apply to any system in which people cannot find– just like usability skills apply to any system where people cannot use (and I’d personally say an IA should be able to design for both use and IR, and for understanding also)

    To address another comment, the crowd that I run with are not just IA’s, but do include a lot of HCI folks and software & Web folks. I know very few print people, except a few pals who don’t really know much about ID or IA, despite often have a goodly amount of skill in it. I know an unseemly amount of Californians, living in Palo Alto as I do, but I also know large numbers of intonations via emails, marriage and now working for a an international company. The terms I use are the ones that — if folks have heard of ID and IA– others define similarly. IA is slipperier than ID, and is defined more broadly or more narrowly. We know different folks, we have different vocabularies, and we need to find ways to talk to each other respectfully– and with understanding.

    This is all semantics of course… but again, we have to move toward a common vocabulary to have a meaningful discussion. This is really a variation of defining the damn thing. Which we will have to do each time two communities meet. I’ve started talking with knowledge management folks, and guess what they do– looks a lot like IA from where I sit.

    We have to be cognizant that different groups will have all hit on the same core needs– to find data, to understand it, to use it– and as they being to understand how to solve these problems, they will probably name their discoveries. The name may or may not be the same ones we use. Their name, or ours, or our predecessors may become the common parlance– we avoid these problems (as well as reinventing the wheels) through publishing our work and conversations like this one and the one on V-5.

    Finally, Nathan, I would love for you to give me the names of the folks who can present a dataset visually effectively and design and effective controlled vocabulary, so that I can interview them on B&A. That wisdom and the insights from doing that work should be shared to inspire and inform and build some bridges between the communities.

  16. 16
    Nathan Shedroff

    For starters:
    addresses deleted to protect privacy– crw)
    Richard Saul Wurman:
    Maria Guidice:
    Michael Everitt:
    Jacob Muller-Lance:
    Terry Irwin:
    Stuart Silverstone:
    Stuart Silberman:
    Bill Flora:
    Drue Miller:
    Raoul Rickenberg:
    Louise Bartlett:
    Peter Bradford, NY (don’t have a current number)
    Charles and Ray Eames (and more than a few of their employees)

    OK, that’s off the top of my head.

    As for your comment “recognized how very difficult and how extraordinarily important that [ID] is,” I disagree. ID is no more difficult than IA or graphic design or any form of design. You need to a) care about the issues, b) familiarize yourself with the techniques, and then c) actually use them. I’m not saying that everyone has the skill nor that everyone will be an expert but none of this is proteomics. All of us are capable of being proficient IDs, IAs, graphic designers, etc. Holding it on a pedestal does none of us any good.

  17. 17
    christina

    Thanks for the list– I’ve saved the contact info while removing it from this blog, as I know spambots swing by and I know Maria at least would have my head if she suddenly had penis enlargement ads coming to her hourly. I’ll be contacting them for interviews and articles in the new year.

    Second, I don’t know everyone on the list, but the ones I do do not know how to do controlled vocabulary construction— from synonym rings to full blown thesaurus design, including metadata harvesting.

    I suspect that now we are having a specialist to generalist continuum discussion– again, I suspect we aren’t saying different things, we are just saying it different ways.

    Let’s say we have an ED person– they have sufficient deep knowledge of how humans have experience plus sufficient generalist knowledge to lead/assist a multi-person team designing almost any experience.

    They we have midlevel generalists/specialists who have been practicing long enough to get very skilled in a set of related skills– this is Adam’s big IA or your IA/ID, I think. Maria is a good example– she has a rich knowledge of graphic design, ID and IA. She can solve a lot of problems– she’s smart and has a wealth of experience in a set of related feilds. She’s a “big D” designer, for sure.

    Then there is the deep specialist… Amy Warner might be an example… who has a very deep knowledge of traditional LIS methods applied in IA environments. A deep specialist is useful to work with when you have a problem like designing a thesaurus for a million product website. There are also folks who are media-specific generalists, like our friend Nick Finck, who knows quite a lot about fields that give him knowledge about designing for the web, such as IA and css. Humans often combine skills and talents in different ways, depending on needs and interests.

    One key problem many folks make is they value a deep specialist over a generalist (or a midlevel specialist). Each problem needs different types of humans.. sometimes you need generalists for the perspective and range of skills they bring to a project, other times you need a specialist because teh simply know things no one else does, because they know things it takes ten years to master.

    As for pedestals, I admire all masteries– I admire Nick for his ability to understand IA, design and xml/css/etc– his range inspires. and I admire Amy for her deep wealth of practical and theoretical knowledge about IR. and I admire Tufte for his clarity in both his design and his ability to help others understand his work. And of course I admire RSW for being the kind of visionary he is– farsighted yet pragmatic– I’m pretty sure that can’t be taught. I have pedestals for them all.

  18. 18
    Nathan Shedroff

    Exactly! Maria is a great example. While she hasn’t done any thesaurus design or “controlled vocabulary construction” if someone took 10 minutes to explain it to her, I bet she’d do better than many and as good as most. I’ve never said that any ID/IA can do everything that falls into IA/ID. BUt Maria calls herself an ID and not an IA (at least before this became an issue).

    So much of the literature and many of the people within the IA community see ID and now put her in this little box of “presentation” and “visual arrangment.” That’s the problem. The IA community needs to understand that the ID community isn’t what they think or wish and to continue to believe so is a fantasy.

    The other problem with separating the responsibilities into two sets is that it gives people in either set the idea that they don’t have to learn the principles and techniques in the other. I’m not saying that IAs/IDs/Usability specialists/etc. need to be great at every technique but they need to be proficient and understand these techniques–especially if they ever hope to manage a project. But more importantly, one doesn’t learn enough about the field and the work until one touches all of the parts. But almost every time I see some “IA” “respect ID” or “reveres IDs” they do so in a way that sounds very much like “but I don’t have to do any of that,” “I can leave that to others,” and “that’s not as important as the big thinking I do.” Every time the two are split, an incorrect value judgement gets made. The two cannot be split because they’re both part of the same set of techniques. I’ve never seen a problem that wasn’t solved better with all of the techniques imployed TOGETHER rather than someone solving the “high level” and then passing it off (and moving on) to the “presentation people.” It’s a fallacy and a dangerous one.

  19. 19
    Lou

    Hmmm… I highly doubt that someone could become a controlled vocabulary expert after a ten minute description. I’ve been involved in CV development in one way or another for many years, but it would be arrogant for me to claim to be an expert in that rather deep specialization.

    Nathan, do you really mean this?

  20. 20
    Nathan Shedroff

    Louw,

    What I meant is that I know many people who are sufficiently smart and experienced at both the conceptual and presentation aspects of IA/ID that given, an introduction to CV could easily understand what it means since they do part of it by nature anyway (not defining it in new or specific terms). While they may not list it as a skill or they may not recognize the term they certainly have the skills. Given an example or sample CV I have no doubt that they would be able to work proficiently and even exemplarily. Again, none of this is proteomics! It’s just not that difficult.

  21. 21
    michael

    Nathan, I have a hard with the comment about anyone being able become an expert at developing/deploying controlled vocabularies after a 10 minute intro. In my world, controlled vocabularies are perhaps one component of a greater universe of skills and knowledge for indexing/knowledge representation and information retrieval. Having worked 6 years on integrating thesauri with information retrieval systems in digital library environments and having studied indexing and knowledge representation, I think I am far from being an expert in this field.

    A lot of people coming from LIS and knowledge management backgrounds have been bringing their specific flavors of information organization to IA (as part of application and web development). Many LIS people bring knowledge experience in Information Retrieval (and the vast IR literature) to the table. If you’ve been following the business literature about the promise of enterprise-level taxonomies and the reality of integration difficulties with IR systems such as CMS, you know that there are people with classification, knowledge management and domain expertise that have been needed to bridge the gap between information need/seeking and information fulfillment.

    There are a lot of us who work on these types of issues shallowly and deeply. What Adam says about not being expert at designing visuals might also be true of IAs. Many IAs might have an extremely shallow understanding of controlled vocabularies that you refer to as acquirable in 10 minutes, but also many would not be able to work on, for example, a subject thesaurus in a specific subject area such as pharmaceuticals. I just don’t think it is easy to say that, “you can do what those people who call themselves controlled vocabulary experts do by just taking a 10 minute tutorial”. I don’t think that or any area of skill or craft is as reducible as you seem to imply. Does everything have to be so black and white? The world I work in a spectrum of a lot of grays.

  22. 22
    Nathan Shedroff

    Michael:

    I never said that one could become an expert at anything after 10 minutes of introduction. However, while CV is now a defined term, this isn’t anything new. People have been developing and standardizing vocabularies for projects for as long as books have been written. MANY people have this skill and, for the most part, it is an easily understandable process that many people can perform. I’m not saying that just anyone can have the patience or thinking process to do this well, let alone be an expert, but as my friend Jeff Wishnie said once “Someone can be a deep expert in any particular technique but that doesn’t preclude lots of people from being perfectly proficient in that field for most needs.”

    Again, I will restate since it doesn’t seem to be clear enough above. I know LOTS of people who can do most, if not all, of what falls into ID/IA who do not use these labels and don’t follow the IA community. NONE of this is terribly difficult stuff and almost all of it can be taught reasonably. For those designers in these industries with experience–especially 10 or more years–detailed and specific techniques such as CV development neither represent the sum total of IA nor even a significant part of what IA encompasses. To call it out as critical and fundamental to IA or use it as a litmus test for the entire field is ridiculous. Simply put, it is one of many techniques and issues that fall in the domain and not one of the most critical (if you have to set priorities). Further, to hold it up as some kind of arduous, intense process that leaves mere mortal designers helpless against its complexity is laughable. While it can be important to some projects (website or not) and can have an important affect on the experience of an interface, it is not so complex and difficult that it cannot be learned quickly by a reasonably intelligent or experienced thinker–especially one working in the IA/ID field for over 15 years already (which was the context for the original “10 minute” comment).

    I just read Christina’s article on the subject (that she links to) at Digital-Web and there is nothing in this article that is difficult to understand nor any principles or techniques outlined in it that would be difficult to master (baring any problems with reason, thinking, or following directions). While I doubt that this is the sum-total of the entire technique, there is nothing that leads me to believe that even advanced issues in this are warrant the kind of deep instruction that one would need to be proficient, in most cases, at performing this process for common projects. Of course, I’m sure there are some specific problems that might be very complex that most people wouldn’t commonly run across. I’m also sure that there are those out there with skills that excel in this area that make them faster, more thorough, and more innovative. But, again, this is not the core of IA nor the most important issue within IA.

    I just don’t understand the propensity of this community to overstate the difficulty of performing their responsibilities in this domain nor their need to make mountain RANGES from little molehills.

  23. 23
    Nathan Shedroff

    And another thing…

    I just read on Peter’s site his piece about information architecture being the only creative field that didn’t exist before the Web: http://peterme.com/archives/00000101.html

    It is EXACTLY this kind of hubris and ignorance that is so distressing in the IA community–which is surprising coming from Peter since he usually doesn’t exhibit either of these characteristics. Why must people in the IA community–especially leaders–make such ridiculous comments in order to elevate or distinguish this field? If you look at the number of books published, articles, websites, classes taught, and people employed, you would get the sense that this kind of posturing and exaggeration wasn’t necessary.

    Of course, anyone around before the dawn of the Web knows that people were “architecting” information (whether or not you want to use the term “design”) for centuries! Even in electronic media, CD-ROMs, kiosks, customer service systems, customer response systems, knowledge management systems, databases, and online systems were using these techniques and processes.

    I don’t know how many times I (or anyone else) need to repeat this before it will finally sink-in: Information Architecture was a renaming of Information Design and the techniques are IDENTICAL! If you don’t like this, go invent another term for the subset you’re referring to. But if you understand this, you can see that not only were these techniques employed BEFORE the Web, but they have existed before electronic media. If you don’t believe me, go ask the IR and Library Science people if their field dates only as far back as 1994.

  25. 25
    michael

    Well, my point was simply that there are no absolutes. I am well aware that controllled vocabularies are not new. I don’t doubt that anyone can make an authority list for something like a product catalog or even a subject heading list if the person can become fluent in the subject area. I also believe you can educate yourself to a large degree about information organization techniques without going to a graduate LIS program.

    My point is that controlled vocabularies are just the tip of the iceberg and there are many other factors that go into effective information organization for information retrieval — many of which have been studied and reported in the IR literature. I think that wider range of knowledge and experience is what many are trying to bring into this field. I wouldn’t go so far as to dismiss that body of knowledge or that community by saying that the sum of what they can contribute is an understanding of how to create an authority list or controlled vocabulary, which can be learned in 10 minutes.

    I’ve found many of your discussions to be interesting and full of good ideas, but it appears that you are trying to separate yourself and UX/ED from IA for various reasons that I don’t understand. I think instead of indicting this community and driving the wedge more deeply between them and you, it would make more sense to understand what they are trying to say. In any case that is what I have been trying to do, clarify what what I think is being missed in the part of the discussion regarding controlled vocabulary.

  27. 27
    Christopher Fahey

    I’m going to get a bit crotchety here, but to me this interview alternated between tiresome and annoying. It reads like a hair-splitting dorm-room debate about the existence of God. The kind of debate where both parties present strongly-felt arguments for their point of view yet where there is no prospect, ever, of reaching consensus. To compound my frustration, neither Shedroff nor Greenfield seemed to be listening to each other very much, preferring to debate against an imaginary strawman representing ‘the-opposite-of-whatever-each-party-wanted-to-say’.

    I’ve been pretty absent from the IA lists lately, in part due to a heavy workload, but in part due to the fact that we can’t seem to stop having religious debates about terminology and semantics. That said, I will hypocritically join the fray:) :

    Instead of a religious debate it seems like we now have an arms race. Each party is expanding the definition of their champion terminology (“Experience Design” or “Information Architecture”) to include everything else, like two nations redrawing maps so their nation encompasses the other.

    As he defines it, Shedroff’s “Experience Design” is bigger than and certainly includes “information architecture”, “interaction design”, as well as branding, visual design, and a whole host of other fields. The term describes a field about as broad as the term “design” itself, so bloated and generalized as to become impractical as a . Unless I am a corporate officer or a professional author and pundit (like Shedroff), I am most likely going to specialize in some subset of Experience Design.

    On the other hand, Greenfield’s arguments for the term “information architecture” are even more vague to me. Using some incredibly abstract (and to me, novel) definition of the term “information”, Greenfield argues that *everything* comes down to “information flow” and that everything occurs in a “field of information”. In my day-to-day work as an information architect (and yes, that’s what I still call myself), understanding user interaction in terms of a “field of information” is simply absurd. When I am trying to design an interface/process to allow a user to (for example) change the color of some selected text or to select multiple items from a long list, it is unnecessarily abstract to consider the process in terms of “information flow”. To make an analogy, the human body is nothing but molecules and atoms, but your dentist doesn’t *ever* think of your teeth that way.

    Ultimately I dislike both terms in this argument. “Experience Design” is so general as to be useful only to theorists and strategists, so I don’t begrudge it much. But “Information Architecture”, my official job title, is still highly problematic to me. Greenfield’s contortions to defend the term’s inherent appropriateness notwithstanding, I think the only legitimate argument for its continued use is the fact that it is currently the de facto standard. Other than that, I think the term is quite weak.

    Some other notes:

    1) “Information Theory” – unless you are talking about the mathematics- and electrical-engineering-based field exemplified by the work of Claude Shannon, you should wash your mouth out with soap every time you use this term. Read the out-of-print “Silicon Dreams” by Robert Lucky for a great introduction to what information theory is all about, and you too will avoid using the term wantonly.
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312029608/
    Or just read this site:
    http://www.lucent.com/minds/infotheory/what.html

    2) “Information Architecture”, despite the efforts of Argus, Asilomar, et al, is still not a term exclusive to ‘our world’. The Boston-area software firm recently raided by the FBI for suspected terrorist activity was referred to on NPR as an “information architecture” firm, although the firm does not do what we do. And yet NPR’s reporting was correct!
    http://www.ptechinc.com/01/sub/miaa/index.asp
    Even within our little IA community, we still have IAs whose work is more taxonomy- or database-oriented and others whose work is more process-oriented and still others whose work is more visually-oriented.

    3) Whatever happened to the elegant and succint term “interaction design”? More than anything this describes what I do and what most professional information architects I know do. It doesn’t describe *all* of what I do, but it describes *most* of what I do. And it describes a key aspect of what all current IAs do. I think we’re wrong to try to come up with a name to describe all the hats we wear when we don’t even have a name for each of the hats.

    -Cf

  28. 28
    christina

    We can let google solve our argument– a quick visit to the glossary shows information architecture to be
    “The art and science of organising information to help people effectively fulfil their information needs. Information architecture involves investigation, analysis, design and implementation.
    http://www.theusabilitycompany.com/glossary/

    The layout and structure of content or information contained in a Web site. The structure forms the building blocks that generate a site’s visual design and navigation scheme. Information architecture governs content management and distribution, also Web site publishing.
    http://www.neweve.com/glossary.asp

    An aspect of information systems development, commonly referred to within the context of website design, which focuses on organizing information and developing a navigational structure. Common tasks of the “information architect” would include site map design and content management. The information architect’s focus on content management complements the roles of graphic designers and usability experts who are usually also part of a website development team. View records related to this term
    http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is213/s99/Projects/P9/web_site/glossary.htm”

    and Information Design to be

    “For all practical purposes, just another name for technical writing (or technical authoring, technical communication, communications design).
    http://www.techscribe.co.uk/techw/glossary.htm”

    Hmmm– that’ll teach me to use a beta product….

  29. 29
    Paula Thornton

    Whew! Thanks Chris…I needed a breath of breathable air (something not so ‘hot’).

    Let’s stay focused on the goals. Either we’re able to design and deliver something that helps an individual move forward, based on their own understanding…or we’re not very good at what we do. Controlled vocabularies (not to downplay the ‘horrifying’ skill and intensity of application required to be successful) relate to this arena only if I’m doing a search. There are genearlly a number of scenarios in a universe of goals that have nothing to do with search. As well, there are a universe of scenarios that have nothing to do with the entire internet channel at all (supporting Nathan’s view). Yet, our general skills are needed across any portion of an interaction that ANY stakeholder has with a business.

    You don’t have to accept this responsibility yourself, but we will not be successful as a discipline without the breadth. At an executive level (which is where monies get divided up for resources — something we rely on for survival), we have to be able to have very specific sponsorship for the contribution our skills can make across a company.

    We will never achieve such if we continuously work ourselves into factions.

  31. 31
    christina

    I see this debate as an interesting one, and one we will have a bunch more of in the future. Think about it– many folks will have seen a problem (inability to find things in an information rich environment) come up with a solution for this and named it. Meanwhile other folks have seen other problems, come up with a solution and named it information architecture (see Chris’s comment).

    Eventually the two meet.

    They both have a term and a set of solutions, and there is mismatch. But they’ve both been using it for years. A semantic war breaks out.

    However, if there can be an accord, eventually the two can compare notes, learn from each other and the field(s) are strong for it.

    Nathan, it is up to you and Drue and Maria and Lou and Mike and Adam and all of us to come to a common ground. Because we don’t want to waste our energy fighting each other, we want to exchange knowledge and learn from each other. Please believe me when I say that IA is it is practiced by a large subset of those using the term is a complex IR practice, requiring years of study. I believe you when you say IA as practiced by a large subset of those who use the term is also called Information design and is not Information graphics only… now we need to understand better the terms, and hopefully we come to a common language that will allow us to learn from each other and effectively take IA past site maps and wireframes into a true discipline.

    As peter points out, the IA community has been vastly improved, enriched, matured by the knowledge from the IR community esp. Ranganathan’s work. I’m sure there is much more out there to amek us better at what we do– I’m finding knowledge management and software design theory useful educators right now.

    Paula, while CV’s are useful for search they are at least as useful for organization systems for browsing, including providing serendipity– a thesaurus includes related concepts, thus when you are seeking “information architecture” you can find “knowledge management” as well as “sitemaps” “thesaurus design” and “labeling systems.”

    You would be correct in saying it has to do primarily with finding, and has less to do with using or understanding, and thus is only one aspect of what we do… but as we are discovering what we do is far from homogeneous. And that is another part of our semantic divide.

    BTW, I’m an Interaction Designer. Or so Yahoo! says. heh.

  32. 32
    Beth

    Nathan writes: “In fact, no IDs I know even make a distinction between ID and IA as they (and I) don’t see any.”

    Apparently then I don’t count as an ID, even though I asked about the distinction nearly two years ago (see What’s in a Name).

    I was extremely happy to get responses from both Nathan and Richard Saul Wurman (even though the latter suggested these discussions were “academic and pointless”…ah, I’ve gotten some mileage out of that quote :).

    I can understand why Nathan thinks there is no difference between IA and ID. He is a protege of Wurman, who coined the IA term years ago (tho I believe that the folks across the pond probably have a reasonable claim on the ID term).

    That said, I’m also extremely sympathetic to the idea that ID is not just about graphics and/or prettifying things. (Those of us who come out of the tech writing tradition are also familiar with the concept of document design, such as promoted by Karen Schriver, and its very close relationship to information design.)

    While the info graphics of Wurman and Tufte get deserved accolades, the fact is that you can do information design without graphics at all. And this involves the kinds of organization and structure that your average IA would find very comfortable.

    That said, all these years later I remain unconvinced that IA and ID are exactly the same things. I find Jesse James Garrett’s response that IA is cognitive and ID perceptive somewhat compelling. Apparently there is healthy overlap between the two, or we woudn’t be needing to argue whether or not they are different. But…the skills and expertise needed to design an income tax form (a straightforward ID task) may or may not be the same as those needed to help design the navigation for a several thousand page website (a straightforward IA task).

    Yes, there may be plenty in the middle that both IAs and IDs could do, but is it not possible that we’re talking the same kind of differentiation that works in other professions such as law or medicine?

  33. 33
    Adam

    Actually, Chris – although I edited the context that would have grounded the comments you disdain so from the final interview – I *am* trying to think about Big IA using the orthodox, Shannon signal-channel-receiver model.

    I *am* trying to think to ground the rhetoric in (just a tinge of) rigor. In the interaction between a user and, yes, a field of information, what methods are available to the architect to limit noise in the channel? You may not see this as anything but a pointless dormroom wank, but as a working IA I’ve found it a useful way of framing the situation I’m being paid to address.

    The other thing – Nathan and I not really listening to each other. Well, that’s partially there in the text, I suppose, but it’s also partially an artifact of the extensive editing I applied to the original material (just about twice the length) to squeeze it in as even a two-parter. Something I envisioned as a fairly straightforward Q-and-A branched off fractally when Nathan challenged the wording of the questions, etc. It was enlightening – we were really *that* far apart in our perceptions of things that I couldn’t even frame an area for debate without it falling under critique. And that’s fine.

    This is probably the last thing I should say about this piece.

  34. 34
    christina

    Thanks Adam– this sugggests not that you don’t listen to each other, but that you need a translator— you are speaking different languages. Which the ongoing debate here supports.

    Perhaps you should also publish a director’s cut. 😉

  35. 35
    Christopher Fahey

    Adam, can you explain:

    – How the methodologies used in designing interactive systems benefit from understanding the system as a “field of information”?

    – How this relates to traditional “signal-channel-receiver”/Claude Shannon model of information theory (i.e., is there calculus involved)?

    I understand that information flow tends to be pretty key to most interactive system design, but I don’t see how it is the all-encompassing common foundation to all interaction design thinking as you suggest. I can think of lots of everyday interaction design problems for which an understanding of information flow isn’t really helpful or appropriate. Examples range from typical “Small IA” concepts like Fitt’s law (where traditional HCI discourse is perfectly useful) to larger “Big IA” activities like requirements prioritization (for which business strategy and ROI methodologies work quite well).

    The importance of good information flow is not irrelevant to these IA activities, but it seems to me that trying to discuss such things in terms of information flow is analogous (to repeat my previous example) to a dentist who conceives of her day-to-day craft in terms of atoms and molecules. It just doesn’t seem practical to me.

    -Cf

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