"It is odd that Rosenfeld and Morville seize the title of architect, because the central claim of the architect's profession is the very breadth of concern that Information Architecture lacks. Architects have always competed with craftsmen, construction firms, and engineers; what architects offer is an original and coherent vision that inspires and entire Web site or building. Beyond the supervisory power of the job title, Rosenfeld and Morville aren't very interested in architecture. "
, from oldest to newest:
It's really hard to say and I can see your point. However, I would like to point out that Frank Lloyd Wright designed many structures with flat roofs that work fine from a functionality standpoint.
I have never considered myself a Information Architect. If I was to classify myself under a title I would typically use the term Craftsman. So it's a little ironic that Mark states that Architects always have competed with Craftsman, etc. I don't compete with Information Architects, I work with them.
- Nick
Posted by Nick Finck @ 11/08/2001 08:49 AM pst
~~~
re FLW-- when I visited talisin, I was told that almost all his buildings leak. they are infamous for it.
Posted by christina @ 11/08/2001 11:04 AM pst
~~~
re FLW - he was a visionary and an experiementer. He was not necessarily a craftsman. His buildings leak because he was constantly pushing the limits of the accepted engineering/building practice of the time and not everything worked so well.
Posted by erin @ 11/08/2001 11:53 AM pst
~~~
I have always heard that the best architects are ones that were craftsmen (this from the craftsmen view point). This would put me in good standing. However, what is problematic with architects (this from a Stuart Brand perspective) is that architects are about design over functionality and use/reuse, which would put it counter to the Information Architect understanding I think we (if you are following in step with Chistina) are leaning toward making functional information spaces. Therefore in the Stuart Brand context the IAs would be in conflict with the interface design as art folks and therefore maybe not architects.
There is a broad variation of the understanding of the term architect. In Stuart Brand's sence they are the visual design folks that do not take functionality into account. But this he largely attributes to the I.M. Pei's of the world.. The Peter and Lou perspective would be the architect you and I would go see to get an addition put on our house. This type of arctitect takes into acount how you would use the space, review the local ordnances, and layout a plan that the crafts people can build upon. This architect may or may not design the exterior or interior facade. If the architect does design elements of the facade that is fine, but it usually is a canvas for an interior designer or the home owner to have their own will to best use the space given the occupants intent for the space.
Posted by vanderwal @ 11/08/2001 02:47 PM pst
~~~
For reasons similar to those cited in this article, I've wondered if perhaps "information engineer" isn't a more apt label for the person who practices information architecture.
Posted by peterme @ 11/08/2001 03:26 PM pst
~~~
Agreed, peter, "engineer" is probably a more apt term. Architects generally have interests in things that most IAs essentially ignore: beauty, for one. Broad vocabularies of subtle structural elements (where we have LATCH), for another. What's the IA analogue of the arch? Of reinforced concrete? Of the cinder block? Of the cramped cubicle?
Is our goal really to "make functional information spaces?" The "spatial" metaphor is used less and less to describe the web, and again, most IAs I know or read don't really think about "space" with anything close to the passion that building architects do. Have you ever walked with an architect through a building that she designed or loves? Do you revisit favorite websites just to reexperience the information architecture? That alone is enough to disqualify the term for me.
The "craftsman" analogy also seems a little disingenuous. There's no tradition to which we really belong to or extend (perhaps library science for some), although "craft" is associated with the kind of functionality, durability, and reuse that we strive for.
BTW, Malcolm McCullough's "Abstracting Craft" is a good book on craft, digital tools, and techniques.
Posted by Andrew @ 11/09/2001 02:00 AM pst
~~~
To some extent I am liking the information engineer moniker. I think to a some extent of what I do is information engineering, but it is an extension of the information architect foundation. The IA process is based on discovering patterns of language, ideas, cognitive associations with data bits that form information structures in our user's/audience minds. The IA researches, documents, and forms valid logical structures on which to hang further ideas. These understandings of associative properties of information particles are the basis of the full breadth of IA, which can include the Richard Saul Wurhman extension into visual/graphic explainations of seemingly divergent sets of information, which help to easily explain relationships and causality in the world around us. The IA basis is also the basis for information engineering which needs the basic understandings to build information applications that provide ease of use and movements between associated ideas and patterns. I consider myself an IA because the pattern recognition and understanding of the core information bits are a cornerstone for building sites or applications that are relatively easy to use and easy to maintain. So I do love that which I create and I do walk people through applications with love and passion. I am not into the facade, but an elegant facade may be applied to a well architected site/application. Many IAs will love to show you before and after snapshots of their work.
Posted by vanderwal @ 11/09/2001 06:19 AM pst
~~~
Vanderwal, I agree with your description of your approach and process, and even attitude towards your work; I feel the same way.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that when we talk about "logical structures" or even "patterns" we rarely talk about them with the (frankly) emotional feeling that "real" architects bring to their work.
Again, I think the issue is that we talk about "structures" without really meaning anything like "architectural structures." We just don't have that many to use, first of all, so there's really no subtlety in their application. A heirarchy is a heirarchy is a heirarchy, really. An alphabetical list is, well, pretty uninspiring no matter how useful or appropriate it is.
Is any of us really inspired by the structures that we use? I think that's a key question for the relevance of the term "architect," and something that's rarely mentioned by IAs. (Anyone have counter examples they can point to?)
I don't think it's right to characterize building architects as concerned more with form than with use or "content" in their buildings. Creating an "elegant facade" is a vital, but not defining, aspect of what they do.
Hmm. In fact, no building architect would consider her work complete _without_ having designed the facade of a building in great detail, down to the color of the paint. Can we call ourselves "architects" if we don't do the same for web sites?
Or are we just rehashing the same old, "is this the right label for what we do" question?
Posted by Andrew @ 11/10/2001 03:55 AM pst
~~~
In many ways the architect moniker is a poor choice because it is a broadly defined term, yet from that same perspective it is quite appropriate. In large architecture firms there were architects that designed roomspaces (the event specific areas of a building -- bedrooms, dining rooms, workspaces, executive offices), even some specializing in specific roomspaces like kitchens or boardrooms. In these large firms there are some that focus on the structures, as an engineer does, asked to create wide open spaces for work areas, which will require innovative/specific weightload structures to handle the openness. There are others within large firms that focussed on adding the facade internally and/or externally. This is much akin to the large Web teams or larger agencies that handle Web development. In smaller shops in both Web and Architecture firms where those folks cover many roles or specialties.
The excitement of an architect is based on there innovation or creative influences on the structures. Many architects do not feel inspired as they create houses with kitchens, diningrooms, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, etc. This is must like those of us IAs. We have the basic navigation structures and create predictable sites based on the user's needs and understanding. We do have room to get excited building in multilayered classification metadata structures with can tie the user to other portions of the site or have related materials at their finger tips.
These moments of joy come from working with clients and users and identifying problem areas, listening to the "if only I could" wishes, but more importantly have the lattitude to work with the technical teams and disign folks (these may be ourselves) to innovatively come up with solutions for these wishes. I have a couple projects in the past couple years that have inspired me in this way and have offered me the ability to innovate and be proud. I went to a Washington DC, IA (DCIA) meeting that was a show-and-tell for documentation. There was some amazing documentation that showed realationships of information as they related to business areas of the cliet's users, a visualization of 14,000 Web pages for a client to show their managment and stake holders so that the vastness of their impending work had some visual understanding, and others showing before and after affects of their work on the site. These folks were proud of their innovations and they had a right to be proud as their work was fantastic.
Posted by vanderwal @ 11/10/2001 12:51 PM pst
~~~
The term information design came from Wurman, who was trained as an architect. If you don't see the architectural decisions is what you do, then more than likely you are doing design.
Information architecture is very close to what software architects do. Software architects are really dealing with what goes on inside the black box. Namespaces and directory structures exist whether they are exposed in the navigational and wayfinding mechanisms of a site.
Wayfinding is the architectural discipline closest to IA, if you see IA as navigational structure.
The term Information Engineering is already taken. Further, the use of the term "Engineer" is restricted by law. Financial engineering was a discipline full of practitioners that came from finance and applied mathematics to their discipline. Because they used the term "Engineer," the practioners are now mathematicians that apply their knowledge to finacial problems--not at all the same thing. Software engineers are facing the same fate. They now must be licensed engineers rather than computer science majors. Forget the term "Information Engineer."
Posted by David @ 11/10/2001 02:05 PM pst
~~~
I'm almost fed up of trotting this out - but hey... let's ramble...
I trained to be an architect, did a dissertation on what architectural psychology could teach experience designers and ended up doing what Peter & Lou define as 'Big Information Architecture' - I don't do classification systems or thesaurii or any of that clever stuff with excel spreadsheets that real IA's do.
I guess I mainly do wayfinding and interaction design concepts - sometimes even - gasp - design whole UIs and even brands!
I fit the bleed between project managers, business analysts, brand strategists, designers, coders and the client - translating and triaging and trying to get the best out of everyone while driving them to get as close to the original vision we all had to start with.
Like a real architect.
But the supervisory/translational aspect is addressed in the article - not the vision thing.
well - i would contend that it takes a lot of determination, bloody-mindedness and skill (plus a DESIGN team of at least 25-50 and perhaps a year or so) to create architecture of any merit in the real world.
One of my favourite architects - Jan Kaplicky of Future Systems gives a talk with visuals now reproduced in their book 'For Inspiration Only'.
One of the visual couplets Kaplicky uses to illustrate his philosophy contrasts a moody, uplit black & white photo Richard Meier - architect of the Getty Center in LA very much posed as Randian hero in the mold of gary cooper in "the fountainhead"
against the 200+ strong design team of the Boeing 777, waving gleefully in a carpark.
"Which is the real designer" he asks provocatively. He goes on to contend that the boeing team dealt with a much more complex problem domain, rapidly changing technology and timescales and created an object of adnaced functionality and efficientcy and yet breathtaking beauty.
Lots of neat-o little extensions and remodelling projects in the real world can be kept pure enough to make the design journals and be credited to be the inspiring and innovative work of one person.
In the digital world we have Joshua Davis, Ben Fry, David Small - who create individual works of beauty and the poetic element present in great architecture.
Of the larger scale, team-oriented project? I dunno. Do we have a Boeing 777 out there?
In the real world as I've mentioned - it's a huge team project just of the design side, and JUST in the architects office, forgetting for the moment the consulting engineers, surveyors, project managers etc. involved in the larger building team, to which the architect is usually, but not always the 'lead consultant'.
All of those architects will have had at LEAST 5 years multidisciplinary training in design, history, law, engineering, psychology construction techniques and business.
Also remember architecture has evolved it's collective knowledge of material, structure and human experience in relationship to the sapce they inhabit (physically) over a span of arund 10,000 years.
More like the Boeing team - our technological landscape is shifting quickly and often with vast discontinuities and genuine paradigm-shifts.
The business landscape shifts too much to finance and sustain large projects, or the large consultancies where best-practice knowledge, if not always innovation, can be supported.
And last but not least - the landscape of human understanding of the digital experience is still incredibly nascent - with Jakob, Jared et al documenting the disconnects daily between technology, design-innocation and the user's struggle to make sense of it all.
A hopeless landscape to dream of creating beauty within?
We are just at the foothills of crafting digital experiences - and we have so much to build on (no pun intended) already.
The only example of 'architectures' i'd want to
visit again and again is the one DO.... *amazon*. boring and predictable choice, i know. but it is genuinely becoming a digital experience that delivers serendiptous pleasure within it's ARCHITECTURE as well as an ease-of-use and efficiency of it's engineering.
I think there can be real experiential pleasure in digital architectures - especially in complex database driven sites that exploit so-called 'bottom-up' or emergent infomation architecture to generate seredipity and suprise to within an underlying logic, discernable to the user.
Read up on MIT's William Mitchell discussion of software's genius loci, then surf round amazon...
I've just bought 'emergence' by Stephen Johnson - and I reckon that will fire a fair few imaginations as to how one could increase the beauty of information architectures.
And don't label think you can assume the epithet of the engineers as mere rational implementers in order to abdicate your responsibilites to creating beauty!!! ;-) - READ THIS:
An Engineer Imagines - Peter Rice.
The one of the most important things drummed into me at architecture school was the Vitruvian philosophy that acts of creation could only be deemed 'architectural' if they satisfied three criteria in equal measure - COMMODITAS (commodity, or usefulness), FIRMITAS (stability, robustness and strength) and VENUSTAS (delight...)
I think that holds true for what we do... You should only say you've created an information architecture if Vitruvius could recognise your intent 2000 years later...
I for one am going to keep trying...!
Posted by matt @ 11/12/2001 03:31 PM pst
~~~
sorry for the typos...
remember kids, don't blog drunk...
Posted by matt @ 11/13/2001 01:21 AM pst
~~~
Hey Matt, thanks for that long post, including that time travel Möebius loop at the end ;-). You know, I've been thinking about all this over the last few days, and also reading the presentations Adaptive Path just put out, and think I was wrong in my posts with my comments about IAs and structure: Amazon's kind of my default example too, but there's more excitement about information structures than I allowed above. Ben Fry´s stuff for sure, although it frequently doesn't really satisfy the requirement of COMMODITAS.
(I don't think one can be right or wrong about the whole naming-of-the-job issue; that wasn't really the point of my posts.)
Posted by Andrew @ 11/13/2001 06:53 AM pst
~~~
wwo-- some amazing comments here-- as is so often the case, the comments beat the blog.
I have to say the naming of the dicipline thing is old and dull-- but living up to our name, growing the profession and doing better and better work... that is good stuff.
Posted by christina @ 11/13/2001 02:11 PM pst
~~~
