The Future of Information Architecture

The Future of Information Architecture Christina Wodtke

Christina Wodtke
Boxes and Arrows
Book
Asilomar
Consultant
www.aifia.org www.eleganthack.com www.boxesandarows.com www.blueprintsfortheweb.com

Information Architecture is
Architecture in information spaces.

Understanding IA
Why has IA survived the crash?
What value does it have?
How can it thrive?
What’s next?

Who cares?
Once there were people with cows
And people without cows
The people with no cows were hungry

They took to the road
And met at the market
And the people with no cows bought cows
The people with cows had fewer cows, but money for other things

Now there are people with information
And people with no information
The road is the computer
And the market is the web

But the market is really big
And the people can’t find each other
So we have ignorant people
And people with no money
The cows are okay with this
Business is not.

The Goal
The players
Users, seeking information (cowless)
Businesses with information (with cows)
Intermediaries such as search engines and directories, profiting on the exchange (marketplaces)
The goal is to get the users seeking the data to the businesses offering the data

Missing information is dangerous
In the news, US government’s information management problems

Missing information is expensive
“ The Fortune 1000 stands to waste at least $2.5 billion per year due to an inability to locate and retrieve information .”
“ While the costs of not finding information are enormous , they are hidden within the enterprise, and…are rarely perceived as having an impact on the bottom line.”
The High Cost of Not Finding Information
An IDC White Paper, July 2001.

Missing information kills
“ Like all primary care physicians, Dr. Bob Goldszer must stay on top of approximately 10,000 different diseases and syndromes, 3,000 medications, 1,100 laboratory tests, and many of the 400,000 articles added each year to the biomedical literature. That's no easy task. And it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. The Institute of Medicine's 1999 report, To Err Is Human, suggests that more than a million injuries and 90,000 deaths are attributable to medical errors annually . Something like 5% of hospital patients have adverse reactions to drugs, another study reports, and of those, 43% are serious, life threatening, or fatal. Many knowledge workers have problems similar to Dr. Goldszer's (though they're usually less life threatening). No matter what the field, many people simply can't keep up with all they need to know .”
--Harvard Business Review, Jul 1, 2002

Missing information
Lost sales -
Expensive support -
Duplicated effort -
Lost trust -
Lost lives?

Classification has Consequences
A physician who doesn’t see a new cure
A poor student who can’t find financial aid
A store where a product isn’t found

IA has consequences
Tagging with metadata
Organizing with CV’s
Creating navigation systems
Optimizing search
Information Architecture manages information to make it findable

And IA can build brands.

Branding in 10 seconds create fullfilled by Brian Collins’ Model of Brand brand promises brand experiences Brand managers

Brand and the User Experience Hugh Dubberly’s Model of Brand Creating a good customer experience is the essence of good branding

IA Realizes Brand

Product Quality = Brand Loyalty
I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal . It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous. It's because when you buy our products, and three months later you get stuck on something, you quickly figure out [how to get past it]. And you think, "Wow, someone over there at Apple actually thought of this!" And then three months later you try to do something you hadn't tried before, and it works, and you think "Hey, they thought of that, too." And then six months later it happens again. There's almost no product in the world that you have that experience with, but you have it with a Mac .
And you have it with an iPod .

Benabar n’est pas jazz?

What is this?

What are these?

They are all birds (ornithologist)

The Cassowary is not a bird! (the Karam)

From “Why the Cassowary is not a bird”, R. Bulmer, Man , Vol. 2, Issue 1, (Mar. 1967)

Who Cares?
Ornithologists
The Karam
Information Architects

Dewey Decimal System
200-299 – Religion Categories
40+ categories related to Christianity
1 for Judaism
1 for Islam (& related)

Who Cares?
Religious Scholars
Librarians
Information Architects
Jews and Muslims

Classification reflects social and cultural organization
Information Architect must understand this context
We can change how people think via classification and labeling

Frames
Voter revolt
Tax Relief
War on terror
Free Market
Poison free
George Lakoff, author of “Don’t Think of an Elephant

Business reframes

Design Look 46.1%
Information Design/Structure 28.5%
Information Focus 25.1%
Company Motive 15.5%
Information Usefulness 14.8%
Information Accuracy 14.3%
Name Recognition & Reputation 14.1%
Advertising 13.8%
Information Bias 11.6%
Writing Tone 9.0%
Identity of Site Operator 8.8%
Site Functionality 8.6%
Customer Service 6.4%
Past Experience with Site 4.6%
Information Clarity 3.7%
Performance on Test by User 3.6%
Readability 3.6%
Affiliations 3.4%
“ While information structure is often associated with usability , the comments here show how information structure has implications for credibility . Sites that were easy to navigate were seen as being more credible.”

Trust me

Big trend #1
Search: the magic box

Speed of People Searching
People take only a second to search
People want to take only a second

Fast, Fast, Fast

Query block?

Articulation Problems
Average Search 2.5 words
30% of searches are 1 word searches
Another third at 2 word searches– often single concept search “New York”
This trend is not changing
From E-Sex to E-Commerce: Web Search Changes -- Amanda Spink, Pennsylvania State University, Bernard J. Jansen, US Army War College, Dietmar Wolfram, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Tefko Saracevic, Rutgers University

Mind-reading expected
And increasingly delivered

Human disambiguation How do you use editorial to best effect? Humans don’t scale.

Zipf curve (for search) Most common searches (head) Least common searches (tail) Obama Jennifer Lopez Britney Spears Zipf Curve Peter Morville Information Architecture

Best Bets
Analyze the head
Analyze content
Maximize the knowledge

Answers

Trend #2
Organizing Search

Clusty: organizing

A9: classifying

Trend #3
Folksonomies

Del.icio.us: Folksonomy ascendant

Flickr: Metadata is fun

Trend #4
Pagelessness

The page

Where is your data going?

How can people find…anything? On a stove!

Trend #5
Visualization

When was it above 20ºC during this month? Source: Karl Fast www.livingskies.com 15 17 19 15 22 10 15 15 10 11 15 20 12 18 14 23 12 15 18 12 17 13 11 21 10 29 12 17 29 12 Mon Sun

Now when was it above 20? 15 17 19 15 22 10 15 15 10 11 15 20 12 18 14 23 12 15 18 12 17 13 11 21 10 29 12 17 22 12 Mon Sun Source: Karl Fast www.livingskies.com

Now add some interaction controls 15 17 19 15 22 10 15 15 10 11 15 20 12 18 14 23 12 15 18 12 17 13 11 21 10 29 12 30 22 12 20 29 0 35 Mon Sun Source: Karl Fast www.livingskies.com

Newsmap: Understanding

Kartoo: no dang sense

Grokker: interact and understand

Trend #6
Person-based Organization

A9 is chasing

Yahoo is chasing

Social Networking- with a purpose

Trend #7
IA as Bossman

“ We will never make progress as long we are resources and not leaders. Resources don't discuss the business plan, the marketing strategy. Resources don't help decide what the product or service will be in the first place. Resources are called in when the leaders think they are needed. They do their job and then get out of the way. ” - Don Norman A quote

Moving Up in Influence Manager New Employee Employee Director & Up Needs Help for everything Self-Sufficient, Contributes Individually Contributes via others Contributes via influencing organizations From “Novations” by Gene W. Dalton

Director of Design Vice-president of Web Services Director of Product Vice-president of Design Management Consultant CEO Who are you next?

The Next IA
Will be invisible, like search
Or visible, like Newsmap
And it will be human- for, by and with humans.
It will help business.
And you will make it happen.

Books and Things Information Architecture: Blueprints for the web What the CEO wants you to know Information Architecture for the World Wide Web Boxes and Arrows Aifia.org Eleganthack.com IAslash.org IAwiki.net

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The Future of Information Architecture

by cwodtke on Jun 11, 2007

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The Future of Information Architecture — Presentation Transcript