Observations on the American Society for Information Science summit 2000 meeting: Defining information architecture

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science, Jun/Jul 2000 by Zwies, Richard

This article is a report of my observations and impressions of Defning Information Architectore, the American Society for Information Science Summit held recently in Boston. I am relatively new to ASIS and information architecture; therefore my observations are from the outside. However, the energy of the meeting and the discussions that it inspired are drawing me into this new area of information science.

The meeting brought together members of the new Internet commerce industry (the "dot com" community), the growing knowledge management industry and the established information science and database management community to define a new professional field: information architecture. I would like to commend the people responsible for bringing this complex and ambitious meeting together. Many of us will no doubt benefit from the greater recognition of information architecture that it will foster.

This report briefly covers

* the definition of an information architect;

* the architect's duties and tasks;

* the various disciplines involved;

* the qualifications necessary to work in this field;

* the principles and techniques used in information architecture.

It also discusses the spirited multidisciplinary interaction that took place at this meeting. Much of what is reported here is distilled from the presentations and discussion that took place between the attendees and presenters. Some of the presentations are being posted on the meeting's Web site, and a list of books by conference speakers is attached for further reading.

ASIS in Motion

This summit meeting, which may come to be viewed as a critical event in the development of the field of information architecture, was representative of the changes taking place in the American Society for Information Science (ASIS). The organization is committed to providing a professional base for the emerging field of information architecture by assembling an information architecture special interest group. There were also calls during the meeting for an information architecture electronic mail discussion list (which immediately came to pass) and professional publications. The proposed name change from ASIS to ASIST, or the American Society for Information Science and Technology, might also reflect new directions. Defining Information Architecture was the first in a series of summit meetings focusing exclusively on particular special interests that will replace the Mid-Year Meetings. The Annual Meetings will continue to support a wide range of topics in information science, but will be complemented by the more focused summits.

General Observations

Information architecture is a young field. However, more than 15% of the some 290 attendees who pre-registered already had jobs that included "information architect" or some variant in their titles. Most of those who identified themselves as information architects in a voice poll at the meeting had been in the field for less than five years. The speakers and attendees came from eclectic backgrounds including the cutting-edge electronic commerce and the academic information science spheres.

Definition of Information Architecture

One of the resounding successes of the meeting was that, for me at least, a clear definition of information architecture surfaced from this melting pot of new ideas and professional cultures. Information architecture, as a working definition, is the art and science of organizing information to help people effectively fulfill their information needs. Information architecture is an applied field that involves investigation, analysis, design and implementation. The definition includes the organization, navigation, labeling and search mechanisms of information systems. The goal is to help people find and manage information more successfully. This definition is mostly according to the keynote speaker, Louis Rosenfeld, CEO of Argus Associates and co-author of the book entitled Information Architecture listed in "For Further Reading." Subsequent speakers added that human factors such as system effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction are also key to the definition.

During the meeting there was a focus on the information architecture of Websites, but the practice clearly applies to other kinds of complex information services.

Tasks Involved

At the core of an information architect's work is the definition of the high concepts, central message and audience for an information site or service through interviews with clients and users alike. The architects and their teams design the logical structure of the site or service and prototype the user interface based on the requirements gathered. They utilize elements in the user-centered design of information systems such as search engines, context matrixes and domain-specific controlled vocabularies and thesauri that determine the browsing hierarchy of a site. The architect works constantly with the various and diverse members of the team to construct the system in accordance with the central concepts. He or she is also responsible for establishing metrics to determine if the goals and objectives were met.