Information Architecture Book Review

A lot of people think they know exactly Information Architecture is, but the truth is that a lot of people don’t know and they are not even aware that they don’t know (aka second level incompetence).

To make sure I wasn’t a member of the later group, I recently read Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web (2nd Edition) by Christina Wodtke and Austin Govella.

Wodkte and Govella do a good job in outlining their definition of the basic principles of IA:
- Design for Wayfinding
- Set expectations and provide feedback
- Design ergonomically
- Be consistent / consider standards
- Provide error support (Prevent, Protect, and Inform)
- Rely on Recognition rather than on recall
- Provide for people of varying skill levels
- Provide contextual help and documentation

While the illustrations that drive home the subject matter can be a little clipart-ish at times, the concepts are presented in a non-technical and non-jargon based way. Each topic is explained clearly using an outline / numbered bullet format to ensure that each section can be clearly understood independently and collectively. Items such as ‘Who are the users?’ may seem trivial at first, but imagine how many interpretations of ‘The users are...’ exists within an organization and the problems that arise when the user begins to morph throughout the product lifecycle to satisfy everyone's argument. Wodtke and Govella decompose several non-obvious items such as persona creation and navigational types (structural, associative, and utility) into chunks that are comprehensible (Hrair Limit). I was genuinely surprised to find a section for Social Architecture which exposed me to topics such as Kurt Lewin’s formula for understanding human behavior and the elements of social architecture: identity + elements, relationships + elements, and activity + elements.

The book can be read from cover to cover, if time permits. However, most of the world will probably use this book as a reference guide for completing IA related tasks as they arise. I would strongly recommend that all aspiring and current IAs give the book a once over to spawn new thoughts about the discipline or to renew the interest in keeping things usable and findable.

Expertise is overused. Try transdisciplinarity

Recently, I was referred to as an ‘expert’ in regards to my work on an upcoming iPhone application where I’m the lead architect (Don’t worry. I promise to not drown you in technobabble on this post). Upon hearing this, I was instantly uncomfortable and I felt compelled to correct the obvious error of judgment, if for nothing more than the sake of clarity rather than modesty. In any event, it made me think: “What do people really think an expert is? Do a few rudimentary accomplishments warrant ‘master’ or even ‘wizard’ level notoriety?” While I find several technologies and programming languages to be easy to use (Adobe Creative Suite, Actionscript, HTML, AJAX, sometimes Objective-C), I find myself realizing how little I know. The truth is, that I’m not an expert at all. I am able to pick up skills quickly and I’m able to use what I’ve learned over time effectively in different situations, but I would never say I’m an expert. To say that one is an expert implies that some threshold of knowledge has been reached or surpassed, and therein lies the problem. What happens next? Is there nothing left to learn? How many experts are self-judged and consequentially self-approved?

My personal solution: Stop trying to be an expert and become a transdisciplinarian. How do I do that? I chose to study the unions between and beyond scientific disciplines and humanities. As a designer and developer, I can see how proficiency in several related fields can improve the quality of my work and my dexterity overall. For example, I can infer what ‘good’ design is if I have design research which identifies visual cues, for example, that appear comprehensible by my target audience (See Gestalt Perception). Researchers such as Sam Ladner provide scientific and empirical evidence in an effort to influence the design of future products, but often this valuable quantitative and qualitative analysis is not used in the design process, if at all. (Recent post by Sam Ladner: Context, Time, and technology, Why do ethnography?) .

Another way of advocating transdisciplinarity is to consider the current U.S. economic situation. Millions of skilled workers, which include even more ‘experts’, are unemployed. In fact, comScore recently released a news brief stating online search behavior on search terms such as “unemployment”,”coupons”, and “bankruptcy” have increased year over year by 206%, 161%, and 156% respectively (comScore: Searches Using Term ‘Unemployment’ in December Triples versus Year Ago). Can anyone really afford to have a myopic view of what the job market considers to be valuable right now?


To help me change my thinking, I read a book entitled Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt which does an excellent job describing the the way our minds learn and think by introducing concepts such as the Dreyfus Model of skill acquisition. Hunt references second-order incompetence, which is loosely described as the condition of being unskilled and unaware of the deficiency, which may be a source of many self-proclaimed experts. I recommend the book, but the overall message is to try to become more holistic with our views of proficiency. A broader view of what your / our interests may help to make people more valuable today and in the future (circa end of the recession).