The following are highlights from a presentation presented by Nathaniel Davis at World IA Day. The presentation took place in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2017.

Information architecture, as a practice and discipline, is still young

  • IA theory, science, and research are still forming.

The popular view of information architecture represents a small subset of its total value

  • 80% of the value of information architecture is still unrealized.
  • Information architecture includes modeling the intent and use of an environment to help inform strategy and design.
  • A systemic concern for information coherence, constraints, objects, and flows
  • Information architecture includes modeling content and the relationships they keep.
  • A structural concern for information properties and behavior that support design
  • Structure (n.) supports design (n.)
  • Structure supports an environment’s design and sustainable use by providing resilience to informational forces.
  • The practice of information architecture contributes systemic analysis as a way to engineer a structure that coherently connects architectural intent to design.

Four Information Architecture Modeling Activities

  • Frame objective using concept models & rationale
  • Synthesize research with information science
  • Align owner objectives with customer and user need
  • Model information relationships and interactions

Six Pillars of IA Modeling Maturity

  • Content Interaction
  • Information Retrieval
  • Needs Analysis
  • User Analysis
  • Context Analysis
  • Entity Analysis

A structure is engineered

  • Most approaches to UI design suffer from poor systemic and structural analysis.
  • Information architecture does not happen in a vacuum.

In the digital domain, the model is the structure for the user interface

  • Promote the analysis of UI structure in the design of effective and sustainable user interfaces.
World IA Day Boston 2017 – Information Architecture presentation by Nathaniel Davis

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