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.
