As computers and digital devices increasingly insert themselves into our lives, they do so on an ever increasing social level. Designers need to understand the context of use and include the whole of a user’s experience into the solution when creating a computer interface.
Big Ideas
Not so long ago, on my personal site I posted a little entry on design. And a comment was made: “IA is not design.” This sentence has sat vibrating in my head for months. It speaks of bravado in the face of fear. But why should Information Architects fear design?
Fear of Design
Part 2: The intense focus on the user experience differentiates websites from printed products—and information architects from print designers and writers—more than anything else. Information architects must think like print designers and writers—and they must do what print designers and writers do—on a much bigger scale, in “N dimensions.”
Moving from Flatland to Hyperspace: The “Evolution of a Mindset” Part 2 of 2
Part 1: My entrée into the web world—Spaceland, or “Hyperspace”—was not a smooth one; in fact, it was downright mind-bending. My personal journey from designing and writing for print media to becoming an information architect for websites conjures up images of Flatland, written by Edwin A. Abbott, an English clergyman, educator, and Shakespearean scholar (1884).
Moving from Flatland to Hyperspace: The “Evolution of a Mindset” Part 1 of 2
Attending conferences often crystallizes the direction of a career or confirms choices made as people meet and communities bond over similar goals. It isn’t often that you hear about someone throwing off the mantle of a title or dropping out of a discipline altogether. David Heller explains why he feels the title IA isn’t appropriate to what he does anymore.
Why I’m Not Calling Myself an Information Architect Anymore
As I write this the Police’s “Synchronicity” is on the radio and that’s a good way of summing up some of the interesting developments experienced during the past few months.
Arrows in Our Quiver
A recent book captures a larger movement within the academic field of human-computer interaction away from its traditions of behavioral science and engineering towards “interaction design.” But re-labeling isn’t enough, it also requires a shift in philosophical foundations as well as professional practice, and the language of HCI is not the best place to look for inspiration.
Just How Far Beyond HCI is Interaction Design?
In last month’s welcome, I set out to describe Boxes and Arrows purpose and goals. On a line by itself I stated this is not a place for jargon. I felt that was important enough to call out. I certainly am being called to task for that.
Speaking in Tongues
Defining the audience for Boxes and Arrows sparked the same kind of heated discussion as the community-at-large about what exactly do we call ourselves? Here’s two views, we’re sure there are more…
What’s in a Name? Or, What Exactly Do We Call Ourselves?
Many people who work within the design field have had a hard time assimilating the full scope of Experience Design—and a harder time accepting their niches within it. The reasons for this resistance uncover much about the state of design as well as the state of identity.