1) If you replaced the word “information architect” and “IA” with “interface designer” and “UI” would you have the same article? If so, then why not just use those terms instead of constantly referring to the job as “IA” throughout the article?

2) I think you somewhat neglect the issues on who makes the final decisions in any design. After all, in the business world, someone has to be accountable and make the final call. The real question here, how do titles and job function also affect the decision making process on a project?

If a self-proclaimed IA has no background or training in visual design, should they make the final call on what icons, typogrpahy and color systems to use? Would you mind if a self-proclaimed UX person told you that the entire taxonomy proposed was simply wrong, when it seems quite clear they have little background or trianing in that sort of work?

The fact is I’ve never seen a job listing or found an opening for a strictly specialized “information architect” on the Web, except for the library-sciences positions you discuss. Maybe after 10 years working in the web business I am at too junior of a level. What I have seen in the web production chain is that the overall architecture of the site usually falls to a series of meetings between marketing and engineering. Marketing has a list of demands, legal requirements, and whims that the engineering staff is tasked to build. A few whiteboard sketches and 3×5 cards are taped up and the navigation is decided upon – without a full time architect who holds authority over that. Then when coding begins, any changes are regarded as scope creep and fought viciously by the developers and their manager.

I have found myself in positions analogous to an information architect’s many times, but never officially and never with final authority. Final authority always, always seems to rest with the VP of marketing who read an article in Fast Company that morning and now thinks the site should be blue.

Gary, I think that on many jobs valuable IA contributions come from people without IA titles, like yourself. Chasing that title may be a goal that you have. I’ll get lynched here for saying this, but for 99% of web projects, I would rather have a great programmer or a great visual designer on my team who understands and does IA than some cognitive psych PhD.

As for final authority, that is a delusional concept.

However – we can’t effectively do the following quote from the article:

“This is an important strategic move. We’ve got a message to spread about quality, cohesion, organization and usability in the web product development process. But since our clients, colleagues, and executive managers learned about IT and the web in many different ways, the ears that hear the message we share are tuned to a variety of vocabularies and metaphors. Many people won’t hear what we have to say if we always deliver our message the same way with the same words.”

…. unless we all have the quoted “shared message”. Its no use having two people using different techniques to talk to two audiences about IA if one is saying that IA is all about wireframes and screen design and the other is saying IA is all about site structure and organization.

If you look at the conference agendas for IA Summit, UPA, CHI, and STC you see a lot of overlap, but the overlap is not contextualized, so it appears that all 4 are trying to take their respective name now mean the overlap. This to me is wrong. It dilutes the meantion and strength of the particulars and thus we loose the value of the multi-facets that Lynn so correctly wants to preserve. Experience Design at CHI looses “design”. Interaction Design at UPA becomes an attemtp to make design less subjective and more validative and quantifiable. Even if unintended, this is the outcome.

This is the real damaging piece. If in defining the particular we subsume the whole we are missing the point and we are hurting our peers’ abilities to differentiate and show value and (as you suggest) bring their particular backgrounds and contexts to bear on the whole.

I would like to take this opportunity to call on all the groups no matter how old or young they are, or how many members they may or may not have and come together to define the umbrella. Maybe even have our separate organizations become partners in a new umbrella organization. What that new umbrella is, I don’t know — User Experience (some hate the word user) … but there is an umbrella out there, eh?