On Mar 31, 2009, at 9:37 AM, Dan Saffer wrote:
[...] most analog games don't call under this definition. Everything from chess to football to poker. But there is a lot of interactivity.
Try teaching Chess, Football, or Poker to a child and then tell me there is no IA.
Maybe my perspective of IA is warped, but I see IA in Chess, Football and Poker. Chess has a board that requires navigation through that system. The layout of a board is architecture. Football has yardlines, which are IA. Poker has cards, each with information on them that was designed. Texas Hold'em has 5 cards, the Flop, 4th Street, and the River. Each laid out on a table, or in an orderly fashion that is IA.
For me, IA is purely about organized structure. Maybe my vision of IA is warped, but that's how I've always approached it. Not that complicated.
Do these games have taxonomies? Not really. But a taxonomy is only one small piece of IA.
If you take a digital game like Simon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(game) > and interactive displays like Rosen's wooden mirror <http://www.smoothware.com/danny/woodenmirror.html > there is no information architecture involved at all because there is no content to find or navigate through.
Simon has IA, just look at the structure of the four buttons, red, blue, yellow, and green, along with the arrangement of the buttons and labels in the middle. The interface itself has IA. Does playing the game have IA? Theoretically, you could argue that each sequence is IA, it's just random IA. There is no such thing as computer generated randomness, only theoretical randomness. If it's run by a computer program, then it isn't random—anyone who's taken a research, theory, or computer science class knows this.
I'm really surprised at these arguments. They seem like a grasp to try and find examples that don't have IA just for the sake of arguing rather than finding truth.
Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel Principal Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: t...@messagefirst.com AIM: twar...@mac.com Blog: http://toddwarfel.com Twitter: zakiwarfel ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
