On Mar 30, 2009, at 9:39 PM, Dan Saffer wrote:
There are many products that have limited information architecture,
but a lot of interaction design:
- appliances and consumer electronics like stereos, digital cameras,
microwaves, etc.
Are you kidding me?
Have you used a digital camera recently? I can't figure out much of my
Nikon D80 thanks to poor information architecture.
Or how about TiVo? TiVo demonstrates a brilliant marriage of IA and IxD.
The other thing I find interesting is while (a very few self-styled)
leaders of IxD bitch about IA supposedly landgrabbing UX, the IxD
community seemingly feels no compunction in landgrabbing industrial
design (to whit: commentary about microwave ovens and power buttons).
Which, of course, is the point. We're all contributing to the design
of the experience. And hard-and-fast distinctions are not helpful.
- toys
Which toys? Again, I would argue that any toy with significant
interaction design characteristics (and not just industrial design
ones) also require IA sensibility as well.
- games
This I'm more willing to accede.
- ambient devices
This is ignorance, pure and simple. Ambient devices are *all about*
information architecture. If you think about the ur-ambient device,
the Ambient Orb, there's almost no interaction. It's all about the
conveyance of information in a meaningful format. There's a reason I
invited David Rose to speak at IDEA 2007, because his work is so much
about the structuring and presentation of meaningful information.
- robots
I see both IxD and IA as relatively minor contributors here, when
compared with industrial design, electrical engineering, mechanical
engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence.
- ubicomp and other interactive environments
You've got to break that down.
- tangible devices like Siftables
Your bias is showing. Siftables is a platform. Some things will weigh
heavily on the IxD side, others on the IA side.
- gestural or haptic systems
This is meaningless. What are these systems *doing*?
- a lot of sensor-driven interactivity
Again. What sensor driven interactivity? But, if I think of sensor
driven activity, the key thing it puts out is data. Lots of data, that
needs to be made sense of. IA helps.
- interactive displays like digital whiteboards
Whiteboards, maybe. But CNN's Magic Wall, what John King is
interacting with -- very much IA.
- many medical devices
Perhaps. But think about the challenges with the data and information
in those devices. Even Charmr, in its simplicity, was all about making
the data meaningful. That interpretation is much more IA than it is IxD.
It would be more fair to say that IA needs to be closely aligned
with IxD, but not necessarily the opposite. A digital toy or game
can have a lot of interactivity but no "content" to be structured.
But you cannot have a content structure (an information
architecture) without some means of navigating through it
(interaction).
Sure you can. Whether traditional library examples (card catalogs,
unless IxD is now claiming the design of physical drawers), or
wayfinding.
What this all speaks to, honestly, is an IxD landgrab, or, at least, a
desire to elevate IxD as the premier UX practice. The mentality
exhibited here and by a couple others on this list is dispiriting. The
IxD advocates have eagerly sought the evolution of IxD practice and
influence. But in doing so, there's no recognition of the evolution of
IA. The only interpretation I can make of this desire to put IA in a
little box and to make IxD the King Discipline is a unproductive
landgrab.
And it's clear that if anyone should NOT be placing boundaries around
what IA is/isn't, it shouldn't be interaction designers with chips on
their shoulders.
The field of experience design will most benefit from equal advocacy
across all its constituent disciplines, including IA, IxD, visual
design, industrial design, architecture, environmental signage, etc.
etc. etc.
--peter
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