the future of information architecture

Christina Wodtke

The Future of Information Architecture

Christina Wodtke

Christina Wodtke

Christina Wodtke

Boxes and ArrowsBookAsilomarConsultant

www.aifia.orgwww.eleganthack.comwww.boxesandarows.comwww.blueprintsfortheweb.com

Christina Wodtke

Information Architecture is

Architecture in information spaces.

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Understanding IA

Why has IA survived the crash? What value does it have? How can it thrive? What’s next?

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Who cares?

Once there were people with cowsAnd people without cowsThe people with no cows were hungry

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They took to the roadAnd met at the marketAnd the people with no cows bought cowsThe people with cows had fewer cows, but money for other things

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Now there are people with informationAnd people with no informationThe road is the computerAnd the market is the web

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But the market is really bigAnd the people can’t find each otherSo we have ignorant peopleAnd people with no money

The cows are okay with this

Business is not.

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The Goal

The playersUsers, seeking information (cowless)Businesses with information (with cows)Intermediaries such as search engines

and directories, profiting on the exchange (marketplaces)

The goal is to get the users seeking the data to the businesses offering the data

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Missing information is dangerous

In the news, US government’s information management problems

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Missing information is expensive

“The Fortune 1000 stands to waste at least $2.5 billion per year due to an inability to locate and retrieve information.”

“While the costs of not finding information are enormous, they are hidden within the enterprise, and…are rarely perceived as having an impact on the bottom line.”

The High Cost of Not Finding InformationAn IDC White Paper, July 2001.

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Missing information kills“Like all primary care physicians, Dr. Bob Goldszer must stay on top of approximately 10,000 different diseases and syndromes, 3,000 medications, 1,100 laboratory tests, and many of the 400,000 articles added each year to the biomedical literature. That's no easy task. And it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. The Institute of Medicine's 1999

report, To Err Is Human, suggests that more than a million injuries and 90,000 deaths are attributable to medical errors annually. Something like 5% of hospital patients have adverse reactions to drugs, another study reports, and of those, 43% are serious, life threatening, or fatal. Many knowledge workers have problems similar to Dr. Goldszer's (though they're usually

less life threatening). No matter what the field, many people simply can't keep up with all they need to know.”

--Harvard Business Review, Jul 1, 2002

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Missing information

Lost sales -

Expensive support -

Duplicated effort -

Lost trust -

Lost lives?

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Classification has Consequences

A physician who doesn’t see a new cure

A poor student who can’t find financial aid

A store where a product isn’t found

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IA has consequences

Tagging with metadata

Organizing with CV’s

Creating navigation systems

Optimizing search

Information Architecture manages information to make it findable

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And IA can build brands.

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Branding in 10 seconds

brand promises

brand experiences

create

fullfilled by

Brand managers

Brian Collins’ Model of Brand

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Brand and the User Experience

Hugh Dubberly’s Model of Brand

Creating a good customer experience is the essence of good branding

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IA Realizes Brand

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Product Quality = Brand LoyaltyI get asked a lot why Apple's

customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous.It's because when you buy our products, and three months later you get stuck on something, you quickly

figure out [how to get past it]. And you think, "Wow, someone over there at Apple actually thought of this!" And then three months later you try to do something you hadn't tried before, and it works, and you think "Hey, they thought of that, too." And then six months later it

happens again. There's almost no product in the world that you have that experience with, but you have it with a Mac.

And you have it with an iPod.

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Benabar n’est pas jazz?

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What is this?

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What are these?

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They are all birds(ornithologist)

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The Cassowary is not a bird!

(the Karam)

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From “Why the Cassowary is not a bird”, R. Bulmer, Man, Vol. 2, Issue 1, (Mar. 1967)

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From “Why the Cassowary is not a bird”, R. Bulmer, Man, Vol. 2, Issue 1, (Mar. 1967)

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Who Cares?

Ornithologists The Karam Information Architects

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Dewey Decimal System

200-299 – Religion Categories 40+ categories related to

Christianity 1 for Judaism 1 for Islam (& related)

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Who Cares?

Religious Scholars Librarians Information Architects Jews and Muslims

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Classification reflects social and cultural organization

Information Architect must understand this context

We can change how people think via classification and labeling

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Frames

Voter revolt Tax Relief War on terror Free Market Poison free

George Lakoff, author of “Don’t Think of an Elephant

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Business reframes

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1. Design Look 46.1%2. Information Design/Structure 28.5%3. Information Focus 25.1%4. Company Motive 15.5%5. Information Usefulness 14.8%6. Information Accuracy 14.3%7. Name Recognition & Reputation

14.1%8. Advertising 13.8%9. Information Bias 11.6%10. Writing Tone 9.0%11. Identity of Site Operator 8.8%12. Site Functionality 8.6%13. Customer Service 6.4%14. Past Experience with Site 4.6%15. Information Clarity 3.7%16. Performance on Test by User 3.6%17. Readability 3.6%18. Affiliations 3.4%

“While information structure is often associated with usability, the comments here show how information structure has implications for credibility. Sites that were easy to navigate were seen as being more credible.”

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Trust me

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Trust me

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Big trend #1

Search: the magic box

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Speed of People Searching

People take only a second to search

People want to take only a second

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Fast, Fast, Fast

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Query block?

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Articulation Problems Average Search 2.5

words 30% of searches are 1

word searches Another third at 2

word searches– often single concept search “New York”

This trend is not changingFrom E-Sex to E-Commerce: Web Search Changes-- Amanda Spink, Pennsylvania State University, Bernard J. Jansen, US Army War College, Dietmar Wolfram, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Tefko Saracevic, Rutgers University

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Mind-reading expected

And increasingly delivered

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Human disambiguation

How do you use editorial to best effect?

Humans don’t scale.

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Zipf curve (for search)

Most common searches (head)

Least common searches (tail)

Obama

Jennife

r Lopez

Britney

Spears

Zipf Curv

e

Peter M

orville

Inform

ation A

rchite

cture

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Best Bets

Analyze the head

Analyze content

Maximize the knowledge

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Answers

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Trend #2

Organizing Search

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Clusty: organizing

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A9: classifying

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Trend #3

Folksonomies

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Del.icio.us: Folksonomy ascendant

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Flickr: Metadata is fun

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Trend #4

Pagelessness

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The page

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RIA

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Where is your data going?

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How can people find…anything? On a stove!

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Trend #5

Visualization

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When was it above 20ºC during this month?

15 17 19 15 22 10 1515 10 11 15 20 12 1814 23 12 15 18 12 1713 11 21 10 29 12 1729 12

Mon Sun

Source: Karl Fast

www.livingskies.com

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Now when was it above 20?

15 17 19 15 22 10 1515 10 11 15 20 12 1814 23 12 15 18 12 1713 11 21 10 29 12 1722 12

Mon Sun

Source: Karl Fast

www.livingskies.com

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Now add some interaction controls

15 17 19 15 22 10 1515 10 11 15 20 12 1814 23 12 15 18 12 1713 11 21 10 29 12 3022 12

20 29

0 35

Mon Sun

Source: Karl Fast

www.livingskies.com

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Newsmap: Understanding

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Kartoo: no dang sense

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Grokker: interact and understand

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Trend #6

Person-based Organization

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A9 is chasing

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Yahoo is chasing

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Social Networking- with a purpose

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Trend #7

IA as Bossman

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“We will never make progress as long we are resources and not leaders. Resources don't discuss the business plan, the marketing strategy. Resources don't help decide what the product or service will be in the first place. Resources are called in when the leaders think they are needed. They do their job and then get out of the way.”

- Don Norman

A quote

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Moving Up in Influence

Man

ag

er

New

E

mp

loye

e

Em

plo

yee

Dire

cto

r & U

p

Needs Help for everything

Self-Sufficient, Contributes Individually

Contributes via others

Contributes via influencing organizations From

“Novations” by G

ene W. D

alton

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Director of DesignVice-president of Web ServicesDirector of ProductVice-president of DesignManagement ConsultantCEO Who are you next?

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The Next IA

Will be invisible, like searchOr visible, like NewsmapAnd it will be human- for, by and with

humans.

It will help business.

And you will make it happen.

Christina Wodtke

Books and Things Information Architecture: Blueprints for the web

What the CEO wants you to know

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

Boxes and Arrows

Aifia.org

Eleganthack.com

IAslash.org

IAwiki.net