Instead of admonishing folks for not practicing, employing, using, or even being aware of information architecture, I think it would be more illuminating to probe, why has information architecture been marginalized? (And I say this as someone who believes that increased practice of information architecture would prove FAR more valuable, impactful, and meaningful to more people/users than the typically-considered "craft" practices of visual design.)
Dan Saffer
1w
Why should IA be any different than every other discipline under the UX banner aside from UI?
You were there the whole time. You must have some theories.
I think it’s part of the shift to “unicorns”. IA is a hinderance and asks too many questions if your goal is manipulation, gaslighting, hype, or otherwise create an opportunistic environment—especially in information. Move fast? IA wants to understand. Break things? IA wants to fix things. Deceptive design? Exact opposite of *information* architecture.
As an OG IA, what I’ve observed: 1. IA and IxD used to be part of the same skill set (remember Big IA and Little IA?). As IxD got hived off into UI, IA skills drifted. The same is now happening to IxD and research skills. 2. IA was the canary in the coal mine for organisations believing that once something has been designed once, it just needs minor maintenance. Site structures have been growing organically for over a decade now (decades in some cases!), and the rot this has introduced can now also be seen in the dogmatic application of design patterns/icons/UI guidelines by disciplines that have no design training themselves. This underpins the UCD staff layoffs - a conviction that tools & libraries will outright replace knowledge and experience, and that whole work processes can be junked in the name of atomised shipping efficiency. 3. IA improvements are a lot of work. They cross org depts, and they touch on org design because organisations still produce work in silos. The trend is currently to return to Sales/Customer Service/Ops and shrink Product to PMs who are increasingly looking like warmed-over BAs. 4. Result: CX is degrading rapidly now (see Forester et al), and big tech is leading the charge.
Bob Royce
1w
Many have already noted some of the reasons it has been such a hard sell: trying to expand Agile from a way to build things to be a way to design things, and a general focus on short-term gains v long-term investment, are certainly big contributors. We've also seen multiple instances where agencies convinced clients that what was needed was "pictures to be coded" v systems that need an interface. More abstractly, though, (and I'm aware of the irony that abstract ideation is not a good way to sell something), investment in IA requires people to acknowledge the need to reconcile conceptual differences they'd rather not admit are there. Who wants to admit their organization is not aligned in how they talk about the world and needs help? Even more abstractly, most business people want to think the world is complicated, and if they just decompose their systems well enough, the engineers will be able to resolve all conceptual differences and be done with it, once for all. The problem is that the world is complex, especially the world of language. Language is a game we play and striking the balance between chaos (no IA) and mind-control (too much IA) is hard work that people would rather not do.
John Donohoe
1w
I can recall trying to hire a designer with IA skills 10 years ago and it seemed like a lost art to the pool of younger designers that I came across at the time. You could find some seasoned contractors with solid IA capabilities but that was about it. My only hypothesis at the time was because it wasn’t part of any school’s UX design program. At that time design thinking was all the rage and was supplementing long existing visual design programs but no one thought to add the library science skills that were already in the industry. Could be it just didn’t fit the D school model that were being adopted. When I started in the late 90s I don’t remember there being a UX design role. You had visual designers, engineers, content creators, and information architects that typically came in to be the connective tissue between them all. IAs would do taxonomies and sitemaps and also wireframes and click paths. It feels like the role has become more focused (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but we’ve lost some needed skills.)
Josh Lane
1w
Honestly, I think it's because of Design Systems. It's easier and faster to grab existing patterns & components and start designing high-fidelity experiences (or prototypes). And since that's what stakeholders value (speed & fidelity), that's what got prioritized. Low-fidelity work (Research, IA, Wireframes, etc) has all been de-prioritized in the face of "move fast and break things" like another commenter mentioned. Additionally, I don't see as many horizontally-focused teams tackling the entire experience. There's typically a "Platform" team tackling things like nav, sharing, account, settings, integrations, etc. But not the overall architecture of the system. You could say that the head of the platform team, or even the head of the entire design team, should be thinking about IA. But I think this sort of role and responsibility should land on a horizontal Staff/Principal Designer - the same way we see Staff/Principal Engineers tasked with architecting the entire system.
Bob Goodman
1w
Where to even begin. It would be a good time for IA skills to come back, because they are at in the intersection of Data, Content, taxonomic structure, unifying backed system design with front-end consumer facing interactions, etc. Why did it get marginalized? On the front end, I think was in part due to mobile and social interaction; small screen design was seen as more about interaction design and at most, wireflows. And then on the systems level, it was seen more as a data and engineering function around taxonomy development and maintenance, and UX has gotten further and further removed from system design unfortunately. So it's too much of a niche (especially a niche born of early Web days of large sites and portals) to be a common stand-alone in-house role other than by exception/special case. But along with possible roles to play in AI, it's as useful as ever, and it would be helpful to have more IA training for UXers as a way to branch out from Figma and final-mile UI design, possibly in patrnership with content strategy and data teams.
Publisher at Rosenfeld Media, conference producer, podcaster, author, polar bear.
1wCapitalism, mostly.