Editorial

A Note from the Editors

This issue of Intercom is essentially a double issue on information architecture, with print and Web editions (some additional articles have been published online only). I'm thrilled to start off 2012 with such impressive content and an exciting topic. I thank coeditors Andrea Ames and Alyson Riley for their hard work and dedication to this issue. Visit http://intercom.stc.org to share your thoughts about the articles.

—Liz Pohland

liz.pohland@stc.org


We set out to do something new with this special edition of Intercom magazine, something that reflected our passion for information architecture and our desire to help equip information architects (IAs) for success and survival given the pressures of today's economic realities. We wanted to bypass entirely the long-standing discussion about the name and nature of information architecture—a debate that's been going on since Richard Saul Wurman coined the term in 1976—in favor of exploring what IAs have learned as our discipline has matured and as we have come to speak the language of business. We wanted to focus on the strategic aspects of the discipline that resonate in today's market—things like:

  • The relationship between information architecture and business strategy
  • Methods for balancing the mandates of user advocacy and the reality of business requirements
  • Tools to measure and justify investment in IA outcomes
  • Techniques for describing how human users benefit from information architecture in ways that resonate with those outside of our discipline

And wow, did the IA community rise to the challenge! We are very pleased to introduce the writings of fellow friends of information architecture who share our passion. In the pages that follow, you'll discover work that explores these topics and provides a glimpse into the future of information architecture—so much good stuff that we couldn't contain it all in the print version of Intercom. We encourage readers to check out both the print and Web versions of this publication—the Web version contains significant additional material, including our discussion with Rahel Bailie about the synergy between information architecture and content strategy, work by Laura Palmer and Susan Yeshin (who each explore in different ways how IAs can use Web analytics to make business-savvy decisions), some prescriptive advice from Tricia York Garrett for how IAs can communicate in smart, strategic ways with executives, and insights from Nicola Yap on the tricky topic of change management.

In looking at the print and Web versions of this special edition, some themes quickly emerge. First, we weren't the only IAs who didn't want to discuss the name of our discipline. Even if we may occasionally ask existential questions about boundaries, the IA role has solidified. There's a new(er) player on the scene—content strategy—and how the two disciplines play together seems to vary by person, project, and professional context. As a result, there's some exploration to be done there, but in general, the articles in this issue reflect the confidence and sophistication of thought that comes from being all grown up. Today, IAs are focused on things like business-friendly metrics, effective communication with stakeholders about results, standardizing methods to ensure procedural rigor and high-quality results, and, not surprisingly, what comes next.

Samantha Starmer—guest columnist for “The Strategic IA”—asks questions and begins to imagine what the future may hold, as does Richard Saul Wurman in the article featured on the cover of this magazine. In talking with the authors included in this special edition, we were left with a very clear sense of what can best be described as itchiness: a nagging, pressing, itching to move forward, to discover the next paradigm, to define an information architecture that will take the best of the massive technological advances we've made since 1976, and out of all the noise, generate a new, simple, elegant experience. An itching to take huge, technology-enabled, transformational advantage of a concept not new to IAs but revolutionary for the business world—that everything is information and that the lines between stuff, services, and story are forever blurred. The entire game is changing—and no discipline is better positioned to shape this future than ours.

We hope you find value in the focus and material of this special edition, ranging as it does from the practical to the prophetic. Thank you to the gifted authors who contributed to this project and to Liz Pohland for her ongoing support and creative calendaring.

—Andrea Ames and Alyson Riley

thestrategicia@pobox.com