Definitions for Information Architecture

What is IA?

In “Pervasive Information Architecture”, Andrea Resmini discusses the over 20 year-old debate on what IA is and quotes Andrew Hinton that “only communities which do not quarrel over such things are dead communities” (Pervasive Information Architecture 2011, p. 30)

Collection of definitions

• Information architect (Wurman 1997)

  • a. the individual who organizes the patterns inherent in data, making the complex clear;
  • b. a person who creates the structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal paths to knowledge
  • c. the emerging 21st century professional occupation addressing the needs of the age focused upon clarity, human understanding, and the science of the organization of information.

• An holistic way of planning which meets the organization’s information needs and avoids duplication, dispersion, and consolidation issues. The information architecture is the collective term used to describe the various components of the overall information infrastructure which take the business model and the component business processes and deliver information systems that support and deliver it. Prime components are the data architecture, the systems architecture and the computer architecture (Carter 1999).

• Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond (Polar Bear Book), 4th edition 2015 (1st edition 1998), p. 24:

  1. The structural design of shared information environments
  2. The synthesis of organization, labeling, search, and navigation systems within digital, physical, and cross-channel ecosystems
  3. The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability, findability, and understanding.
  4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape

• Information architecture (IA) is the structural design of shared information environments; the art and science of organizing and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability; and an emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape. (Wikipedia, derived from Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond)

• The art and science of organizing information so that it is findable, manageable, and useful. (Samantha Bailey 2002)

• Organization of information to support findability, manageability and usefulness from the infrastructural level to the user interface level. (Downey & Banerjee 2010, adapted from Bailey 2002)

• Information architecture is the practice of deciding how to arrange the parts of something to be understandable. (IA Institute)

• The interplay of

  • Ontology (the establishment of particular meanings)
  • Taxonomy (the arrangement of the parts to accomplish specific goals within, or across, contexts), and
  • Choreography (the rules for interaction among the parts). (Klyn 2009)

• Good information architecture takes the burden off the individual of having to structure information again and again. Thus, it frees your mind to understand and to act. (Rosenbusch 2020/2015)

• As information architects, we develop strategies to understand what we are trying to structure. By giving information structure, we learn to understand. We do this to encourage others to explore and understand. By being curious, we recognize our own and others’ discovery strategies. (World IA Day 2021)

• Information architecture (IA) aims to connect users with the content that they are looking for, in a seamless and intuitive manner. (Theresa Putkey)

• The way that we arrange the parts of something to make sense as a whole. (e.g.)

  • sections and labels that you use to divide up a website
  • table structures in a database
  • wayfinding and signage system in an airport
  • chapters of a book All of these are implementations of the same basic set of principles about the way people use structure and language to create meaning. (Abby Covert 2021, ca. 4:15-4:55 in the video)

• As information architects, our job is to make the complex clear (Abby Covert). Much of our practice involves investigating and teasing out and describing things that are beneath the surface that are hazy or constantly in flux. When I teach information architecture to beginning students, we spend most of our time learning how to become comfortable with uncertainty. And this is the hardest part of the class for many of my students, and rightfully so. Humans are quite uncomfortable with ambiguity. (Rachel Price at IAC 2020)

• The practice of deciding how to arrange the parts of something to be more understandable. We do that by making information more findable and more discoverable. Our job as designers is to render what is complicated meaningful and what is complex manageable. In other words [Andrea’s paraphrase?] Facilitate people's own problem solving (wayshowing), often by helping to omit information that is not requested (exformation). (Cassini Nazir at IAC 2020.

• “Information architecture is the way we arrange the parts of something to make sense as a whole, whether that be arranging screens in a mobile application or arranging various pieces of signage at a baseball stadium. IA involves the careful consideration of the language you use and the structures you enable for users to understand something. So IA is all around us and is mostly practiced by people who don’t even know they are doing it.” (Abby Covert cited in Boxes and Arrows, 2020, https://boxesandarrows.com/information-architecture-expert-panel-part-one/)

• Peter Morville 2012, https://prezi.com/aafmvya6bk7t/understanding-information-architecture/

• Understanding that information architectures are systems of meaning which pervade our social worlds (desperately requires acknowledgement by the field of information architecture globally). (Jason Hobbs, Andrea’s brackets - also in that article: "Any harm that our information architectures may inflict, or safety they may compromise, cannot be understood, assessed or predicted within the existing frameworks for the discipline and practice. The impact of information architectures cannot be measured, their existence cannot be managed, and neither their making nor their meaning in the world can be regulated as the field stands today."

• Andrea’s comment: I'll try to reverse it: We need to develop IA as a discipline and practice that understands, assesses or predicts that IA can inflict harm or compromise safety. The field needs a new framework to measure and manage the impact of IA, and that regulates the making of IA and its meaning in the world. (Hope I got this right!))

Terms absent in these definitions

• Architecture
• Sense-making
• Place-making
• Orientation
• Context (also cf. pervasiveness)
• Accessibility
• Language, semantics
• Mental models
• Learnability
• Rememberability
• Business goals
• (User goals - in usefulness)

Alternative approaches

Many of the definitions above are “content blobs” which do not really do the complexity of the term Information Architecture justice (and may even make them seem a bit arbitrary). Maybe we should break it down into more chunks and thus give it more structure, e.g.

• Goals
• Results (not as in deliverables, rather as what happens when IA has been done). e.g. clear and organized vs. confusing and unmanageable
• Means
• Metaphors (cf Richard Saul Wurman: You only understand something relative to something you already understand)
• What is NOT IA? (understand better by understanding what it is not; also clarify invisible structure vs. visible elements in the UI, e.g. menu)
• Fields of application (content rich contexts, AI, …)
• Ask people what they find UNCLEAR about IA and its definitions
• Plus deliverables, methods, examples (good and bad)

Work in progress

To break down information into parts, arrange them and describe the relations between the parts in order to help human beings (and to a certain extent machines) to understand and to discover, to establish or explore new connections, view different perspectives, find gaps, personalize etc.

• The granularity of the parts is dependent on the context. E.g. if you are travelling in a car on the highway, you don’t want to know every village you are passing by, but the intersections and exits as well as where you can get gas. If you’re travelling on foot or by bicycle, you need far more detailed information, not only about distance and infrastructure, but also about the inclination of the path or road.
• Also note: The tsunami of information is not only a problem of quantity, but also very much of quality. Information in form of unstructured blobs is very hard to interpret.

How to contribute to this list of definitions

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