Ironically, information architects haven’t explained how we create value in terms most people understand. If I tell someone at a party that I’m an IA, they won’t know what I do. It’s a problem: if others don’t understand how we can help, they won’t hire us.
The main challenge is that the object of IA is inherently abstract. What I mean by ‘object’ here is the central focus of the discipline. People understand the object of other disciplines. For example:
| Discipline | Object |
|---|---|
| Architects | Buildings, urban environments |
| Automotive Designers | Cars, trucks, and other vehicles |
| Graphic Designers | Posters, book covers, page layouts |
| Industrial Designers | Physical products |
| Typographers | Type, typefaces |
I expect few people know the word “typographer.” But most have seen typefaces. A typographer introducing herself at a party can say “I design fonts” and people will know what she means.
Buildings are tangible things. People have walked through their spaces just like they’ve seen texts set in different typefaces, ridden cars, or scanned page layouts.
What’s the analogous ‘central object’ of information architecture? Is it navigation structures? Taxonomies? Heading labels? Tables of contents? Websites? Apps?
It’s none of these. These are all IA touchpoints, but not its central object.
It may be that IA has no relatable central object. A website is an object of IA – but so is an atlas or a diagram of the human body. For most people, these things seem completely unrelated.
So IA faces an insoluble conundrum. The discipline won’t gain traction if it doesn’t focus on a relatable object of focus. But if it focuses on a central object – websites, apps, atlases – it won’t be IA anymore.
This is because IA operates at a more abstract level than other disciplines. Information underlies all human endeavors. Almost anything can convey information. (Even the objects of the other disciplines listed above!) And if it can convey information, it can be the object of an information architecture.
Which is to say, IA might be a meta-discipline.
This works against describing how IA creates value in terms most people can understand. The over-simplified phrase “organizing information to make it more useful” is still too abstract, since ‘information’ doesn’t evoke tangible images.
That might be ok. It just means we can’t aspire to mainstream acceptance. Instead, we must aim to be valued by the people who most need our help. Who that might be? That’s a subject for a future post.