What is information architecture? (What) has it to do with programming?

Question

I've came accross this concept several times and did not find a clear explanation. What is it? What has it to do with programming? What has it to do with what we (software engineeers / programmers) call architecture? How can it help me? How can I put this to work for me? How is the professional that best understand this subject called?

Answer 1

It's a concept dual to systems architecture, except the approach is centered on information itself, not on the system that processes the information.

Answer 2

The art of deciding what information you want to present/manage and how to go about organizing it; reference Wikipedia article.

Answer 3

From Wikipedia, Information Architecture is:

"The art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems." Examples include library systems, databases, Content Management (CMS) Systems, web development, user interactions, enterprise architecture, and critical system software design.

Answer 4

Content and documentation trends

One area where Information Architecture is experiencing rapid growth and attention is in technical writing and content authoring. This is related in many ways to the trends of that sector, where decreased cost and increased usability requirements have influenced the growth of topic-based authoring and single source publishing.

A great example is the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, or DITA. As the name suggests, this model relies on information architecture as a means to manage content. An Information Architect in this realm would understand content in the context of sourcing and generation, management and maintenance, and the increasing publishing formats and opportunities.

On the job

This particular Information Architect role description would require skills that overlap many areas of analytics, programming, and documentation. They might know DocBook XML, LaTeX, some Javascript or Python, analytic fundamentals, reporting suites, SQL or similar, charting and mapping. They are likely to have used IBM's Information Architecture Workbench, which was formerly called Task Modeler as part of IBM's DITA efforts. Most of all, they would be engaged in taxonomy and information topology.

Taxonomy and mapping

That bares repeating. Information Architecture is increasing in demand for documentation teams looking for expertise in managing single sourcing and topic-based authoring models with often a custom Component Content Management System (CCMS), and a critical focus on the taxonomy of content and data collateral. As these needs evolve, these IAs will be working on whole-of-business content and portal issues, which brings the role back in line with "traditional" IA definitions in terms of web development.

In other words, they are the glue between technical writers, engineers, project managers, team leads, and other wild and wonderfully overlapping roles. How that resource is interpreted will differ between organisations, projects and even teams. For the time being, it's a role with often unique skills, but one that will be popular for specialisation as it so comfortably overlaps many different areas, allowing many different paths to expertise. And I think that is definitely a good thing for innovation overall.

Answer 5

During the .COM boom information architecture was a 'vital' part of every web dev pitch. It showed you'd read the book. In my experience these days, it is less explicit, most web developers and content managers inherently understand that information must be arranged and presented in a coherent fashion to make sense to the user. I'd be interested to know if anyone else has noticed the phrase being used less and less.