17 Aug 2008 0647H

Biting the hand that feeds you

Seems a recent post at grokdotcom has inflamed the information architecture community: hardly worth mentioning really but for the strident responses drawn to that flame. I don’t think it’s wrong to say that interaction design or information architecture is faulty or point out how they are incomplete, and most mature disciplines at some point in the process of defining themselves have to, at some point or another, realize their limitations. You can see this in the way that information architecture has tried to claim interaction design to shore up its LIS-heavy moorings, and in the way that information architecture and interaction design, strictly speaking, don’t cover the web analytics/SEO/SEM-guided interactive marketing component very well. And of course they can’t: if you have sales targets you want to reach, there are many retailing variables to manipulate and the architecture and interaction components are only part of that equation. Healthy enough to realize where the interdisciplinary boundaries of user experience stop and where we’ll need to partner up with marketing strategists and the like. But, the argument grok is making is essentially that because IAs or IxDs are so limited disciplinarily, all the more reason to hire grok, starting at n dollars per engagement, to perform some work which would of course necessarily capitalize upon in some form or another the tremendous foundation of work laid down by information architects, interaction designers and user experience professionals overall, everywhere, for the last decade or more, and disregards how the discipline has evolved and continues to evolve into the interdisciplinary practice of user experience. That is nothing short of disingenuous and approaches galling.

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Filed under Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Strategy, User Experience, Work

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