Emergent Information Architecture
by petermeA long time ago, I presented at the Information Architecture 2000 conference a talk entitled, “How Websites Learn: Information Architecture that Adapts to Use.” I was working at Epinions at the time, and thinking about how best to exploit people’s use of a website to restructure the information.
Next week, Brandon and I are talking at Web Design World about “Putting Web 2.0 into Practice,” and I found myself revisiting the same themes. I came up with this very simple diagram to communicate what I’m seeing:
The spectrum goes from implicit, meaning derived from user behavior but not consciously created by the user, to explicit, meaning consciously created by the user.
Algorithmic refers to the kind of emergent information architecture witnessed on Amazon, with tools such as “People who bought X also bought…” and the Page You Made. Amazon keeps track of everything everyone does, and the underlying information architecture evolves to reflect that.
Tags seem to me as a hybrid. They’re explicit in that people have to engage in some explicit act of applying the tag. They’re implicit because the aggregate of that tagging leads to folksonomies and other social metadata that starts making connections between information that was not there before. Flickr takes this one step further (and back towards “algorithmic”) with clusters (my favorite being “pitcher“).
Wikis represent an extremely explicit mode of emergent information architecture. No connections or relationship between information exist without users making them themselves. What’s fascinating to me is how communities self-regulate in such a way that this doesn’t lead to a linked-out mess. Lostpedia demonstrates strong organizational principles, yet allows the freedom for users to pretty much do as they will.
What’s presented here is in no way meant to be exhaustive. In fact, it’s very much preliminary. I’m throwing this out there to see if others have thoughts for how this can be fleshed out and made more robust.
January 30th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Thanks Nick, it helps when you’re a web developer by trade
February 28th, 2007 at 9:09 am
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April 1st, 2007 at 4:27 am
thanks very much for your post.It help me understand the information architecture in the new enviroments.But I still don’t know why you named this “emergent information architecture”,so can you tell me what does the word”emergent” means here?waiting for your answer,thank you!
April 4th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Emergent refers to how information organization structures emerge from all the small actions that individuals take. On Amazon, new organization emerges based on what people buy. On Flickr, new organization emerges based on how people tag their photos. The idea of “emergence” comes from evolutionary and complexity theory. Steven Johnson’s book _Emergence_ is a good place to start.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Thanks.I v read some literature on complex system and self-organization ,so now I think I v mastered your idea.Really thank you very much.As the research on IA for web2.0 in China is so absence,I want to translate your this big post into Chinese and publish it in my blog(Of course,I will mark your name and your address on it).Would you agree me to do so?