Why I am no longer calling myself an information architect.
by ChiaraAbout a year ago, Jesse came to me and suggested I change my title from Information Architect to User Experience Designer. He gave a number of reasons, but none of them resonated with me. I clearly remember commiserating with some dear friends at the IA Summit 2008 about this proposed change in title.
I didn’t want to give up the title. I considered myself an information architect first and foremost. I’ve called myself an IA for nine years now. I was proud of the name. It was who I was. So I didn’t change it.
In Memphis this past weekend, at the IA Summit 2009, I spent a lot of time talking with first time attendees and those new to the field of information architecture. I hosted a round table at lunch for those new to IA. They were a great table, with tons of questions.
One of the things they really wanted to know was how to become a great IA. My answers surprised me. I didn’t tell them that they had to master multi-faceted classification or be able to generate thesauri and controlled vocabularies from scratch. I didn’t tell them about stencils and templates for making better wireframes.
I told them how important it was to listen to the customers of the organizations they would be working for and to deeply understand their behaviors and motivations. I told them to be champions for the user. I told them to listen to the pain of their clients, and think about how their designs could ease it. I told them not to go in shouting about CVs and classification and indexing and how their clients were doing it all wrong. Be subtle, I said. Listen for their needs. Present classifications and metadata and all that cool stuff as the way to get your designs implemented, not as an end in and of itself.
And I realized… I wasn’t telling them how to do good information architecture. I was telling them how to do good user experience design. I realized while I love IA, and it is my core competency, it is also only a small part of what I do.
For that reason, I am taking on the title of User Experience Designer.
Entries (RSS)
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:35 am
Interesting timing. I’ve started reading Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin (http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0470229101), who argues that User Experience Designer isn’t really accurate because we can’t really control how the user experiences our products. She suggests that we’re really Interaction Designers.
Funny.
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Now only if someone can explain the difference between a User Experience Designer and Interaction Designer?
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I’m glad that companies like AP are taking on this cause, I think its really important the UX community rallies around a unified title. I realize there have been many recent discussions around this topic- to that end, I’ve set up a blog dedicated to this topic, to see what the community at large has to say on this topic- http://theuxtribe.wordpress.com/
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I think interaction design is on the same level as information architecture. Both are necessary components to making the whole design go. You can’t have one without the other. The line of where I stop doing IA and start doing IxD is very fuzzy and frankly, I’m tired of trying to make it clearer. It doesn’t matter. What matters is if we are solving the problem, if people are able to use what we design, if they can find the information we have structured.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I’m also not sold on “experience design” as either a title or an activity. The “experience” component of that phrase has always struck me as somewhat presumptuous, trendy, and vague. And though it is accurate to point out that we can’t truly design experiences (only set the field for them), it seems pedantic to insist upon that point.
“Interaction design” has the virtue of accuracy, and does not suffer from the narrowness of “information architect(ure)”. Unfortunately, it still sounds rather dry and mumbo-jumbo-y to those outside the field. Less human than “experience design”.
So I’m stuck. What to do?
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Congratulations! I am wondering about this discussion for ages. I am calling myself an User Experience Designer. I like the holistic approach of UX as a concept It goes beyond Usability. There is a bunch of different building blocks on the way to a good user experience. For me the most important ones are: IA, about the beauty of information. IxD, about how to use that information. UXD, about your feelings while you’re using it. That’s all. Don’t make it too complex.
March 24th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Holy toledo! One of my founding IA mentors has crossed over to the other side!
Forgive my hyperbole, but I feel like this is a significant milestone not just for you but for IA as a practice. It takes a lot of honesty and soul searching to get to the point where we can separate our titles from our identities, and I think this is something the IA community has been grappling with for a while.
You’ll always be IA numero uno in my heart, but I’m excited to see you take on a new title. Not just for what it means for you, but for what it means for IA overall as it adapts and changes and grows up just a little bit more each day.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I’m happy see this change in behavior and this change of title. I stoped calling myself an information architect long time ago for, yes the larger unified title of, User Experience Designer. What is important as you said is to have the empathic quality of beign able to place ourselves in the shoes of our client and more importantly, the clients of our client (the users). We are there to solve problems or at least to ease them. That’s it, this is our job, finding the best solutions. To do so, we need to have experience in information architecture, interaction design, usability (that I simply like to call the good sense of fhe common sense), sketching, wireframing, fast prototyping, specs writing, know a multiple front-end and back-end solutions and services available, search engine optimization, online marketing technics and so on. And this is why as UX problem solvers we are not just simple information architechs, but User Experience Designers. Listen, isolate, solve, test, learn, repeat.
March 25th, 2009 at 5:55 am
@Roman–
That comment says more about the interaction designer mindset than anything. Of course we can’t control how user’s experience our products. Since when does design = control? That’s an unfortunate legacy mindset in the design community.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:07 am
I’ve never understood the Information Architecture designation and “mantle” because I was never clued into what it was exactly. It always seemed like an extension of library science to me and, worse, for the clients who seemed to feel they needed it. Chiara’s quote “I didn’t tell them that they had to master multi-faceted classification or be able to generate thesauri and controlled vocabularies from scratch…” speaks volumes about the problems with being one – it’s completely organized from the wrong side of the table – even the language is engineer-oriented.
Glad to hear/see that the nature of the language surrounding this practice, and even the classifications themselves, are becoming more user-focused. In the end, I like Information Designer, because User Experience Designer makes me think of theme parks, Oscar award ceremonies, and furniture showrooms.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:24 am
With years of experience in this field under my belt I don’t use Interaction or User Experience Designer either. The word “designer” implies to most that you’ll do photoshop work or even HTML coding. I quit using IA quite a while ago, I found it limiting. I prefer User Experience Specialist. Sometimes I don’t do IA deliverables. Many times I find myself doing more strategy work, AND the IA deliverables…sometimes I will even do the testing on another IA’s wireframes, write a new strategy for the recommendations and pick up their work where they left off.
Either way the role is getting more liquid. I find I have to explain less when I use User Experience Specialist. There was always some sort of mis-understanding when I used the word Architect.
Whatever you’re called – you might have to do a little explaining.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Congratulations Chiara! I know the name game can be frustration. I have been using the title IA since 1999 and I like it … but for the last few years I have been going back and fourth on titles. I focus on IA, IxD, and User Interface Designer (UID) which would mean I should be a User Experience Designer. I have even had that titled at jobs even though inside my head I like the title Information Architect. I have a degree in Information Technology and Computer Science. Information Architects should know a lot about Information Technology, IMHO. I thought they were connected. However, it was not until a few years back that I learned people in IA have a background in Library Science, not Computer Science. At least years summit, I could not find any IA’s who had an IT degree. Well, that confused me because I have been on my own island for 10 years not paying attention to titles. I have now seen that when I tell people I am an IA, they expect me to know close to zero about IT and Computer Science. That presents a problem for me because the IA title sells myself short and doesn’t present the larger picture of who I am now.
I am still confused on what to call myself. Reading this makes me feel better. I often come back to this type of longer title statement: User Experience Designer specializing in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, and User Interface Design.
Hope you’re doing well. Peace, Cory
March 27th, 2009 at 6:27 am
I have never felt that the term “information architect” was a good description of the field now known as IA. I agree that user experience design is a much better definition.
It would be wonderful if the shift toward the user experience title would free the term “information architect” for use in a broader context as originally envisioned by Richard Saul Wurman:
“I thought the explosion of data needed an architecture, needed a series of systems, needed systemic design, a series of performance criteria to measure it. That said, information architects are people who have a passion to make the complex clear.”
I have a passion to make the complex clear, and I’d like to reclaim the term information architect, if you guys are done with it that is!
March 27th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Evel Kneivel is said to have told Spanky Spangler that [he was a Stuntman, until he realized Daredevils make more money.]
So, I refer to http://www.iainstitute.org/en/learn/research/salary_survey_2007.php and change my title based on the clients/employers climate.
Another way of looking at it is that the key to being a good designer is not worrying about your title and focusing your energy on your work, however, the key to being a happy designer is using a title that establishes respect for what you can offer.
March 27th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I’m thrilled to see the lunch table topics had such a profound impact on you, Chiara! It sounds like you may have gotten even more from the lunch than the newbies. I will certainly make sure to recruit you again as a table topic volunteer.
March 27th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Chiara, thanks for your most interesting post.
Not sure I agree with everything you say (or Jesse said), so decided to post my own considerations / follow-up comments over here: http://is.gd/phmq.
Oh, @dave: funny, that’s how I always used the name information architect, the RSW way. And I don’t think it really was misused that much through the years, or at least no more than say ‘designer’. So no, I don’t think we are done with it.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
[...] experience designers doesn’t quite ring right for me. It makes sense when I think about it in the way that Chiara Fox explains it, but it seems like we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps the [...]
March 30th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Chiara, I love your lunch table story – it truly sums up a complex thought process into a simple point. I’m also advocating rebranding (I think its more than just a name change) our group of 20 or so IAs at work to UX Designers since “IA” is just not representative of the work they do (mainly an IA/IxD combo with a side of Content and Usability).
March 31st, 2009 at 10:48 am
I notice Adaptive Path has both interaction designers and experience designers. How does AP distinguish the two?
April 1st, 2009 at 5:08 am
[...] Why I am no longer calling myself an information architect. [...]
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:53 am
I read your essay with great interest, but I have a mixed reaction to this. It sounds pretty pedestrian – one finds that the concept behind some term (the name of your occupation) no longer applies or at least doesn’t fit well to experience. I had this experience with my own job classification (now information scientist). But, you may have missed a larger point. You help people with designs of thesauri and doing classification, and your experience here is an example of that kind of work. Are there lessons from that to teach the uninitiated?
You’re right to listen to the users, for a system that doesn’t meet their needs won’t be used. However, I am not sure that new focus changes your fundamental goals. It just changes the paths to those goals. And it’s the goals that tell us the essential nature of your work. Have they really changed?
April 9th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Like many others in the field, I have trouble in telling the differences between IA and User Expereience Designer.. These two roles are playing almost the same role now while IA seems to be classified under taxonmy and UX designer tends to be under UED..
Perhaps someone needs to make a redefinition!!
April 16th, 2009 at 7:52 am
I honestly don’t care what my title is because it won’t change what I do at my current job.
But in my eyes I still see a difference in the two areas. To me ->
Information Architects – wireframes, site maps, user flows, interaction models, etc.
Experience Planners – user interviews, user research, competitive analysis, personas, contextual inquires, etc.
So to me, IAs are the steak, XPs are the sizzle.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:08 am
May I present a challenge in redefinition to those who thinks UxD is presumptuous, trendy, vague, pendatic, theme parks, oscar award ceremonies, furniture showrooms, etc ? Are any of you fit or well-cultured to provide your expertise to DEAF customers/DEAF organizations? Do not confuse DEAF people with Handicapped who are not DEAF. HEARING Handicapped people are vastly different from DEAF people from all walks of life.
If you are not well-cultured with the DEAF Culture, you are unfit to provide them your services as either IAs and XPs but under the circumstances and when time is of essence and DEAF people needs this particular service, DEAF people will choose XPs anytime over IAs without hesitation.
September 25th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Such fascinating insights for those of us on the hiring side. Both internal and external recruiters face this issue all the time – when new positions open, what do the hiring managers want, is it an IA or an IxD or a UED or a Usability Expert? I think it’s wonderful to see all of you engaging in this dialogue — it shows the passion you have for what you do and it makes me feel better about not always knowing myself what to call you!
My comment is this: whatever title you choose or accept for any kind of employment, make sure online, in your portfolios, resumes and linkedin profiles, that you use all of the above. In ’specialties’ or ’summary’ sections, use all of these buzzwords/titles to describe what you do. This way you come up in more searches and we’ll be more likely to find you.