Role of Information Architect !

Information Architect is a person who creates the structure or map of information which allows other to find their personal paths to knowledge.

Need of Information Architect

Each building serves its purpose uniquely. Architecture and design of a building depends upon the purpose, location, users, finance etc. if we start constructing a building without deciding its design and architecture the constructors will have problems in constructing it, users will have problems in using it and the purpose for which the building was constructed will never be achieved. Similarly websites are resource of information. Each website serves its purpose uniquely. If website is developed without any planning about design and architecture then developer may have problems in organizing the information and maintaining it, users may have problems in using the website in searching and accessing the information. These problems may be like time consuming search, time wastage in loading of web page due to improper formats used and difficulty in browsing due to the use of improper keywords.

So information architecture is necessary:

1).For producer so that any updation in the information can be done efficiently within time.
2).For any website to be commercially successful because if user are facing difficulty in searching and navigating the information then they will not use the website again.
3).Because unorganized information can’t be converted into knowledge.

Main Job of information Architect

The main jobs if the information architects are given below. An information architect

1).Clarifies the mission and vision for the site, balancing the needs of its sponsoring organization & the needs of its audiences.
2).Determines what content and functionality the site will contain.
3).Specifies how users will find information in the site by defining its organization, navigation labeling and searching systems.
4).Maps out how the site will find accommodate change and growth over time.

The Consumer's perspective

Users want to find information quickly and easily. Poor Information Architecture makes busy users confused, frustrated and angry. Because different users have varying needs it is important to support multiple modes of finding information. From the consumer’s perspective there can be two modes of finding information.

Known item searching: Some users know exactly what they are looking for. They know what it is called and know it exists. This is called known item searching.

Casual Browsing: Some users don't know what they are locking for. They don’t know the right label. They casually browse or explore the site and they may learn that they have never even considered.

If you care about the consumer, make sure that your information architecture supports both modes. While attractive graphics and reliable technologies are essential to user satisfaction, they are not enough.

The producer perspective

If you are producing an external website the users can be actual or prospective customers, investors, employees, business partners, media & senior executives. If you are producing an intranet the employees of your organization are the consumers. The cost of designing and implementing the architecture is the cost of time spent:

1).In deciding categories of various users.
2).In arguing over the main areas of content and functionality that the site would include.
3).Redesigning.
4).In maintaining the information space on increase in information.

The role of information Architect is to minimize their cost. If information Architect doesn't take care of producer s perspective the burden will be on the site's user to understand how to use and find information in a confusing, poorly designed website. The site maintainers wouldn't know where to locate the new information that the site would eventually include, they had likely to quarrel over whose content was more important and deserved visibility on the main page and so on.

Who should be the information Architect?

An insider who can understand the sites sponsoring organization.

Advantages

1).Organization’s information is in safe hands.
2).No extra cost, so cost effective.
3).Insider knows the most about in organization's processes and how to get things done within that organization.

Disadvantages

1).Knowledge of an insider may be too specific.
2).Insider may lack the political base required to mobilize cooperation from others in the organization.
3).Insider gets diverted from his original duties.

Someone who can think as an outsider and be sensitive to needs of site’s users.

Advantages

1).No biased behavior is expected from an outsider.
2).We have a choice for outsider so we'll choose according to our needs so he'll act more efficiently than insider because he'll be the specialist of his field.

Disadvantages

1).Extra cost.
2).Outsider doesn't have minute details of 'organization so he needs information.
3).Passing secret information of the organization to an outsider can be dangerous.

Outsider can be from a variety of fields like:

Journalism: Journalists are good at editing and organizing information. They have rich knowledge base.

Graphic Design: Graphic Design is much more than creating pretty pictures. It is geared more towards creating relationship between visual elements and determining their effective integration as a whole.

Information and library science: People from this background are good to work with searching, browsing, and indexing technologies.

Marketing: Marketing specialists are expert at understanding audiences and communicating a message effectively to different audiences. They know how to highlight a positive feature and how to suppress the negative ones.

Computer science: Programmers and computer specialists bring an important skill to information architecture. Especially to architecting information from the bottom up. For example often a site requires a data base to serve the content; this minimizes maintenance and data integrity problems. Computer scientists have the best skills for modeling content for inclusion in a database.

Balance Your Perspective

Whomever you do use as an information architect remembers everyone (including us) is biased by their disciplinary perspective. If possible try to ensure that other disciplines are represented on your web site development team to guarantee a balanced architecture.

Also, no matter your perspective the information architect ideally should be solely responsible for the site's architecture and not for its other aspects. It can be distracting to be responsible for other more tangible aspects if the site, such as its graphic identity. In this case the site's architecture can easily, it unintentionally, gets relegated to secondary status because the architect is concentrating, naturally on the tangible stuff.