A Brief History and Origin of Information Architecture (IA)
In today’s society, we human beings absorb tons and tons of information everyday through our ever day's life. With all the information we received in our brain, everybody has their way to filter out what’s more important and what’s less important to them. The process of what I’ve just described, it’s call information architecture. It’s a system that helps an individual to organized, access, and using information.
History of Information Architecture
Humans have been creating and using systems to organize information for decades, long before computers and the internet were introduced to us. With the help of the world wide web, we get to access any information as easy as clicking on a link. But how do all these computer data that is on the world wide web sorted and organized for us, users to access them? Richard Saul Wurman, best known today for being one of the creators of the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conferences, coined the term “information architecture” at an American Institute of Architects conference in 1976.
Richard was trained as an architect but who has become also a skilled graphic designer and the author, editor, and/or publisher of numerous books includes “Information Architect” (1997). In it, he described what’s an information architect as:
- organize patterns inherent in data
- make the complex clear,
- create structure or map,
- address needs of clarity, human understanding.
A year later, two librarians Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld have further developed on Richard’s idea of information architects with their book, “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web” (1998). The book has become instant best seller back then at a little known website called Amazon. Peter and Louis were in a business that specialize in design of websites. They have used their knowledge of library science, which is the of how to categorize, catalog, and locate resources, to apply on creating and organizing websites.
In the 2002 edition, the authors added that information architecture consists of three conceptual circles: 1)content, 2) users and 3)context. Content may include text, numerical data, images and videos. Users are the target audience for the information, with IA including the audience’s experience and how audience members look for information (information-seeking behavior).
Resources:
Information Architects by Richard Saul Wurman
Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond 4th Edition by Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld
A Brief History of Information Architecture, Journal of Information Architecture
Information Architecture, Graduate School of Library & Information Science