YOUR IA LIFE DIRECTED BY SERGIO LEONE
Article based on the talk of Xander Roozen at the World Information Architecture Day 2018 in Utrecht at GriDDs offices.
For the video registration of this talk see the bottom of this page.
Introduction
This talk was held by Xander Roozen, an information architect & content strategist, for large companies in several industries and a music lover. His interests and skills focus on using information to create structured systems for a better human experience. The era of the internet makes digital information immediately available to users at the touch of a button. Xander is interested in the design challenges that come from linking things that couldn’t be linked before the Internet; helping to create content that makes sense out of digital raw material.
Xander was quite pleased with this year’s theme of the World IA Day which was IA for Good. During his lecture, he shows us the importance of having the right kind of attitude when approaching the design and use of IA. It is quite important for designers to have a positive problem-solving attitude irrespective of the field they find themselves. He sees the theme (IA for Good) as a call for the right attitude and the contribution of our skills and knowledge as designers to creating a better world.
Practicing Information Architecture.
Information Architecture (IA) is an emerging community of practice that focuses on bringing the principles of architecture and design to the digital landscape. It is commonly used as an adaptive language of critique used to judge the quality of design and is regarded as the structural design of shared information environments. This includes the science and art of organizing and labeling online communities, websites, software, and intranets to support their usability and findability.
How Information Architecture is used to Improve Design.
With digital products becoming more complex and specialized, Information Architecture remains as essential as ever. A few years ago Information Architects like Jesse James Garrett and Andrea Resmini challenged the IA community, asking to come up with this language of critique in order to improve the internal quality of design. The resulting Meta-Modeling Methodology was formulated to look at design on three levels. The first level looks at the problem the designer is trying to solve. The second level consists of the theories or models that are used to solve that problem. The third level is the entirety of paradigms and language being used when solving the problem.
Xander explains that since language plays an important role in IA it is pertinent that Information Architects adopt a language that can be understood by their intended audience. He also emphasized the importance of transparency, consumers should be made aware of what is going on behind it and they should be able to agree or disagree. This bolsters brand loyalty and increases its awareness.
The Concept of Information Architecture in practice.
While living in Lisbon in the early 2000’s, Xander identified, although being from Western Europe too, it was still a completely different culture in subtle ways.
One of the things he stumbled upon was the direction of the title on the spine of books on library shelves. The title on the spine of these books in the United States, UK, and Holland are usually written from bottom to top. Convenient when standing in front of a bookshelf because you can read from left to right. In a library, this makes it easy to read off the titles while walking along the aisle. In Portugal and most other European countries however, book titles are written from bottom to top. This also makes perfect sense because when books are stacked in a vertical order the titles are still easily scanable from top to bottom.
However, when you have a library filled with Portuguese, Dutch, English, and German books you suddenly have a problem. In theory, both design principles are sound and barely discernable unless you have a design mindset or see yourself in a foreign country. This problem is even compounded when it comes to organizing and labeling websites, software, and digital products. Thus, Information Architects are tasked with bringing the principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
Let’s have a look at how IA can contribute to a better world: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Xander uses an analogy of the 1966 film by Ennio Morricone The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly to judge real-life examples of design solutions with a focus on their transparency: the audience had to vote weather the example was good, bad or ugly in terms of transparency.
Virgin Megastore
His first example was of a Virgin Megastore outlet that opened in Portugal in 2000. While describing themselves as balancing international trends while catering to local cultures, they disregarded an important national practice of organising stuff in stores: it ordened by first name, not by last name.
So you’ll find Lenny Kravitz filed under the L and not the K. When you can’t find things, you also can’t by things and Xander believes this was one of the reasons the Virgin Megastore closed only a few months after the opening. The audience agreed.
Nutricia Chocomel
His next example was Chocomel, a chocolate milk drink for kids with a twist. As part of a smart marketing campaign, the company prints each of their packages with a single letter of the alphabet. This might seem like an ordinary design tactic but it proved to be successful at creating a witty playfulness among kids and youngsters. Not only by choosing the package with a certain letter, also by re-ordering the packages on the shelves, creating funny words (not always safe for work). Based on a clear and straight forward ia principle, this transparency of purpose and targeted at their customer base serves to boost the company’s publicity while solidifying brand loyalty.
Spotify
Two and a half years after Dan Brown released a poster at the IA Summit in 2005, comparing information architectures for different network audio players, Spotify began operations.
Today’s brand of choice for most of us when it comes to music streaming, despite widespread complaints about unfair artist payouts. Not surprisingly when taking their mission statement in mind: to replace your personal music collection.
To achieve this they keep releasing cool features based on listening patterns of their users. Consumers are increasingly aware about the excessive amount of information companies. Spotify is using deep learning — a technique for recognizing patterns in enormous amounts of data, with powerful computers that are trained by humans.
One of those magic features is the Time Capsule, creating playlists based on the music you listened to in your 20s. Based the idea that this will be the music you keep getting back to for the rest of your life. But sometimes it’s not that magical after all: when you sign up you have to supply your birthday. Combine that with your favorite genres and you’re done. Nice, but no cigar. Plus, it’s incomplete: you’ll don’t get music that was released outside your formative listening years.
Transparency: The key design principle for IA for good
To further illustrate the importance of transparency in design, Xander uses an example of a blog by Chris Boland who writes about disconnecting. Chris argues that if you want to be productive in whatever you do, you have to disconnect: shut down email, Slack, phone, etc. Really disconnect and focus. So, in order to read his blog, you will encounter a case of practice what you preach as you can only access his page when you switch off your internet connection and Wi-Fi. The moment you switch off your internet connection, the page reloads and you can read the article. This is transparent design in full effect. Transparency shows how close your overall design is to its intended, purpose and audience.
In conclusion, Xander calls for increased transparency in design. In his words: “the skills we have, and it doesn’t really matter if you’re information architect, a UX designer, a visual designer, or copywriter, you have to simplify the complexity around you. There’s a lot going on behind the screens and you have to deal with it the way a user would. You have to make that complexity simple and be especially transparent in whatever you do.”
Video registration of the talk of Xander at the WIAD 2018 event in Utrecht
