Jon Husband has written another great post on supporting the modern knowledge worker. Dave Snowden has also, on a number of occasions, waved the flag in support of a more human approach to processes and systems.
“…systems based on pre-given hierarchical taxonomies constrain the way we see the world, they prevent serendipity…”
With a background in psych, I’ve always felt it important to ensure that an understanding of human cognition, behaviour and motivation is vital to systems design — I think it’s why I love the discipline of Information Architecture so much, and probably why people like Brad Hinton find it so fascinating.
While some call for the death sentence to the ever-changing face of information architecture, it has great potential in its ability to cross-over into and assist many other disciplines, in particular, knowledge management. This is because, rather than concentrating on how to build management structures to support knowledge work (IMHO the mistake of KM-past), information architecture looks at the sorts of information structures that can be created to support knowledge work by drawing on its multidisciplinary heritage — cognitive psychology, library science, and more recently (in the case of social computing), social psychology and human-interaction dynamics.
“Intuitive navigation doesn’t happen by chance” - Steptwo
Because “you can’t scan all the available information”, as Dave Snowden says, “its critical to know where to look, and how to pay attention”. Good information architecture can help by designing systems and processes whose interaction models, methods of classifying (grouping, chunking, etc) information — whether taxonomic and/or folksonomic — and visualisation of these elements that match the way people think about their work, the way they want to work, and the way they need to work.
Whether its suggesting information needs to be chunked, visualised, classified or reduced to small pieces, an information architect’s job is to analyse the human needs and turn it into a solution that works for people, not ‘at’ them.
… why else do you think web 2.0 tools are as effective as they are?
M
