Where did the IA go

Keynote presentation for the Italian IA Summit, December 2020: https://architecta.it/summit/

1. Where did the IA go? Donna Spencer, Maadmob @maadonna
2. My IA journey
3. My IA journey • Started in 1999 • Involved with IA Summit/Conference 2004-2020 • Freelance/consultant with IA focus since 2002 • Government, higher education, e-commerce work • 2 books • Card sorting: Designing usable categories • A practical guide to information architecture • I’m still doing IA work!
4. I’ve watched IA change over 20 years
5. IA was •Structure for content •Categorisation •Navigation •Flow/paths •Language and labelling
6. Roles have changed Usability Information architect User experience designer Service designer, product designer Content strategist, content designer
7. Work structure has changed Independent / agencies In house
8. More role specialisation Generalists Specialists
9. Learning changed Self-taught, conferences Bootcamps
10. Agile arrived Variety of project structures Agile
11. Projects changed Content heavy websites, intranets Apps
12. Resources changed Start from scratch Design and pattern libraries
13. AI and machine learning arrived Manually-created categories Algorithms and big data
14. Do we still need IA?
15. IA now •Structure for content •Categorisation •Navigation •Flow/paths •Language and labelling •IA in pattern libraries •Modelling •Project data strategy •Data science
16. IA in pattern libraries Make sure your pattern library has IA guidelines Add meaning to pattern libraries
17. Modelling Making sense of complexity Describing complex content or contexts Communicating it
18. Project data strategy Content acquisition Content structure Content relationships - Particularly for Agile projects
19. Data science Enhance algorithms with categorisation Transparency for personalisation and recommendations Locate bias in algorithms, and reduce it
20. Yes we still need IA It just looks different now But it’s much more interesting!
21. Thank you! •You can find me: • @maadonna • maadmob.com.au • linkedin.com/in/donna-spencer/ •I still do IA consulting, especially with data science teams •I can work remotely 