Hmmm … My Information Architect Ex-Boyfriend in 1997 Was Actually Cool?? (Session 10)

Information architecture and information technology: architecture and construction. Each relies on the other – it is a symbiotic relationship and will always impact my work as an information manager. A website is like a building, or like a grocery store for example like in lecture today - quite ‘Godard-esque’ as many people actually grocery shop online.

To identify the mystery vegetable I first entered my own descriptors ('vegetable, large white bulb, multiple green stems') which returned pictures of spring onions. I then searched for ‘vegetable pictures’ which returned veggie cornucopia pictures. Then I searched 'vegetable descriptions' which returned sites that were child-oriented. Then 'guide to vegetables' or 'vegetable guide' yielded a site that listed vegetables which required me to click on the vegetable names to access pictures and descriptions. I chose vegetable names that I couldn't identify until I found a picture that vaguely looked like the mystery vegetable. I entered the name of the pictured vegetable into Google Image search and the mystery picture came up number 3: a kohlrabi. This took over 5 minutes, but it would have taken me over 1 hour at the library.

The Tesco site was built with excellent architecture. The user has fantastic control with the 'shopping list feature'. The lack of graphics and more copy heavy product description works well. It is a practical choice of architecture favoring speed over prettiness, but the user can choose to see images. Amazon is busy and annoying with too many choices, but I can create a wish list (a desired library).

Information architecture has a wide reaching impact. Datacenters will proliferate as e-books become de rigueur and client-server applications based in JavaScript move from our desktops into the Cloud. This information tidal wave must be managed by information architects on the WWW, and our world will look very different. The learning materials and tools in this program are just one example. We are entirely digital and a significant amount of information architecture was required to put our learning experience together comprehensively.