HYPERCATALECTA

“A hypothetical cocktail party conversation about labeling people when doing great work is all you’re really after.

Setting: Every conference cocktail party this year… nerds everywhere, afraid of advertisers.

Awesome Person willing to talk to Advertiser #1: Abby, I understand this whole User Experience thing you have going on at Draftfcb & the whole future of Advertising thing — but your twitter handle is Abby the IA which stands for Information Architecture, so what’s the deal? Which are you?

Abby preferably after first drink consumed:
Great observation! You are not the first person to bring this up — in fact people have joked that since taking the job at Draftfcb I should become Abby_the_UX.

So to your point, what is the difference between UX and IA? I must be honest; it feels like this industry’s favorite thing to argue about these days. But here is my take:”

read on…

I don’t think in terms of wireframes… I don’t think in terms of Information Architecture, I think in terms of understanding.  I’m interested in understanding things that interest me and I am interested in the systemic rigger of being able to explain.  I’m interested in communicating with another human being …and I am doing it with rigor and responsibility, and that is what information architecture is.  It’s not the modality, not the particular technology… it’s just making yourself understandable.

— Richard Saul Wurman, IA Summit 2010

I’ve never been able to phrase it as well as Richard Saul Wurman, but it is exactly what I feel being an IA (or UX, if you want) is about. And it’s also exactly why I like working in this field.

Just one thing: can someone please wave a magic wand over mixxt and make the website usable? Big sigh…