Please, tell us a bit about yourself. What is your education, background, and training?

I studied in video and film production and received certifications in both, no formal degree or anything. As for my experience in web design and development, information architecture, usability and overall user experience it is all self-taught with some help from some very good mentors:

Molly Holzschlag enabled me to break into the industry while she was at CMP by opening many doors for me including getting me speaking gigs, judge seats at web award shows, plus also providing invaluable insight into how both the web industry and the publishing industry work which I used to define what was to become Digital Web Magazine. In addition she was also the one who exposed me to web standards and got me to adopt it as what I just do as a web professional.

Jeffrey Zeldman was a mentor to me during my brief stint at A List Apart assisting with web design and development of each new issue. This was an invaluable learning experience. He was always there to answer my questions and teaching me a few new tricks every now an then, but most of all, he was there when I needed morale support during the hard times.

Christina Wodtke was the one who helped me define what it was I did at work all day, before that Information Architecture was always something that other people did.. the reality was IA is what I was doing all along. She always seemed like a sister to me and eventually Digital Web Magazine and Boxes and Arrows became sister sites.

Lou Rosenfeld was a mentor to me being someone who was more than happy to answer questions I had about the IA field as I got more and more involved in it. He was the one who convinced me to get involved with both IAI and UXnet. He was even able to get me to step up an lead the Local Ambassador initiative at UXnet which was a great learning experience.

How did get interested in information architecture?

The way information Architecture came to me was more out of chance than anything else. Back in the early days of the web we didn't really have Information Architects. At the most Project Managers would create sitemaps that designers would design templates for and developers would build out a series of static pages from. I started getting into site planning and structure and this led me to doing what I would today describe as web site storyboards more than anything else.

One day I was having a conversation with Christina Wodtke about what it was I did at work and she told me it was Information Architecture. Next thing you know, I am speaking at the IA Summit and so forth.

Still to this day I don't really call myself just an Information Architect. I tend to use the term 'Web Craftsman' as my skills tend to transverse several roles including IA, usability, user experience, web development, web design and even strategy and marketing.

What is your definition of IA? Why is it important?

To me, an IA is the person who takes the goals and needs of the client, the user, and the technology and pares them down to a series of instructions that can be communicated to those who will be designing the pages on a visual level, those who will be building the pages on a functional level, and those who will be coding the page interactions on a functional level.

Information Architecture is very important because there is a failure to communicate this information to the rest of the team in the early conceptual stages of the project. That could result in an outcome that is catastrophic to the success of the project. And by catastrophic I mean total failure to deliver any measurable improvement to the business, user, or technical goals of the project.

How similar is IA to traditional architecture?

Well, it is actually pretty similar on a lot of levels but also very different when it comes down to nuts and bolts? no pun intended.

Architecture is the process in which a set of rules and guidelines are defined to map out how a structure or item is to be built. This is often in the form of a blueprint.

Information Architecture is the process in which a set of rules and guidelines are defined to map out how a web site or web application is created. This is often in the form of a wireframe, story board, or process flow.

So in a lot of ways they are similar, yet on a level of technology they are dramatically different as I don't think an Information Architect would ever try to blueprint an electrical system for a house, nor would I imagine an Architect would try to wireframe an e-commerce system.

How do information architects fit into a Web design team? In case there's no information architect on a team, what should web designers know about IA in order to build the website properly?

I used to think that the IA only played a role in the beginning of a project helping define things and then just hand stuff off to design and development. However today I firmly believe the role of the IA is something that should touch on every phase of a project from the beginning conceptual phase to the final launch phase.

Unfortunately, not having an IA on the team is not that uncommon. A lot of smaller businesses (like four-person shops) typically can't afford to have an IA. In these cases cross-discipline skills are critical. For example, a designer should understand enough about how the CMS will work in the final product as they understand about how CSS and XHTML will be used to take their designs and layout the page.

Simple understanding of basic IA concepts are a must. For example, when laying out a navigational system such as a navigation bar for a web site, the items in the navigation should be grouped in some form of logical order. To know if this being done take the items in the nav bar and ask yourself, are all of these things alike? Do they make sense for how a user would want to see the information on this site organized, etc.

Ultimately and at the bare minimum pick up a copy of the Polar Bear Book entitled 'Information Architecture for the World Wide Web' by Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville (O'Reilly) and read it cover to cover and refer to it often.

What are the basic skills one needs in order to be an information architect? Hmm, good question. I think a basic understanding of organizational structures and logical flow are the core requirements here. This is why you often see a lot of individuals with LIS degrees moving into the role of Information Architecture and why IA programs at universities are more commonly grouped with LIS programs than CompSci programs.

Another core requirement would be clear and concise communication. You need to be able to communicate lots of complex information in the most simplistic form possible. You also need to be able to communicate this to creative types like web designers and creative directors, technical people like developers and programmers, and business people like CEOs, CIOs, directors of marketing, and so forth.

What are the information architect's responsibilities? Do you have a check-list to go through after the website is finished in order to make sure everything works and matches right?

There is no golden check-list like you described. Each web site, web application, and mobile site have different and unique needs, and if a check-list were to be created it would be different every time. Overall, when a project is done the original user, business, and technical needs and goals should be met.You can validate that the goals were met by reviewing the IA wireframes and other artifacts created during the IA process and comparing them to the final outcome; the fully functional web site. Often times you will find elements that have been altered in other phases of the project that should be re-adjusted based on those changes.

This mostly happens during the design phase where visual changes impact IA structure requirements or in the development phase where technology sometimes influences interactions and functional elements on he page.

What was the first website you built information architecture for?

Well, I don't know if I would say I built IA, as IA is not just creating documents, it a process? but that aside, the first site I did IA for was back in 1995 while doing contracting work for Microsoft DTS. I created an online tool using Active Channels for managing and accessing knowledge base documents needed for technical support reps.

It was not a glamorous project at all, but the net result was a dramatic increase in efficiency and productivity regarding support call times from problem to solution.

Describe how your work process usually flows: what do you start with, what are the key points to consider, etc.?

It all depends on the scale of the project. Typically I like to start with an initial discovery meeting with the client to understand their business goals. Sometimes this meeting is coupled with a technical meeting to understand the systems currently in place and how this project will work within those systems or interface with them.

From there, I start doing research by exploring what information they have to date including marketing information about their target audience and such. Once I understand the business, technical and user goals I move into the development of an initial sitemap if it's just a web site or process flow if it's a web application.

After that, it's a matter of how technical the client is: I may just turn around a series of low fidelity wireframes that I call zone diagrams, or if they are really technical savvy I will produce an initial set of detailed wireframes.

If the client is more forward thinking but on a tight deadline, I may produce my wireframes in XHTML/CSS and then move directly into rapid prototyping and testing.

After that I typically do a handoff meeting with the designer and/or developer to make sure they understand what the client has agreed to and how it should be created. This is the point at which I step back from the project a little and instead of being hands-on I move into more of a review and advisory role. This role continues until the end of the project.

What is the relationship between information architecture and usability?

It's a love/hate thing. Ok, all kidding aside there is a very interesting overlap between the two in some areas. While the IA's primary role is to communicate information based on business, technical, and user goals and needs, the usability professional's role is to represent the user and their needs. The usability professional's perspective often focuses around the ease of use and actual execution of functions or features within a web site or web application. Oftentimes at companies you may see the IA and the Usability Professional as one role, typically described as a User Experience Specialist or something along those lines.

In other cases these may be two separate roles filled by two different individuals in possibly two different departments. A lot depends on the size of the company and the number of clients, etc. Unfortunately, most of what I am seeing today is a lot of businesses that tend to hire one individual for both roles and often at an underpaid rate for what the job really requires.

Are there evolving standards for IA?

I am not so sure there really are standards for IA. I think there are a lot of commonalities out there that could be interpreted as IA standards but I see those being broken, changed and re-adopted every day. There are always new technologies being introduced and new ways of designing or creating something, and because of this I think the way the IAs work is constantly changing.

What are the typical IA problems?

I would say the most common cross-project problem I see is 'how do I organize my web site more effectively?' Which I feel is a remnant of the days when we were just building site after site and page after page to just get the information out there. Today, now that the information is out there, we are re-thinking how to best represent it and make it easy to access, find, and most importantly, understand.

Every business has its traits and requirements. Do information architects have a specialization, or work with all types of businesses?

Well, I think if you can find an IA who does IA specifically for your industry, you sure as hell better pay them well because that is not a common thing to come across. Most IAs are versed in IA in a general sense and may not have knowledge of a specific industry or line of business. This, however, is something that can be learned on the job and most IAs I know thrive on research and learning.

What are the typical myths about information architecture you've heard?

Well, for starters not everyone can or should do IA. Do not give this task to your director of marketing or your project managers. That's what we did in the 1990s and we learned the painful ramifications of doing that.

The only person doing IA should be someone who is skilled in doing IA. This would be an individual who is well versed in not only organizing and communicating information on both a technical and creative level, but also understands how websites and web applications should function and be designed, etc. Anything short of that is simply going to cause the user lots of headaches and lead to a failed project.

I am sure there are many other myths and such out there about IA but this is the one that has been on my mind lately and can lead to one of the most critical mistakes in a web project.

Other myths have been identified in articles like Jeff Lash's article The myth of User-Centered Information Architecture or via the survey on IA Myths that the IA Institute conducted.

What software do information architects use and need?

Well technically speaking all you need is a whiteboard and a marker, maybe a pen and paper. However, to ease things along IAs have been known to use a series of software tools. At the core, a good diagramming tool is a must. On Windows this would most likely be Visio (with a good IA stencil). On the Mac it is clearly OmniGraffle (with a good IA shapes palette). However, some IAs use tools ranging from Adobe Illustrator or InDesign to do their diagrams.

Outside of this core diagramming tools are other tools to help assist in the process of information architecture such as a good card sorting tool or a good prototyping tool and sometimes simply brainstorming tools (often referred to as mind mapping tools). It also doesn't hurt to have a tool that can pull in the entire organizational structure of an existing web site and output the information in outline or sitemap format. Such tools are referred to as site mapping tools.

There are probably many other tools out there that IAs use on a dayto- day basis but those are the ones that come to mind at this moment.

How many IA models are there? Which one is most widely used while designing personal, news and e-commerce websites? If Design Interviews was to become a journal, what IA model would you suggest to use?

I am not sure what you mean by IA models. If you mean, what models are out there for organizing information, well I would have to say that there are an infinite number of them and it would be nearly impossible for me to describe or even list each one here.If Design Interviews was to become a journal, what information organizational model would I suggest? I would have to say a combination of topical, chronological and alphabetical models. I suggest this because you have to look at the user and ask how they might want to try to find the information on your site, and in this case it would be by topic, date, author's name, and perhaps article title. You can see a good example of this sort of organizational structure in the information architecture of the left navigation at Digital Web Magazine which was originally architected by Christina Wodtke.

What do you think of information architect's evolving responsibilities with regard to such emerging challenges as individual publishing and information space with no structure?

I don't think you can have information without structure. All information has structure of some sort, if it didn't it would be less than even data, it would be simply words and numbers. That said, in today's world where anyone can publish a blog, and everyone can tag a photo with whatever tag they want, I feel that leads to needing a new perspective on what IA actually is.

For a long time IAs used to have the comfort of the site's hierarchy but with things like folksonomies and such that has changed and IAs needed to adapt. Right now one of the biggest evolutions is moving beyond the single static page wireframe and into something more dynamic. Those story-boarding skills may come in handy after all.

Another evolution is the thought of doing wireframes in the native environment, such as recyclable information architecture where the IA is created in XHTML and CSS for prototyping, and used in development later on in the project.

Mostly though, I don't see a lot of dramatic changes from these things in terms of web design or IA. I see more change occurring in marketing, advertising, and simply refindability (if that is even a word yet) than anything else due to all of these things. I say this because its not so much 'can you do it' or 'how do you do it' but its more of an issue of 'how to be noticed' and 'how to be remembered' that are the key issues now.

Things are still evolving in this regard so it's hard to say where it will all land and how it will all be done but one thing is for certain, there is a lot of opportunity for innovation now.

What blogs/magazines/articles would you suggest reading in order to broaden one's knowledge on IA?

I would start with reading the Polar Bear book. I would also check out Christina's book IA Blueprints for the Web. Digital Web Magazine also had a column by Jeff Lash that is called IAnything Goes which covers a lot of the basics. Plus there are other IA related articles on Digital Web that go deeper into specifics.

Once that is done and you are looking to dive deeper you might want to check out Christina's Boxes and Arrows site or subscribe to the Information Architecture Institute's discussion list where you'll be able to discuss any IA topic with IAs from all around the world.

To wrap up our dialog, what advice would you give to someone who was thinking of becoming an information architect?

First, be sure your heart is in it. You should be passionate about cleaning up messes and making sense of chaotic things. This is what IAs do. IA is a lot like design in this way, if your heart isn't in it then it will show in the end result.

Second, if you are passionate about IA, then the best thing you can do is find yourself a good mentor?someone who can teach you what reading books, articles, and magazines cannot. IAI has a pretty damn good mentoring program that can assist you in finding a good mentor locally. I should know, I am helping mentor one good IA at the moment through this very program. If you still can't find a mentor or someone to help you out, contact me and I can at least point you in the right direction.

Third, be involved in the IA community by attending local IA groups as well as conferences nationally like the IA Summit. Don't just listen to and learn from the conversation, get involved in it. Establishing a reputation is a good thing but even more important is establishing a network of colleagues. Treat the IA community well and they will treat you well.

Forth, and last but not least, understand that every IA challenge is different and sometimes needs new approaches. Use what you have learned in the past to assist you in your new projects, but don't let it confine your creativity to come up with new ways of solving IA problems. So, approach each IA problem as if it has never been solved before and innovate.

Special thanks to Lana Carlene for her peer review and copy editing the initial version of this interview.