IA Areas of Practice

July 26, 2001 at 9 am · Filed under Design

From Christina
Venn Diagram from Louis Rosenfeld and Jess McMullin illustrating what they feel to be the main components of Information Architecture: Users, Content, and Context. This is what I love about IA - they’re not afraid to focus on content, writing, words, arrangements, patterns, structures. Content, content, content, say it three times. So often I feel that usability totally misses the boat on this.

Lou’s take on the diagram is also worth a read, as he and Jess detailed out the diagram in slightly different ways.

Also worth checking out is the Veen diagram.

WebWord Interview with Jared Spool
Spool rehashes UIE’s recent research and comments on the usability profession. He makes the great point that the companies that are doing the best with usability don’t seem to have strong usability communities, but instead have strong usability cultures. A quote he cites: “Good Judgment comes from Experience. Experience comes from Bad Judgment.”

Web Design Patterns
Also from Christina
Well, it looks like someone finally got together a useful, nicely presented collection of web design patterns. Hopefully this will start provoking some good contributions, start growing the collection.

For more on design patterns, check out Thomas Erickson’s Interaction Design Patterns page, which links to the also excellent Amsterdamn Collection of Patterns in User Interface Design, which isn’t web-specific and nicely complements the web design collection.

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