twining's IA assignments

SJSU SLIS LIBR287 Updated 01/23/2005

IA Information Architecture
Syllabus / Schedule / _{1st
assignment} / Study Modules / Projects / Blackboard

After you have reviewed the syllabus, the schedule, and this 1st Assignment thoroughly, we are free to ask and answer questions and begin interacting using our course blackboard

Do not rush to complete this assignment and do not attempt to do it in one sitting. Its purpose is not to be OVER and finished, so you can move on to the next task, but to continue our slow journey. Our time allotted for this 1st Assignment is the first two weeks of class, so relax and enjoy the process... see you in the blackboard!

The purpose of this 1st Assignment is to begin our orientation to the wild- and constantly changing world of Information Architecture, the practice and the profession. Please do not yet be concerned about the procedural aspects of IA work, and what you are going to "do" during our study together. It might help if you remember to take off your "student" hat and put on your "practicing professional" hat...and think of yourself, not as having to jump through hoops for approval, or in exchange for a grade, but of joining a community of equals, with the opportunity to contribute something original.

This assignment will take you two full weeks to complete...so get started, but don't rush...give yourself plenty of time to think and synthesize....and don't...I repeat DON'T try to do it at the last minute!

Our first task in exercising our IA professional personae is to begin to find, cultivate, and sustain our IA "voice."

We will do this by orienting ourselves to our shared platform AND the larger environment of IA.   Don't rush.   This will take several weeks of consistent, thoughtful exposure. You are not expected to already know what your IA voice sounds like, or what it has to say. For now, just start listening for it...and while you're at it, let's see how well you listen to what you read:

Relax. Delve deeply, click freely, think critically: seek insights, trends, personalities, and other environmental clues about the emerging profession. READ READ READ the required readings while you are doing this 1st Assignment.  Click through the syllabus another time or two. Trust your intuition, "listen" to what your mind is saying....and you will soon find your "fit." Remember, we are on a journey, not pressed or rushed....and there is no ONE "right" answer.

It is assumed you've read and reread the syllabus, including the / class logistics, the / texts and readings links, and that you're eyebrow deep in the readings. You've browsed the / schedule and have an idea of what's ahead, you've seen the / sitemap, and perhaps you've at least taken a cursory look at the / projects and the / study modules. You understand that you will find a quick link to all these course components at the top and bottom of each page on this web, and you are comfortable navigating your way around.

You now understand that we are free to ask and answer each other's questions, as colleagues, and that, as colleagues, we respect each other's time and would never violate Ranganathan's fourth law....

...perhaps your mind is swimming?...this is good....experience it.

are you feeling stress, confusion, anxiety ...no worries!

....RELAX...feel it...experience it...you might be feeling "... information anxiety ..."
or perhaps Information Anxiety 2:-)

...or maybe you have performance anxiety?? (get over it!)

Information Anxiety is a BIG part of what IA work intends to mediate,

and understanding Information anxiety is a large part of what we are here to learn...

We learned a little about the "father" of Information Anxiety in the personalities section
of the / texts and readings page (...did you do it?)

In addition to this 1st assignment, there are other assignments embedded along our way, included with each of the six online study modules. We will "do" these assignments individually and post our results in the Study Modules forum in the blackboard. Several of the study module assignments serve a dual purpose, and are part of the process of creating "work product" for our projects. So, don't worry about the study modules right now....we'll get to them...stay focused and present....none of these assignments are "graded" any more than real life "work product" is graded, but are meant to facilitate and support our learning, and provide opportunity to practice, and demonstrate progress. Their purpose will become clear as we proceed, and you will discover they are fun learning aids, and appear at just at the right time, meant to make our journey easier, not more difficult or stressful. They also facilitate our online discussions.

Information Architects must learn to do more than survive in an information-anxious world....we must transcend it, understand it, mediate it.

We must flourish in environments with sudden, unexpected, and often-times critical tasks that demand our attention when we least expect them.

We must understand what it "feels" like to be bombarded with choices and options, and we must understand that limiting choices for one person's ease may impede another person's journey. We are mediators, mapmakers, guides, surrogates, intermediaries, sensitives...and we function on behalf of others.

Learning to function in this capacity is a big part of cultivating the "IA professional" personae, and that is a primary objective of this class.

Ok...let's roll up our sleeves:

Our largest focus is the process of IA: its components and how they fit together and harmonize.
Along the way we'll play with some of the products of IA.
But first, let's jump in and see what IA is about

IA's must take time to cultivate understanding,
and the ability to facilitate understanding, as intermediaries,
from the multiple simultaneous perspectives of a constantly changing user base,
and translate that understanding into fluid but stable underlying structures
that facilitate understanding.

Lets say that again...

In other words, the way YOU, the IA, thinks, navigates, learns, needs, organizes, and experiences
must become largely transparent.

YOU must be able to suspend your disbelief.
YOU must be able to transcend your assumptions.
YOU must be able to see and represent the world from multiple, simultaneous perspectives.
YOU must be able to accommodate natural difference and not force compliance.

What's important is the way and why the users of the information s/places that you are architecting, think, react, experience, and navigate.

You must become intimate with your users: their needs, expectations, and behaviors
You must simultaneously become intimate with the medium
and with the message, or the meaning of the information being architected.

You must not consider the user, the medium, and the message in isolation from one other.
You must see them intertwined, and begin to see the relationships among user-medium-message

Yess, indeed, the medium is the message (McLuhan), but for IA, the medium is the user

IT WORKS SORTA LIKE THIS: http://www.gci.org.uk/images/trefoil.swf
but that's still just a 2-dimensional representation of a 3-dimensional model...

So, you will be working with a moving target: your users, who will change, as will their needs, assumptions, expectations.

In truth, YOU (and the work you do), will also change your users
(quantum observer affect) so, you must be prepared to work on a never-ending journey, chasing an always-moving target!

If IA is nothing else, it is "never done...never finished...never over...."

IA is about process
the architect's process intertwines
relationships among user, medium, and message,
which are equal in terms of the principles that define these relative to
the data-information-knowledge transfer process
when considered at the procedural, contextual, conceptual levels

...in other words, the IA conceives environments (information s/places) in which the user, the medium, and the message are, in principle, equal
relative to the data-information-knowledge transfer process (which you've presumably already mastered in your other classes, but which we can discuss if needed)

and, considers them simultaneously at three levels:
the procedural, or HOW to architect,
the contextual, or WHAT (when, where) to architect,
and the conceptual, or WHY to architect.

that's a pretty daunting task!
Your first inclination might be to jump to the procedural, and start "doing" IA,
but we're not going to...that would be like putting a scalpel into the hands of a 1st year med student ;-)
We're going to start slowly, with the conceptual....

So, our first lesson is to learn something about the
Environment of Information Architecture

Ready????

With your user, the medium, and the message in mind, start thinking about your project. I know you might not know enough to get started yet, but think project anyway. Soon enough we will begin the process of proposing, and negotiating your project, but for now, let your imagination soar. no limitations, and keep it simmering on the back burner while you are doing these:

Obtain the text and reading materials and begin reading/rereading.
Library database passwords are posted in the blackboard.

Download and configure the Mozilla Firefox 1.0 browser.
Use this browsers (along with IE, if you must) for this class.

Browse this course website thoroughly, and several times. http://intertwining.org/sjsu/IA
click every link and get a sense of the s/place. Reserve judgment, and resist the rush to finish.   Get to know the "existing system" intimately. Who are the players in the profession? How long have they been around? What have they put into place for us? Where are the "gold mines" of information about IA? How does that magical mobius strip work anyway?


Enroll in Class Blackboard: http://tigris.sjsu.edu/?bbatt=Y?bbatt=Y introduce yourself and make friends. Learn to navigate the interface and use all the functions.

View the Understanding Collaboration slideshow and 3C's comparison chart for some background about how this class should "feel" once we get into the flow of it.

Subscribe (free) to SIGIA-L ((that's said si- i-a, sig stands for special interest group) distributed email list (this list can have heavy traffic, so as a timesaver you might want to program your email software to thread messages and route to a separate email folder for browsing, or subscribe in digest mode to get one message a day): http://www.asis.org/Conferences/Summit2000/Information_Architecture/listserv.htm
Browse their archives and get a general feel for search capabilities, tone of messages, scope of content, ease of interface, resources available, key players, etc. The archives are an important resource. Understand the scope of the list and its archives

Browse the Boxes and Arrows website; subscribe to their email list.

Browse the (now defunct) Argus Center for Information Architecture http://argus-acia.com
What happened to these people?

Browse the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture web and subscribe to the AIfIA list:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/aifia-announce

Click through new.architect http://www.newarchitect.com and browse the archives...how many times has this e-zine changed, morphed, gone out of business...where have the people gone? hmmm....getting a sense of the morphing of the profession and that nothing is set in stone?

Browse the Usability and IA site http://www.websitetips.com/design/usability.shtml
we will return to usability later in the semester....

then, return to the schedule for additional instructions...

"see" you in the blackboard....!

IA Information Architecture
Syllabus / Schedule / _{1st assignment}/ Study Modules / Projects / Blackboard