Information Architecture
Information architecture (IA) is a relatively new field that is absolutely critical for building effective information systems. The best definition I can find for IA is from www.interaction-design.org . The goal of Information Architecture is to improve information access, relevancy, and usefulness to a given audience, as well as improve the publishing entity's ability to maintain and develop the information over time This definition is OK, but it seems to be heavily biased toward software user interfaces and web design. Most folks, if they think of IA, want to know which button should go here and which field should be next to which other field. While this is an obvious and important application of IA, it is the equivalent of worrying about the order of the words in the title of a book, but ignoring the other 200,000 words INSIDE the book. As a person who working on projects that exist almost exclusively in the mind, a large part of my time is spent trying to get people to wor...