“A staged approach to realising a network of IAs in Europe.” (Søren Muus et al.)

“Card sorting is a useful technique for discovering user perspectives on site navigation. However, designers or user researchers who conduct card-sorting exercises should be aware of the method’s challenges and assumptions. This column has presented a number of alternative methods that can extend and complement card sorting and thus provide the most comprehensive insights for designing an effective information hierarchy.” (Michael Hawley – UXmatters)

“At the moment I’m trying to pull back and see information architecture as a new but somewhat established field. Invention used to be necessary of everyone, but now it’s only needed from a few. Compare it to another field like electrical engineering. At the beginning there was a lot invention, but now we know enough to simple do it. Today, some engineers continue to push the envelope in the design of microprocessors while others specify the wiring in the next model of speaker phone. I would expect IA to settle into the same spread.” (Victor Lombardi – Noise Between Stations)

“I’m giving a presentation on Taking Social Networks Global, at the EuroIA Summit in Amsterdam. I was working on it the past days, and I’m pretty happy with how the talk is turning out. As a preview, here are my slides (so far, they might still change slightly).” (Peter Vandijck)

“(…) my main concern is that this discussion about openness and transparency could be distracting us from the main question we need to be addressing right now: what is the IAI’s vision and its role in society?” (Jorge Arango) – courtesy of petervandijck

“Information Architecture involves the design of organization and navigation systems to help people find and manage information more successfully.” – the conversation is the interesting part. (Jeff Sexton – Future Now’s GrokDotCom) – courtesy of michelvuijlsteke

“This article is going to look at the early stages of planning out a web site, and a discipline that is commonly referred to as Information architecture, or IA. This involves thinking about who your target audience will be, what information and services they need from a web site, and how you should structure it to provide that for them. You’ll look at the entire body of information that needs to go on the site and think about how to break that down into chunks, and how those chunks should relate to one another.” (Jonathan Lane- The Web Standards Curriculum)

“These days, there are two predominate ways that users get to a web site. Either they type the URL into the address bar, bringing them to the site’s home page, or they come to the site through an aggregator or referral, such as Google, often taking them to a specific page within the site. For some sites, the home page is the most popular route, but increasingly, users link deep into the site.” (Jared Spool – User Interface Engineering)

“This article will explore the basic concepts of designing optimized site architectures for efficient spidering by search engines. Building an easily spidered site has ramifications in how pages, sections of a site, and entire domains are topically understood and categorized by bots, which influences indexing and rankings.” (AudetteMedia) – courtesy of thehotstrudel

“In 1997, the BBC aired a three-hour documentary based on Stewart Brand’s book, ‘How Buildings Learn’. Brand has posted the whole program on Google Video in six 30-minute parts.” (via Jason Kottke)

“It is clear that the discipline of information architecture is undergoing change. I was amazed at the range of job titles I encountered. Very few people actually had the title information architect. This must be a sign that the rapid development of the Web and the technological advances that are occurring are just moving so fast what we do is very hard to define. It is just a label, and we shouldn’t become too hung up on it, but I think the IAI need to be aware and wise to the developments that are going on in other disciplines such as IxD and UX in general.” (James Kelway – UXmatters)

“They are a visual representation of the content of a web page that is the culmination of user research, business objectives and content. Best brought together in a sequence of pages to illustrate paths of navigation and interactions on the page.” (User Pathway) – courtesy of thehotstrudel

“I’m a person who is deeply passionate about Information Architecture, but also troubled about its future. In 10 years, will we be iRise jockeys or strategic leaders…or something else entirely? If you ask me, my gut says that Information Architecture is definitely worth saving, but right now, I can’t tell you why.” (Matthew Milan – Experience Matters)

“This afternoon I presented my session at WebDU on the topic of information architecture for designers and developers. In the particular case of WebDU, these designers and developers mostly specialise in Flex and Flash.” (Patrick Kennedy – Pat’s Point of View)

“EuroIA invites your participation to this premier European event on Information Architecture. Join us in Amsterdam, Netherlands September 26-27, 2008, for two incredible days of presentations, panels, and networking with information architects from across Europe and around the world. This year we will explore the theme of ‘Redrawing the Map’, both between countries and online – from forging new international alliances to adapting traditional deliverables to the needs of a Web 2.0 world.” (Euro IA 2008)

A collection of online vids concerning usability, information architecture, interaction design and user experience design. (Jan Jursa – The Hot Strudel)

“Just as it is important to choose the proper knife when slicing-n-dicing vegetables, it is critical to prescribe a suitable user interface to support faceted filtering. Faceted filtering allows you to narrow down a large list of objects to a manageable size by applying flexible combinations of attribute filters in any order. Rather than forcing you down fixed paths within a website’s information architecture, faceted filtering allows you to multi-dimensionally slice-n-dice the information in a manner that best accommodates your specific needs. A user interface that optimally supports faceted filtering must expose its robust functionality in a way that expresses affordances, controls complexity, and follows existing standards that have been pre-established across the web.” (Mike Padilla – Digital Web Magazine)

“Giving this talk at the IA Summit was a blast; I’m so grateful for the positive response, and the patience with these still-forming ideas. I’m looking forward to seeing where the conversation goes from here! NOTE: You need to view this in ‘Full Screen’ mode, which you can only do from the SlideShare page itself. Otherwise, the narrative text isn’t readable.” (Andrew Hinton – inkblurt)

A growing number of pictures from the Information Architecture Summit 2008 (April 10-14, 2008 – Miami Florida)