What is information architecture?

It is creating meaning or understanding using design. It's not just making something look nice, it's understanding the meaning behind something and being able to articulate that meaning using design. Designers often just make things look nice and that misses the point. How can that design really help anyone if the person who designed it didn't understand the content themselves?

From the users perspective "the ability to find something goes hand in hand with how well the information is organized" (Introduction to Information Architecture, Wurman). If a designer is designing the signage around a store, how can he design it right if he hasn't actually gone to the store and tried time and time again to get around the store, to encounter the same pitfalls that the customer encounters?

"Information architecture is most brilliant when you can find yourself in the picture, when you can relate to the information" says Wurman. If you look at a picture of the new tallest building, the Burj Dubai, it's almost impossible to get a sense of scale or of how tall it is. If you would be able to see a person next to it, the visual would be that much more impacting. The barrage of pie charts and graphs through the nineties are all so boring because you can't find yourself in the design. If somehow you can find yourself in the design, then the design really works.

A great article by Richard Saul Wurman

I love this because this is where I've been for the last year... being so bored with making things just look nice, rather creating graphics that really help people and therefore contribute to society. I've had my fill of nice looking print pieces that only serve to contribute to the mass of information already out there.

I had my first stab at information architecture with the International House of Prayer. They asked me to define, in a graphic, the organization; how all the ministry they do revolves around praying and the prayer room. The graphic below is the graphic I came up with. I was only able to do this because I understood the ministry after working there 5 years. Had I just come in as a contractor I probably wouldn't have gotten the gist of it unless I did extensive research (which is entirely the point). The level we didn't take it to which we should have done is to get the public and the management to test it before release. Because we didn't do this the graphic made no sense to the public, only looked nice and the management didn't get it at all so it fell off the shelf within 6 months of being published. Lesson learned.