Alumno

INSTITUTO TECNOLOGICO DE MORELIA |
Information Architecture |
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CHRISTIAN ALVARADO ALVARDO CERVANTES |
10 de septiembre de 2012 |

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Summary
Though the term Information Architecture was coined in 1975, it was not until the mid-1990s, with the rapid expansion of computer-based information via the web, did information access and apprehensionbecome a widespread problem, meriting specialized knowledge and skills to solve it. By the time the "polar bear book" (Information Architecture for the World Wide Web) emerged, methods of Information Architecture had begun to help people in various professions bridge the various specialized aspects of database design, document design, web design, navigation design, interface design, and so on.Soon thereafter, "Information Architect" became a frequent professional title across a range of organizations and projects. There are a about a half-dozen international conferences across the globe that focus primarily or secondarily on Information Architecture. Many prominent universities offer Information Architecture programs, and a few offer graduate degrees.
An Information Architectincorporates and applies a wide range of skills, methods, processes and practices to his/her discipline in order to make information more easily understood and used.
1. Information Anxiety, Richard Saul Wurman. 1990. 2nd ed. 2002.
2. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Rosenfeld, Louis, Morville, Peter. 2002. 2nd ed. 2006.

Information Architecture

Information Architecture is adiscipline and a set of methods that aim to identify and organize information in a purposeful and service-oriented way. It is also a term used to describe the resulting document or documents that define the facets of a given information domain. The goal of Information Architecture is to improve information access, relevancy, and usefulness to a given audience, as well as improve the publishing entity'sability to maintain and develop the information over time. It is primarily associated with website design and it is directly related to the following professional disciplines: User interface design, content development, content management, usability engineering, interaction design, and user experience design. It is also indirectly related to database design, document design, and knowledge management.Historical Background
Richard Saul Wurman is credited with coining the term "Information Architecture" in 1975 (Wurman 1989). Wurman recognized decades before the "information age" that people were becoming "inundated with data but starved for the tools and patterns that give them meaning." As a result, Wurman defined the Information Architect as "someone who enables data to be transformed intounderstandable information."
Information Architecture is a term most frequently used in relation to website design. It rose to popular professional consciousness as a specialized field of concern, study, and then a job title (Information Architect) in the late 1990s. It arose to address some of the specific problems posed by the rapid expansion in volume of information published by individualweb sites to the world wide web. Leading up to the "internet boom" advent, many websites rapidly expanded in scale on an ad-hoc and apparently arbitrary basis. Their information content, context, and the relationships between units of information were often lost in the process. As the volume and complexity of the information published increased along with people's dependence on it, there was oftenan inversely proportional relationship between the increase in volume and decrease in its usefulness experienced by those for whom it was ostensibly published.
The emergence of Information Architecture as a distinct role and area of responsibility can also be viewed as a natural result of the evolution of websites, from small scale sites to large-scale, highly complex "information spaces." As...