Sunday, April 8, 2007

Even rants have some value Keith summarizes the reactions to GK VanPatter's controversial piece on IA: Reaction to NextD. "NextD takes a slash at "Findability Information Architecture" is a hot topic on the IA Institute member mailing list. Excerpts from IA's Unidentical Twins (Revisited) . . .[Keith Instone - IA, UX, Toledo, IBM, and less.] My feelings pretty much match Keith's. There's something interesting and worth looking into in VanPatter's perspective (I've read other bits from his site), but the frantic ranting and foaming at the mouth covers up what might be valuable. The screed strikes me as mostly sour grapes, lamenting that his friend Wurman lost control of his invention ("information architecture") and now it has meaning beyond when it was created. Come on, that's an old story. Ideas evolve, change, get co-opted and reworked, and the only things that retain their original meaning without growth and change are dead. But I'll be interested to see if the discussion expands into a useful examination of the many facets of IA. 6:17:41 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Hiding complexity Just because the back-end workings of a product are complex doesn't mean we have to present that complexity to the user. Gordon has a few words of wisdom on that topic: Resisting complexity. Saying no to complexity is among the hardest tasks that writers face. [Usable Help] As Gordon suggests, for me the greatest challenge is to resist the demands of software developers who want the world to know all the intricacies and pain they went through to create the software, and look to their writers to communicate that to the user[~]instead of sticking to what the user needs to know to complete their tasks. My goal for this year: put everything the user needs into the interface, and never write another help topic again. 6:01:06 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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