The Content King: Interview with Louis Rosenfeld

 

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Posted on 18 Nov 2002 at 13:23

The emerging field of Information Architecture is an attempt to grapple with increasing information overload. Lou Rosenfeld, together with Peter Morville wrote the seminal book "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" which recently published its 2nd edition. We caught up with him at the recent Usability Week conference in London.

Can you start off with the elevator pitch for Information Architecture?

I'll give you the boring definition first. It's 'the Art and Science of structuring, organising and naming information so that it's easier to find and to manage.' We are talking about information structures - not just their shape but also the symantic value and where it comes up in the hierarchy of your site. Information architects have to balance the needs of two different audiences, users and the people managing that information.

Information Architecture is about finding and we are 'findability engineers'. We need to find what users are trying to do - searching, browsing, even asking questions are all part of finding. Sometimes its good to think of these separately but ultimately information architecture integrates them because that's what people do. They integrate through many iterations of searching and browsing so a site should support that.

Different business models mean different information architectures. Dell and Hewlett-Packard may have pretty well the same users and on their sites you will see basically the same content - technical support, range of products and so forth but the business models are totally different. One is selling through resellers, the other is selling through the site. I divide the world into three circles, content, users and context. There are so many, you are always going to find some aspect of one of those circles being very different.

How do you sell IA to the guy who signs the cheques? In your book, there is almost a running theme about how Information Architecture strategies get caught up in company politics

Yes...That is the biggest change between the two editions. Its one thing to think about content and users and how you connect them but that's two legs of a three legged stool. The third leg is the business context - navigating business, culture, resource constraints and strategy so that your concept can have strategic value. We are trying to position ourselves as people who can make problems go away. So we not only come up with the architecture but also the policies, procedures and strategies. Rather than talk about information Architecture, let's get the problems out on the table and come up with the solutions.

Today, Information Architects are less likely to be dealing with new websites than old ones which have become overgrown with content as different parts of the site do different things. Where do you begin in this situation?

I hear that from a lot of people, this feeling of being overwhelmed. The content is out of control and there's a lot of politics involved because business units are off doing their own thing. What we do is break up this large, intimidating, messy problem into small pieces that can be taken on. So, instead of trying to get everything in order at once, you need to think about the content areas with highest value for users and the highest strategic value to the organisation. What I am talking about is the low hanging fruit that can be used as a model of what can be done over time. Instead of a strategy that might take three to six months to get everything under the roof, you think about pockets which can be organised as part of a three to six year process.