Richard Saul Wurman om informasjonsarkitektur

Et søk på "Edward Tufte" på bildesøket til Google sendte meg inn på nettsiden til The University of Texas and Austin, Graduate School of Library & Information science". Under R.E. Wyllys sin beskrivelse av kurset "Information Architecture" slipper en til rikelig med visdomsord fra Richard Saul Wurman som er interessant for den som er engasjert i temaet :o)

Jeg har klippet innholdet litt til, men det er fremdeles mye:

Wurman views architecture as the science and art of creating an instruction for organized space.

The architect must:
- Ascertain the needs.
- Organize the needs into a coherent pattern that clarifies their nature and interactions.
- Design a structure that will meet the occupants' needs.

Information architect:
1.) The individual who organizes the patterns inherent in data, making the complex clear. 2.) A person who creates the structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal paths to knowledge.  3.) The emerging 21st century professional occupation addressing the needs of the age focused upon clarity, human understanding, and the science of the organization of information.

“That's why I've chosen to call myself an Information Architect. I don't mean a bricks and mortar architect. I mean architect as used in the words architect of foreign policy. I mean architect as in the creating of systemic, structural, and orderly principles to make something work--the thoughtful making of either artifact, or idea, or policy that informs because it is clear. I use the word information in its truest sense. Most of the word information contains the word inform, so I call things information only if they inform me, not if they are just collections of data, of stuff.”

As I looked into the organization of information, I realized that there were only five ways to do it. They can be remembered by the acronym LATCH:
L) Location
A) Alphabet
T) Time (museums often organize by time)
C) Category (It's the way department stores are organized)
H) Hierarchy (from the largest to the smallest of something, from the reddest to the lightest red, from the densest to the least dense, and so on).

The primary choice of which way you organize something is made by deciding how you want it to be found.