Information Architecture
Tracing IA from from Berners-Lee to Fielding to Wurman to Moreville to Klyn
The 1990s was a heady time for proponents of the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web and HTTP/HTML was up and running, Roy Fielding was defining his REST architecture style and Richard Saul Wurman was coining a new term: "Information Architect". In his 1996 book "Information Architects" Wurman offers this definition:
“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.” — Richard Saul Wurman, 1996
A physical architect by training, Wurman founded the Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conferences in 1984. A prolific writer, he has penned almost 100 books on all sorts of topics including art, travel, and (important for our focus) information design.
One of the people who picked up on Wurman's notion of architecting information was library scientist Peter Morville. Considered one of the "founding fathers" of the information architecture movement, Morville has authored several books on the subject. His best known, first released in 1998, is titled simply "Information Architecture" and is currently in it's fourth edition.
Explaining Information Architecture
Dan Klyn, founder of "The Understanding Group" (TUG), has a very nice
video titled "Explaining Information Architecture" that shows how ontology, taxonomy, and choreography all work together to form an information architecture (IA) model.
Morville's book focuses on how humans interact with information and how to design and build large-scale information systems to best support continued growth, management, and ease of use. He points out that system with a good information architecture (IA) helps users of that system to understand 1) where they are, 2) what they've found, 3) what else is around them, and 4) what to expect.
While Moreville’s focus was on human-navigated content on the web, these same principles are just as important to machine-navigated web services, too. Much of what many think of as “gpood API design” is really good information architecture. Learning and applying the concepts of IA to your API designs has the potential to elevate both the design and the value of any API project.