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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: November 22, 2002 Information Architecture is not Usability (Jeff Lash) -- "A usability-only approach to IA is only one piece of the puzzle. Information architecture problems often account for a large percentage of usability problems, but there are many other things unrelated to IA that have an impact on usability."
Reader Comments...
Do people who would read this article really say IA = usability, or is this one of those straw man starting points some people use in writing a column? When I was in a corp a year ago, I was lucky if someone knew the word usability... its various components were not in their vernacular. Posted by: Frank on November 22, 2002 04:32 PM
Daniel here writing from the buzzing metropolis - Shanghai, taking pics of interesting UIs along the way. I think any *entry point* for usability and enhancing the user experience is useful rather than get too picky about differences. Posted by: daniel szuc on November 24, 2002 04:09 AM
Frank, I think a lot of people do confuse IA with usability, since many of the same concepts overlap. I don't think it does justice for either discipline to bleed to heavily into the other. In a perfect world, all IAs will employ concepts of usability, but that is not a pre-requisite for the job - you could just as easily arrange the site based on what the Marketing VP thinks is best. You'd still be doing your best and doing a good job, but it would probably be a nightmare for users. Posted by: Lydia on November 25, 2002 03:28 PM
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