Different to Me
The challenge we’re facing in our little web team is how to present dynamic search functionality – a mechanism that responsively scales to the whim of the user. It’s not as easy as I just put it. You have to imagine and then predict how a person will interpret the choices they are provided, then supply all the options relevant to that categorical selection. What’s helping me is to think of it not as a search instrument, but more like a developing node system whose construct takes root from the user’s intention. Familiarity breeding accessibility; in such a theory is depicted the end of information architecture.
Say what? Believe it. Joshua Porter’s blog Bokardo recently touched on a shift in the way we categorize and label nodes of information, taking into account traditional hierarchical structure as well as more subversive forms:
The problem is that IA models information, not relationships. Many of the artifacts that IAs create: site maps, navigation systems, taxonomies, are information models built on the assumption that a single way to organize things can suit all users…one IA to rule them all, so to speak.
The innovation we’re seeing with folksonomies, recommendation systems, social networking sites…all have their roots in the idea that modeling what people actually do on the Web is the best way to provide answers for them. And, perhaps more importantly, it is an admission that we simply can’t predict the future…we can’t design a perfect information architecture, and to attempt to implies that the world we’re modeling doesn’t change.