Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Second Edition

Do We Really Need to Hire Professionals?

We are continually amazed by the scale of business blunders caused by the false assumption that anybody can do this work. In our consulting experience with dozens of Fortune 500 companies, we have seen several situations where literally millions (if not tens of millions) of dollars have been wasted by web and intranet development teams that lack even a single professional information architect.

Inside large companies, the policy of promote-from-within often results in newly anointed “information architects” who may know the business context but lack understanding of users and content. Consulting firms can produce even worse results. Over the past several years, it’s been fairly common practice for consultants to respond to a client’s request for an information architect by re-branding one of their graphic designers. A quick change on a business card and voila, you’ve got your information architect!

In all walks of life, we hire professionals when we want some assurance that the work will be done quickly and effectively. We constantly make judgments about when and when not to pay the added price. I cut my finger on a piece of glass, decide stitches probably aren’t necessary, and go the self-help route with Band-Aids and antibiotic cream. But if the bleeding is bad, I’m off to the emergency room for stitches. We make the same judgments when deciding to hire lawyers, accountants, and plumbers.

In some of these cases, our definition of a professional ...