Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Second Edition

Chapter 16. Tools and Software

Information professionals have a love-hate relationship with information technology.^[46] We love IT because it made our jobs necessary by enabling the creation and connection of tremendous volumes of content, applications, and processes. We hate IT because it constantly threatens to replace the need for us. If you’ve seen the 1957 film Desk Set in which the librarians fear the “electronic brain” threatening to steal their jobs, you understand the enduring nature of this struggle.

Love it or hate it, we are all participants in a co-evolutionary journey with technology that is defined by rapid change. As information architects, we have a real opportunity (if not an ethical obligation) to positively influence outcomes by injecting our understanding and healthy skepticism into the information technology acquisition and integration process.

A Time of Change

We are living in the stone age when it comes to software for information architects. The products are crude, and so is our understanding of what we really need. When people get together to discuss experiences with enterprise-wide applications to support web sites and intranets, pain and suffering are dominant themes. Many organizations become so distracted and discouraged by their first web application, they fail to explore the products in related categories.

This will change. In the coming years, all large web sites and intranets will leverage software applications from a wide variety of categories. We ...