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Discover IA industry trends, software and education patterns among IAs, including our latest surveys:

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Survey 1: What's New in IA

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Survey 1 Results | Survey 2 Results | Survey 3 Results | Survey 4 Results | Survey 5 Results

Survey Methodology:

This survey was conducted in March 2006. Members of the IA Institute and sigia-l were invited to participate. A total of 93 responses were collected. In this survey we asked:

  • 1. What's obviously new in IA? Over the past five years, what major trend(s) have emerged in the field of information architecture?

  • 2. What's new in IA that's not so obvious? Over the past five years, what's changed in information architecture that hasn't received the attention it should?

  • 3. Anything else you'd like to add or suggest?

Results reflected the young and ever-changing nature of this field. Feedback varied widely, and what was "obvious" to some was "not so obvious" to others.

Full results:

View the complete results: Excel | PDF

Summary of Results:

A few consistent answers did emerge.

Common responses to "What's New" (obvious or not), including a few of the different names and examples people gave for each:

  • Page-level interaction design: AJAX, RIAs, rich interfaces, Flash, web apps behaving like desktop applications, responsive interfaces

  • User-driven content organization: Tagging, information clouds, folksonomies, user generated info architecture

  • User-created content: Blogs, Wikis, community contributed content

  • Design for Multiple Platforms: IA beyond the web, IA for networked devices that aren’t traditional computers: mobile phones, PDAs, different devices, cross channel/multi channel user interaction, IA for physical spaces

  • Design for the non-business web: Social networks, social software

Somewhat less common responses to "What's New" (obvious or not), included:

  • Application & Interaction Design: The rise in function over content, the move from brochure-ware to web apps, more emphasis on true applications

  • Experience Design: The importance of creating an experience, rich media, animation, audio and video being integrated into the web experience

  • Navigating the business world & how to best fit in or affect change: The BA as IA, Product managers as a challenge to IA, a more clear division of labor between IAs and graphic designers, clients are now more demanding, career development, it is becoming more difficult to streamline processes, Agile, off shoring, China's impact on IA, IAs impact on security issues and vice-versa

  • Methods, Tools and Deliverables: Eye tracking, card sorting, user profiles, personas

  • Software tools for IAs: Axure, iRise, lack of good tools to build and communicate IA

  • And book-specific recommendations: Less dense, more tactical, how to select the detail of deliverables, downloadable powerpoint slides, provide more templates, not necessarily of information design but especially of workflow (e.g., getting a user through registration and account creation)

This page was last modified on July 8, 2008 04:21 PM.