Research Reports

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

2012 Salary Survey

UX Local Group Leaders SurveyPDF Icon

Survey 4: Input from IA Educators

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

Methodology

This survey was conducted in July 2006. Known IA educators and those we found by searching online for recent IA syllabi online were invited to participate. A total of 48 responses were collected. In this survey we asked:

  • 1. Do you now, or have you recently, taught Information Architecture, Human-Computer Interaction, Library Science, Usability or a related field of study? If yes, please name the field.
  • 2. In that field, what major topics are covered in the courses you are teaching or have taught?
  • 3. What books or other teaching materials do you use in your courses?
  • 4. If available, please provide a link to full course description(s):
  • 5. Below is a partial list of academic institutions offering degree or certificate programs related to Information Architecture. Please help us out by adding those we've missed, or removing those that may no longer exist.

Full results:

View the complete results: Excel | PDF

Summary of Results:

Because of the relatively small pool of respondents for this survey, and because to the open-ended nature of the questions we asked, we suggest you refer to the full results above to view the wide variety of responses given for questions 1, 2 and 4.

We have summarized responses from questions 3 and 5 below.

Question 3: What books or other teaching materials do you use in your courses?

Clearly identified books are listed here. See full results for additional detail around articles and other resources being used by IA educators.

  • About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design by Alan Cooper
  • Ambient Findability by Peter Morville
  • Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity by Jakob Nielsen
  • Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
  • Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
  • GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers by Jeff Johnson
  • Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests by Jeffrey Rubin
  • How to Build a Digital Library by Ian H. Witten and David Bainbridge
  • Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium by John M. Carroll
  • Human-Computer Interaction: Concepts And Design by J. Preece et al.
  • Information Anxiety 2 by Richard Saul Wurman, David Sume, and Loring Leifer
  • Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville
  • Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web by Christina Wodtke
  • Metadata Solutions: Using Metamodels, Repositories, XML, and Enterprise Portals to Generate Information on Demand by Adrienne Tannenbaum
  • Modern Information Retrieval by Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto
  • Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research by Mike Kuniavsky
  • Organizing Knowledge: An Introduction to Managing Access to Information by J. E. Rowley and John Farrow
  • Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces by Carolyn Snyder
  • Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do by B.J. Fogg
  • Rapid Contextual Design: A How-to Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design by Karen Holtzblatt, Jessamyn Burns Wendell, Shelley Wood
  • Task-Centered User Interface Design by Clayton Lewis and John Rieman
  • The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
  • The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems by Jef Raskin
  • The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper
  • The Organization of Information by Arlene G. Taylor
  • The Practical Guide to Information Design by Ronnie Lipton
  • The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design by Deborah J. Mayhew
  • Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work by Tom Brinck, Darren Gergle, and Scott D. Wood
  • Usability Inspection Methods by Jakob Nielsen and Robert L. Mack
  • Visual Revelations: Graphical Tales of Fate and Deception From Napoleon Bonaparte To Ross Perot by Howard Wainer

Question 5: Below is a partial list of academic institutions offering degree or certificate programs related to Information Architecture. Please help us out by adding those we've missed, or removing those that may no longer exist.

A full list of all educational institutions mentioned is supplied here, including those in our original list. Some of these institutions offer full degree programs, some may offer no more than ocasional classes in related topics. Because of the frequently-changing nature of IA-related programs, you'll need to consult the educational institution directly for details about their programs and course offerings.

Human Factors International maintains a complete list of "North American programs [that] offer graduate training in human-computer interaction or software ergonomics": http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/degrees.asp. We have not repeated all of their listings here.

This page was last modified on July 8, 2008 05:26 PM.