101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick

I picked this book up over a year ago and almost immediately loaned to a friend who is an architecture graduate…. a few weeks ago I got it back and have gone through it for a second time – what a great book!

I’ve been struggling lately with the concepts of ‘design’ and ‘architecture’. Throughout my career the concepts of Information Architecture and User Experience Design have been vaguely described and I’ve personally been stumped when asked how to define it.

There is a book dedicated to it and wikipedia pages which help describe what it is we do.

Although, perhaps the page in wikipedia says it all

Clearly there is still a lot of room for interpretation and worldwide acceptance of Information Architecture as a profession.

My tactic over the years has been to always sidle up beside the “USER”. Who is using the website? Why are they there? What are their expectations? and What does a company or organization want to achieve with the site?

Yet, I still find myself defining what it is I do. It seems, that no matter how well you build websites, how much experience you have, how well researched and deep your knowledge in the area of website architecture and design is the role and responsibilities of the Information Architect is not broadly understood.

Anyway, this book, is a great one. Not because big “A” architecture is cool, (and secretly we little “a” architects feel inferior) but because from a virtual architect’s perspective, it conveys the principles and challenges that we face every day. It is a great framework for positioning our role.

I’ve pulled a few of the lessons out of the book. Two that particularly resonate with me.

#19 An architect knows something about everything, An engineer knows everything about one thing – this is probably the biggest challenge a website designer faces. Knowing the business to the right level of detail and how it’s customers interface with it is critical. Getting to know each functions operations, their reach with customers and their business problems, means you can make sure a website achieves a whole lot more than one objective and ultimately make sure that others in the organization buy into the concept. A lot of web teams find themselves in that No Mans Land, between customer service, operations, IT and Marketing. We do all these functions every day and have to work very closely with these groups to ensure the website achieve their goals.

#48 If you can’t explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms she understands, you don’t know your subject well enough. Information architects have a ways to go in this area. What is so bizarre to me is that when presenting ideas to “USERS” the concepts are usually quite quickly understood. Presenting to internal stakeholders presents the greatest challenges.

I’ll leave it there, so thank you Matthew . I *LOVE* the book and am carrying it with me at all times! Off to practice my line drawing…