What I do like is the nuances of how people interact with information. I’m not so much into the online or desktop application design and planning the interaction with data entry.

So, it’s not necessarily big vs small IA… but more of information interaction and software interaction. A site like BBC or CNN is a much different interaction and has a different purpose than the interaction design of microsoft outlook or excel or a timesheet application.

Interaction design implies more software design, whether that software is hosted or desktop or on a PDA. I don’t particularly like information architecture as a label because no one understands it (outside of us) and it doesn’t seem to imply rich information architecture. But I’m not going to go around saying “I’m Theresa, a rich information architect.”

But honestly, it drives me batty when the programmers tell me that “This button is a cancel button and doesn’t do anything unless there’s something to cancel, but even if there’s nothing to cancel, it will still be available.” And it’s like “what world are you living in? are you making this product for yourself?” (Yes, this happened recently…)

To be honest it won’t be the holy grail to getting projects done brilliantly – or at least thats my experience. Still if you can collaborate and communicate every day and be totally transparent then it will help (but then that helps in whatever process you use). Let me know how it goes for you but it only really effects the developers from where I sit and nobody has cracked the UCD and Agile thing properly as its completely reliant on teams and individual dynamics.

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God: Bender, being God isn’t easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.

Bender: Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money.

God: Yes, if he makes it look like an electrical thing. If you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.
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Its not the devil thats in the details, its god!
Its the details that attracted me to this field to begin with actually. So much quiet control

Since I work for a small-ish boutique design agency, it’s been design driven from Day 1, and as we’ve grown larger, and more “interactive” there’s a ton of confusion around this very topic. On one hand, I have some folks who insist IA should be a pure representation of information…and designers “drive” the creation process and the final product, while the IA lays out the “requirements”. It gets even more confusing the more interactive and flash-driven a site gets (In my case, we design a lot of film sites). How to IA design a site that is always in motion.. while not stepping on creatives toes?

No one operates in a vacuum, so that buy-in is critical. I do think the designers and developers would enjoy sketching sessions with a lot of group dialogue. Then again, we often lack the time to actually incorporate this into the process – and as a result, developers, IAs and designers wind up competing for who “decides” the direction.

We’re about to implement SCRUM, a development management process to tackle some of these very same stakeholder issues. I’ll report fully as to how it goes. If anyone has any experience with the SCRUM process, chime on in! Ha, the process has a “scrum master”. I am not sure how much I like the way that sounds.

SCRUM: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/architecture/scrum.aspx