I think it the catchy title of the thread I created helped provoke so many great replies:Information Architect Seeks Assist from Regular-Old Architects
Here’s one gem from the growing pile of gems:
Technology and software have actually made it easier for architects, including our firm, to make too many major changes late in the project because we didn’t resolve the design fully in schematic design
One of the big “question areas” I’m going to be exploring with architects as I do research for the book I’ve started writing is the rise of the use of CAD in regular-old architecture design and development processes and for those who’ve been around long enough to have the perspective … if 3D computer graphics and other digital renderings have made client relations and client sign-off any more or less durable than when physical maquettes and models were used in the process back in the day. Hopefully there’s a pile of dissertations about CAD vs. pre-CAD that I can pilfer some good bits from.
“Suppose that you had been commissioned to build a really grand opera house; that after the construction work had nearly been completed and your scheme of decoration fully designed you should be instructed that the building was to be used on Sundays as a Baptist Tabernacle, and that suitable place must be made for a huge organ, a pulpit, and a dipping pool. Then at intervals afterward, you should be advised that it must be so refitted and furnished that parts of it could be used for a court room, a jail, a concert hall, hotel, skating rink, for surgical cliniques, for a circus, dog show, drill room, ball room, railway station and shot tower? That is what is nearly always going on with public parks. Pardon me if I overwhelm you: it is a matter of chronic anger with me.”
- Olmsted Papers, Reel 22. January 22, 1891.
“hyper-rational process: a process that takes rationality almost to an absurd level - transcends all the baggage that normally comes with what people would call a rational conclusion to something”
“this process does not have a signature - there is no authorship. architects are obsessed with authorship. this is something that has editing and teams”
- no master architect with minions carrying out his bidding
- challenges the high modernist notion of flexibility.
- snark: modernism offers “shotgun flexibility”…
- compartmentalized flexibility instead
- very literal contextual relationships
“conventions of space … so obvious we’re blinded by their familiarity”
“…insatiable appetite for visual stimulation with ever greater digital virtuosity - digital has become the new orthodoxy”
“rethinks our dependence on vision”
I’m writing a book this year. It’s called “Now That I See It“.
I’m not settled on its exact format… right now my aspiration is to put some original research findings and anecdotal case studies together into something a sympathetic blogger might call:
A surprisingly-readable and scholarly monograph, examining the all-too-common failure of website design process deliverables to secure durable client sign-off on the particulars of and strategy behind website features and functionality … and what the web design process might look like were it to be augmented with tools and techniques borrowed from and inspired by traditional architecture.
The Problem
I’m going to write about the tragicomical brittleness of some of our web design and development processes, and about how following the best practices in our alphabet soup of IA and UCD and HCI and IxD does not adequately protect us from the spirit-crushing moment of truth when the client arrives at a grand, game-changing realization long after the game has gotten underway. The dreadful and dreaded moment when the client or stakeholder pulls you aside and says: …now that I see it…
After more than a decade of building websites, in big interactive agencies and in small software development shops and in tandem with graphic designers and as a consultant to advertising agencies, I’ve seen the Now That I See It moment happen in all of these contexts and in spite of endless presentation of visual aids and diagrams, wireframes and blueprints and functional specifications. I’ve witnessed all manner of client walk-thrus and demonstrations where designers employ abstract representations of how the navigation will work, how the site is arranged, how and why the bits are arrayed just so in order to meet and align with the stated requirements. I’ve seen these clients nod along in agreement and “sign off” on hundreds of pages of wireframes and specifications, only to reach some later stage in the development process and encounter a Now That I See It moment that requires massive amounts of re-work to “fix.”
For the past five years or so, I’ve called myself an information architect. Like the founders of what one might call the Information Architecture “establishment,” I came to see and practice IA through the lens of the library sciences. This “Polar Bear school of IA” which grew up and out from perspectives rooted in librarianship and information science remains the predominant paradigm for planning, organizing and strategically-aligning business goals and user needs for large-scale websites, and has been codified in successive editions of an ubiquitous O’Reilly book. Yet in spite of this librarianship-flavored affinity for and professional debt of gratitude I owe to Morville & Rosenfeld, the sad succession of epic Now That I See It failures I’ve witnessed or been party to over the years that have taken place in spite of doing things “by the book” gives me pause, and has caused me to question capital-l Librarianship as the primary basis for the “foundational metaphor” in web design.
Has This Nut Been Cracked Before, Elsewhere?
I think that regular-old architecture is an incredibly fruitful domain of knowledge and community of practice from which to approach the building of websites. For the purposes of this book I intend to conduct research into regular-old architecture design processes, and to interview scores of practicing regular-old-architects and structural designers to try and understand how and why (if ever) the regular-old-architect falls victim to Now That I See It moments with their clients. In much the same way that rhythm, axis, symmetry, and the other core principles of regular-old architecture provide a sound and timeless basis from which to inform the design and structural organization of websites, I hope to discover tools and techniques employed in the process of doing regular-old architecture which might better protect our website design and build projects from Now That I See It types of threats. I’m also eager to find out if regular-old architecture can speak to the “nasty paradox” the librarians who wrote the Polar Bear Book identify on page 292:
We are forced to demonstrate the essence of our work in a visual medium, even though our work itself isn’t especially visual
In my experience, the bigger the project, the more and better the abstractions we end up rendering. And as Austin Govella has observed, we calibrate our efforts on a given rendering based on factors such fidelity, iteration, notation and audience. Perhaps there are corollaries and correlating principles used by regular-old architects when rendering blueprints and sketches that can better enable the clear communication of the elements and attributes and underlying strategies of the design to the client. And I’m especially curious to learn about regular-old architects’ use of physical maquettes and to hear from practicing architects about the differences in client relations and buy-in/sign-off when using physical models as opposed to or in addition to so-called Virtual Reality renderings of a design.
That’s what I’ve got so far. If you’re an architect or if you know practicing architects who might be willing to be interviewed for my book project, please leave info in the comments below. Also, if you have resources for me to consider, please tag them on del.icio.us using the tag “NTISI”.
and then Kathy showed up and we hung out trading swigs from a bottle all bitter and clean locking eyes holding hands twin high maintenance machines
Play Now
At least in the online music biz, Chris Anderson’s mega-meme/online business strategy seems to have been proven wrong:
…for the online singles market (10-13 million tracks), 80 per cent of all revenue came from around 52,000 tracks, and for albums, 85% did not sell one lousy copy all year.
The Forrester analyst I follow on Twitter just tweeted a link to Harvard Business Publishing blogger Kevin Maney’s posting about something he’s calling The Fidelity Swap. In a nutshell, Maney’s talking about plotting awesomeness and convenience on opposing axes, and then observing that successful businesses are often strong on awesomeness (he calls it “fidelity”), or strong on convenience, but seldom successful when pursuing high marks in both categories. Ironically, this article is all about making a graph or plot … and the article itself is bereft of any illustrations.
