PUBLIC MARKS from amyrussell with tag "information architecture"

Data visualization was touched upon a number of times throughout the DUX07 conference. In David Pescovitz’ keynote address on Monday, he mentioned that since the 1980s we’ve seen three waves of technology: PC Computing, communicating, and sensing.

Too often, the overarching requirement we hear from clients is that the product must be simple to use. As designers, we nod our heads and agree that yes indeed, simplicity is a worthy goal for this project, without ever defining what is meant by simplicity.

On a discussion thread to which I subscribe, a friendly debate about whether we prefer the term “Information Architect” or “User Experience Architect” as a job title took an interesting—but by no means unrelated—turn towards the subject of drinking wine. This prompted a post by IA Donna Maurer, who offered one of her blog entries describing the detailed taxonomy of her wine rack. In her explanation, she states that “I thought I should show just one aspect of my obsession with organizing stuff. People always laugh at me when I tell them about this. Not sure why – after all, I do organise messy content for a living.”

Call them what you like (task flows, work flows, process flows), flow diagrams are an important part of any software project. As a developer, you may be more familiar with sequence diagrams, a nifty way to visualize an exchange of messages between different processes and the order in which they occur.