Edited by author 07-12-2001 04:41 PM
In an interview with Design Matters, the newsletter of the STC Information Design special interest group, Richard Saul Wurman said that information architecture was the merging of three fields: technology, graphic design, and writing/journalism. This reflects his vision, published in 1996 in Information Architecture, that the information architect is "the individual who organizes the patterns in data, making the complex clear."

In a subsequent issue, Lou Rosenfeld spoke of the influence of the Internet and the WWW on the field: "... Wurman's definition of information architecture doesn't really scale well in the age of more complex information systems like web sites. Like any designer, Wurman's definition is shaped by his contemporary medium--print."

Are there two information architectures? One influenced by presentation and one influenced by structure? Is the presentation-based IA better served by the name "information design?" Does the medium really matter? Is print IA/ID different from web-based IA/ID in meaningful ways?

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