MEET MY PET, PEEVE
00-4-14

 (1) "Information Architecture"   I can't contain myself any longer. I find the use of the phrase "Information Architect" as a job title at internet companies really irritating (ditto "Information Architecture" as term used to describe the field of endeavour). It is often a misappropriation of Wurman's original phrase (which may not be bad in itself), but it is used in such a nonspecific and open-ended way that very little meaning is ociated with its use. If you tell me you're an information architect, I can guess that you work at an internet company (since nowhere else would one use such an embarringly pretentious title) and that you are not a programmer or marketer, but that's about it.

In the April 6 update of Good Experience, Mark Hurst published a letter from Andrew Thompson, who writes, in part:

The idea that the purpose of an information architect is to "understand information" is far too limiting. Yes, we create site maps, but we also provide information design, interaction design, visual design, perform user research, perform user testing, and in general make sure the user experience is positive.

My first exposure to information architecture in the context of the web came in the form of Argus and their Clearinghouse, then their book (Information Architecture for the World Wide Web) and Webmonkey's Information Architecture Tutorial (since when is this not called "Squishy's Crash Course in Information Architecture"?). And I suppose that information architecture was a fine description of the activities they described. But it is a bad description when used as a generic term to capture just whatever it is that whoever is deciding the job titles finds interesting about web design.

IMO, about 2/3 of all people who call themselves information architects (or usability engineers) are really doing interaction design and that is a much more descriptive and accurate phrase. Having said all this, some of my best friends are information architects. Sorry =)

I know I am in the minority here and the phrase has become so ubiquitous that it probably won't get dropped (for a few years at least). So I won't fight it anymore.

(Aside: Reading Peterme's recent thoughts on dynamism of information I remember my whole outrage from a year ago about the poverty of spatial metaphor in web design (talking about where someone "goes" on a site, "navigation", "site maps", etc.) and how I thought it misinformed the design process. I'm going to write that down one day.)

(A second aside: I don't have a problem with talking about a site's "architecture", nor with "information design" (even if it doesn't mean exactly what it used to) nor with "system architecture".)

(A third aside: Wurman himself doesn't seem to care: see interviews with Front Wheel Drive (a good online magazine covering "new science and new media"), Knowledge Management magazine and ZineZone.)

 (2) Travelling:   It's not always like this, but . . .

I wake up Sunday, throw all the papers I'm going to need on my trip into my pile, check my ticket again to make sure that I have the time right. I have it right, only I was supposed to leave the day before. Damn. On the phone with the airlines. Have to buy a new ticket to Seattle (no big deal) and pay $75 to change the Seattle-St. Louis portion, which is full. But that is probably OK and it is very likely that I'll make that flight if I get to Seattle at least an hour before flight time, and I'm slated to get there over two hours before. Good.

Get to the airport, buy ticket, start standing in lines. "Business or pleasure?" Business. [Glances up, eyebrows arched.] (.) "Here are some dumb hostile questions." Okay, here are some pleasant answers. "Go sit over there and wait for an INS agent." (Damn.)

5 minutes p. 10 minutes. 15. Someone comes over and asks the same dumb hostile questions. We go into a room. She leaves and talks to (presumably) her boss. I see them talking. He is looking things up in reference books, running his finger down columns. 5 more minutes. 10 more. I only have a few minutes till the flight.

They let me go. I hear myself being paged while in the queue for security. Run down the hall, get to the gate. Too late. They held it as long as they could. So sorry. The very nice gate worker tries to get me on any other flight which would get me to Seattle on time. Nothing. They are all overbooked.

Back into the main terminal. (Have to go through Canadian customs this time (even though I never left the county). On the phone with secretary. She finds a flight to STL, via Chicago on United. She's made a reservation (but there is only one seat left and I have to get it fast). I go to the United ticket counter. 5 minutes. They can't find any record. It is code-shared with Air Canada, ask them. Go to Air Canada. They can't find anything. It was purchased through Canadian. Goddamnit. Over to the Canadian ticket counter. They find it, but it's too late.

Back on the phone, the only alternative left is to fly to Toronto (4000 miles away) on a redeye, arrive at 6:00am and fly to St. Louis from there, first thing in the morning, arriving about an hour late for my 9:00am meeting.

Okay. Back home for a few hours. Back to the airport. Redeye to Toronto. The flight has the Ontario girls' Ringette team (I had never heard of Ringette, but is apparently a hockey derivative played by a team of about 60 particularly annoying 15 year old girls). Every bump on the ride elicits shrieks followed by giggles followed by "oh my gawd!"s. They are constantly leaning over me to ask each other inane questions. No sleep.

Arrive in Toronto, exhausted. Go to check in for flight to St. Louis. They can't find the flight. "I'm sorry sir, it does show up in our system." Turns out the flight is cancelled. Sigh.

I do end up getting to St. Louis, after 32 hours of travel, 6 hours late for my meeting. Catch the last hour. Eat. Sleep. Go home.

 (As an aside, why did Canada get stuck with "Y" prefixes in their airports' IATA codes? Vancouver is YVR. Toronto is YYZ. Montreal has YUL and YMX. By contrast, "MTL" is used the airport in Maitland, Australia. "VAN" is Van, Turkey. TOR is Torrington Municipal in Torrington, Wyoming. I have never heard of any of those places. What gives?)

updated: I am starting to think that Lawrence Lee (editor of Tomalak's Realm, consistently the best collection of daily links to topics of interest to those who make or market websites) is not actually a human being, but an amazingly well put together natural language processing system tied to a perfectly indexed, up-to-the-minute semantic database of the entire web with a crafty AI front-end. Mere minutes after I posted the above, I get this email from him:

Here's a LA Times article that tackles the three letter question.

Rhymes and Reasons for Airport Code Names
From October 24, 1999

http://www.latimes.com/travel/insider/19991024/t000000034.html

It even mentions the "Y" prefix for Canada! =)

"The most entertaining part of the IATA Web site may be the function that allows visitors to type in a city and learn its airport code, and vice versa. Exploring that way, you find that Canadian airport codes begin with Y, a choice made decades ago by Canada's government aviation authorities. (Toronto: YYZ. Montreal's Dorval airport: YUL. Vancouver: YVR. Ottawa: YOW.)"

They were arranged sometime in the 1950's.

Canoe and I'm sure other travel columnists have authored a similar story.

http://www.canoe.ca/TravelWorld/9907_air.html

 (3) Using words which you don't understand in an effort to sound more intelligent:   Guy on the radio (in a ridiculously alarmist interview about "protecting your children from pedophiles in the cyber-world") says: ". . .. because of the logarithmic growth of the internet . . ." OK you moron, it's getting smaller all the time? Or its growth rate, though quick in the beginning, has rapidly and steadily decreased over time? Did "logarithmic" just sound really technical to you? It's not "faster" or "bigger" than exponential, it's the ing opposite of exponential. (I once heard exactly the same complaint levied by someone else, but I don't remember where or when.)

 (4) Crappy ink:   The WestEnder, a fairly standard urban weekly paper in Vancouver, makes my fingers all black. They publish a special section called "Rants 'n' Raves" where people call in, write email, etc., to praise and scold various things. Here is one from last week:

Hi there. I have a rant. You wouldn't believe the amount of language that can come out of my anger right now from using your paper to do masking on a wall. I have a --just an eggshell wall, okay? And I wanted to use you paper --it was the last week's edition of the, uh, WestEnder-- and so what I did is I took your newspaper and I used it to mask off my wall and, um, I had to paint the door and I used your, your, your in' paper --oops, I don't think you're gonna publish that-- but I used your in' paper to mask off my wall. And i didn't realize it, but when I finished masking my wall, where the door was, I couldn't believe how in' dirty my hands were. Like, where are you getting your paper made? It's gotta be the most cheapest ink that they're using for this in' paper. Okay. So I thought . . . uh-oh, I wonder what it's going to be like underneath the wall. So, I went and painted my door, right? And uh, I took of the masking user your paper on the wall. And you wouldn't believe the mess your paper left on my in' wall. Like, I'm gonna hafta use some other . . . I'm sure the in' not gonna use your paper, that's for sure. Ah, you wouldn't believe the mess it made on my walls! The lousy ink that they're using on your in' paper. Sorry, I don't usually use that in' word very much but I'm so in' mad right now it's unbelievable . . . Goodbye.

By voicemail, April 8, 7:04pm

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Here ends the whining.

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 I know how he feels.
(Except that I have no idea what he is talking about in the first few paragraphs. Begin at the bolded sentence: "Why the do I even care?")

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 One of my oldest friends, Mr. Alexander Gilly of Sydney, Australia writes in with more trivia:

I noticed your new preoccupation with KitKat Chunky while perusing sylloge.com. Interesting marketing success...did you know that Kit Kat Chunky, which has exactly the same ingredients as the regular 'ladyfingers' Kit Kat, is designed especially to appeal to men? Some marketing genius at KitKatKo (sic) figured large chunky solid bars held more appeal to men than the delicate snapable original fingers. A whole new market segment is penetrated by a change of shape. I'm omitting the more obvious psychological interpretations of this, but i'm noting the Chunky's global success...here in Australia the Chunky is being devoured by Alpha males who would never consider buying a 'girlie' chocolate bar like the original KitKat.

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I'm going on a vacation (and oh! do I ever need it) on Sunday. No updates for a week or so.

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