Earl Morrogh is a writer, designer, and educator who has studied and worked for 30 years in several fields including architectural and visual design, multimedia design, communications, and education. He considers these areas of professional interest to be interrelated and his knowledge of them essential for informing his research of the emerging profession of information architecture.

He has worked in both the public and private sectors in a variety of capacities including: art director of an internationally distributed sports magazine (Surf magazine); communications director of the Florida component of the American Institute of Architects; project manager of a National Science Foundation-funded project (the Interactive Media Science Project) in partnership with Apple Computer, Inc., Pioneer, Inc., and Houghton-Mifflin Publishing, Inc.; associate director of the Florida Department of Education's distance learning initiative (Florida Remote Learning Services); and assistant director of Florida State University's distance learning office (Office of Distributed and Distance Learning).

He holds an undergraduate degree in sociology with a minor in architecture and a master's degree in mass communication with a specialization in interactive communications. At present he is a consultant and visiting scholar in Florida State University's School of Information Studies where he has taught undergraduate courses in information architecture and design theory.

Born in southwest Louisiana, "Acadiana," Mr. Morrogh has lived in the Florida panhandle since 1972 where he enjoys living in a rural setting in a house he and his wife of 23 years designed and built. He also enjoys sea kayaking, sailing, scuba diving, and other water-related recreational activities.

ABOUT MY INTEREST IN IA

My interest in information architecture as an emerging profession began with reading the popular book by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, Information Architecture: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites. After reviewing a number of guides to Web site design, I decided that this book would serve me best. Having worked on many computer-mediated education projects practically since the invention of the PC, I had learned that one of the major problems in starting new team-based multimedia design projects is communication. Representing a different discipline, each team member brings to the table a different, specialized, technical language and unique design methodology. My experience also taught me that before a group (often consisting of graphic designers, computer programmers, video and sound specialists, and instructional designers) can work effectively as a team, they must come to share a common design terminology and methodology. I also knew that, with the exception of a few new technical issues, most of what I had learned about design and management issues that are related to multimedia projects would transfer well to large-scale. Web site projects. Faced with managing the design of a large-scale Web site intended to support a variety of activities and audiences associated with the distance learning initiative of a major university, I thought adopting Morville's and Rosenfeld's information architecture philosophy, terminology, and methodology would help the project team pull together quickly. Enjoying a satisfactory degree of success, I held onto the book for future reference.

As I reread the book, I became more and more intrigued with the idea of information architecture as an emerging profession. The following definition of "information architect" by Richard Saul Wurman, included in the Morville book, generated a number of questions and fueled more inquiry into the subject of IA and eventually led to my authoring this book.

Information Architect:

1. "The individual who organizes the patterns inherent in data, making the complex clear";
2. "A person who creates the structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal paths to knowledge"; and
3. "The emerging 21^st century professional occupation addressing the needs of the age focused upon clarity, human understanding, and the science of the organization of information."

The questions this definition generated that I am attempting to answer are:

1. What constitutes a professional occupation?
2. From what context is the professional occupation of information architect emerging?
3. In what stage of emergence is it?
4. What are the "needs of the age" it is emerging to address?,
5. How will it address these needs?

Having studied architecture, I began to compare my professional experiences as an information designer and what I was discovering about information architecture to what I had learned about architectural theory, history, design, and practice as a student. As a result of that comparison, I came to view information architecture as a field with strong similarities to architecture. I have also come to believe that the professionalization of information architecture will prove to be as important and as integral to American society as was the professionalization of architecture.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book is written for an audience of American college students studying in the fields of information and library science, computer science, communications, and visual design. It is designed to introduce the reader to key innovations in the history of communications systems and technologies leading to the information age; the fields of information design; human-computer interaction design and user experience design; and the emerging profession of information architecture by:

• Presenting an abbreviated history of revolutionary communication systems and technologies;
• Identifying social and technology-related factors in information creation, communication, storage, and retrieval throughout history;
• Identifying information age-related problems;
• Defining information environment, information space, and information architecture;
• Presenting existing information architecture courses and curriculum; and
• Envisioning the future of information architecture.

It is divided into six parts:

Part 1—"Information Architecture"

Part 1 introduces and sets information architecture in an historical context by drawing an analogy between its evolution and the evolution of architecture.

Parts 2-4—"Human Interactions," "Human and Computer Interactions," and "Computer Networks"

Parts 2 through 4 focus on the history of communication systems and technologies and cover the evolution of communication systems, the evolution of computing systems, and the convergence of communication and computing systems. To understand this history is to understand the roots of today's information marketplace. Each chapter concludes with a brief evaluation of the information-processing capacity of the system or technology featured. The evaluation is based on the premise that communication systems and technologies have varying capacities for communicating, storing, and retrieving information.

Part 5—"Info Ailments"

Part 5 presents a range of issues that have arisen from the relentless hype associated with new communication technologies as well as the unorganized and uncontrolled flood of data unleashed by them.

Part 6—"Toward a New Discipline"

Part 6 focuses on the emergence of the professional occupation of information architecture and proposes that the "solutions" to many of the issues presented in Part 5, "Info Ailments," will be designed by information architects. Trained to be conceptual thinkers, information architects will foremost be design professionals who are well-versed in the history, theory, skills, and science of their field. They will have the education, experience, and vision necessary to manage entire design and implementation processes. They will clarify and define clients' and users' needs, develop design specifications, draft construction documents, and ultimately help maximize the cost effectiveness of information environments. They will be creative problem solvers.

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS

My research and writing were based on the following assumptions:

• Human existence is a continuously evolving interplay between environmental and technological influences, formal and informal institutions and practices, and personal values and beliefs.
• The struggle to create, communicate, manage, and preserve information is integral to the process of building civilizations.
• There have been four major communication epochs: oral, writing, printing, and electronic.
• The medium of communication has a significant influence on the nature and content of human communication.
• Social forces, in conjunction with available material resources and technical knowledge, influence the invention and constructions of new technologies.
• New technologies may, in turn, influence society.
• The properties of a communications environment—the unique ways in which information can be stored, transmitted, and distributed in that environment—may "favor" the interests of some social forces and ideas over others and, consequently, affect social organization.
• Change in communication environments may also affect humans' "internal" worlds of ideas and ways of thinking.

Changes in information and communications technology are one among many other important innovations that influence the way we live. Yet because communication is so vital to human existence, these changes will likely have far-reaching implications. Information architecture is the emerging profession focusing on realizing the full value—the human worth—of these changes.