Boxes and Arrows: Cognitive Psychology & IA: From Theory to Practice
What do cognitive psychology and information architecture have in common? Actually there is a good deal of common ground between the two disciplines. First and foremost, both are concerned with mental processes and how to support those processes. Indeed, many information architects (including the author) have backgrounds in cognitive psychology or a closely related field. Certainly, having a background in cognitive psychology supports the practice of information architecture, and it is precisely those interconnections and support that will be explored.
A great little article from Boxes and Arrows, which deals with how people think influences how they interface with technology - not a great surprise I hear you say? well, no but actually appling some design principles in terms of the information architecture seems to be all too often forgotten in the design of websites (not that I'm saying I've considered it here :) ) .
An old role at ntl was being responsible for the building and maintenance of the ntl Intranetwithin what is now ntl Home. I and my team worked extremely hard to get people to always focus on the needs of the user and why they would a) want the information and b) how they would use it.
Our 'design' principles centred around attempting to show users what they needed to see and be concise in what was displayed to them. We didn't always succeed but generally we did. The reason I like this article is because although we did not have a theory to back it up, our ideas were on the right line.
Posted by Paul Goodison at August 12, 2003 08:27 AM | TrackBack