The Future of Informative Architecture(IA)
Before getting into the future of IA and its effects on our society, I want to look at why it’s important to understand IA in the world.
Quick Definition of Information Architecture
IA has many variation of definitions but it all comes down to:
“The art and science of organizing and labelling data including: websites, intranets, online communities, software, books and other mediums of information, to support usability”.
It is an elite way of organizing information that is usable for anyone. I would also summarize it by saying, “A system that uses intuitive navigation for structured content”.
We see many uses of this technique in aspect of life. But recently, it has been used more frequently with tech products such as Machine Learning (ML) and Voice User Interface (VUI).
IA in Machine Learning (ML) and Voice User Interface (VUI)
The last few years, our society has physically seen the effects of Machine Learning and Voice User Interface. For the sake of keeping the blog concise, I decided to focus on two companies; Tesla and Amazon.
Let’s start with Tesla…
I do want to preface with some statements that I don’t know everything about electric vehicles and who produced the first electric cars and what not, but I’m just stating an opinion based on my perspective. ( ^_^;) With that out of the way…
With a bigger push for electric vehicles, Tesla is seemingly taking over that department. As a growing car manufacture company, it is wow-ing the world with this innovations and technological advancements. With Tesla pushing its auto-pilot (Machine Learning) driving on the roads of our society, it seems as though that it’s only time that these machines will be driving us in the future.
Only a better IA will help the Machine Learning with new forms of structure and hierarchy.
I want to move on to Amazon regarding Voice User Interface…
It feels as though that this little machine has taken over most homes recently. Voice interface has been around for some time, but Amazon has taken this to a new level with the creation of Alexa. It started with asking Alexa simple tasks such as the weather, calling someone and playing music. But now, users are able to order something and get it delivered to their homes by asking Alexa. With the growth of VUI, the consumers will be able to interact in ways that hasn’t been done before. If my memory serves me correctly, you can give call an Uber through Alexa. VUI will continue to serve people just through their voice and hopefully more innovations can continue to help technology be more accessible to other kind of disabilities people might have.
With growing technology, there is a growing concerns regarding privacy and moderation of automation. With Information architecture, it will be interesting where it will go. One thing I would love to see the control in ML and VUI, which might sound counterintuitive because our world is heading in the direction of automation. But in IA, UX, and UI, there must be a human interaction of some sort, or an intervention. So how are we as designers implement IA into these growing technology?
All in all, I do believe the growth of ML and VUI will continue to be integrated into our everyday lives in the future. My current mentor at DesignLabs told me in the beginning of our meets that stuck with me.
“Everything we create nowadays are in beta”
This means that we create things that are never the finished product, which is why we continue to see updates. Just something to think about. (Thanks Mark!)