Information Architecture, Content Strategy, User Experience?

There are a lot of articles and blogs about these three things on the web, and I have recently added the first two of these terms to my resume. But why? you may ask.

It seems to me that I have been an Information Architect and a Content Strategist for nearly my entire career. I suppose it is high time for some background information, which you will probably find nowhere else.

Something about me

I dropped out of college in my junior year—I was an Architecture student at the City College of New York—in the late 70s. After being something of a bum (I won't go into details here) and working in a hardware store for over sixteen years, I decided I needed to move on. While still working at the hardware store, I returned to school (the NYU School of Continuing Education) to learn programming. I had played around with some programming on my own, learning BASIC, Forth and some other languages on various home computers I was able to afford. At NYU I studied various programming languages which included Pascal, C, RPG II (the computer at the hardware store used this), Job Control Language (JCL), OCL and IBM 370 machine language and assembly language. I was pretty good at it—programming, I mean.

Soon thereafter, I decided I needed to earn some sort of degree, and went to a workshop at Brooklyn College (another college in the CUNY system) to find out more about what I had to do to get my degree. During the course of my interview with the counselor assigned to me, I expressed my knowledge of programming, and also my interest in writing, which had always provided me with a modicum of pleasure. As we spoke of these interests and accomplishments, the counselor asked me, "Have you ever considered becoming a technical writer?" I had never heard of such a thing and I asked him for an explanation.

While he described the discipline of technical writing, I had time to reflect on the many user manuals and so-called "help systems" provided with hardware and software that I had encountered over the years, and how I often felt dissatisfied and even angry at the quality thereof. Well, that pretty much decided me: I would become a technical writer!

The City University of New York by that time had created a program called the CUNY Baccalaureate program—which is still in existence and flourishing—which allowed students accepted into the program to design their own course of study along with the aid of their mentor; the counselor whom I already mentioned. One of the unique features of this program was (and is) the ability of the student to take courses at any of the CUNY colleges, if appropriate to the degree sought. So we did, and I did and here I am.

Back then, to the best of my knowledge, there were no such concepts as Information Architecture or Content Strategy. If there were, they were only gleams in the eyes of those who later came up with the concepts. There were only good (technical) writing and bad writing, and I have always firmly placed myself in the former category. As I have progressed in my career, the use of these concepts was never primary (or even peripherally) in my mind, but always informed the content—documents and online information—I created.

What about UX?

User Experience (UX) is another term thrown about with abandon on the web. I think that this site does an excellent job of explaining the role of a UX designer, which is certainly an emerging discipline.

I suppose I could spend anywhere from $615 to $11,500 for "certification" in UX (see this site for some more information), but that is yet to come, if it comes at all.

Conclusion

And so, I think that I can, with justice, claim that I am both an Information Architect and a Content Strategist. As I said on my website:

These two terms—Information Architecture and Content Strategy—are often confused with each other, as they overlap in many ways. They are, in my experience, quite different things, but are best viewed as part of a single, organic, whole.
Information Architecture is the structure that is created to hold the information you want to be seen by whoever; the menus, pages and their layout, navigation, etc.
Content Strategy is the actual information you intend to deliver.

I see no inconsistency with claiming these capacities for myself. You can agree or disagree with me if you like, but that won't change my opinion, dear reader.

Thanks for your attention and interest,
Andy