The Social Psychology of IA: Designing for the One or the Many?

For our ancient ancestors being social was a means of improving survival. Today, survival is often equated with our capability to filter and assimilate vast quantities of information from a plethora of channels. While developing usable IA solutions typically involves understanding this requirement our methods often only takes the perspective of the one over the many. This process is further complicated because IA solutions are approached from many perspectives – a visual designer approaches IA from one point of view, the interaction designer from another, and the programmer from yet another.

How then can we incorporate the needs of the crowd and yet still provide comprehensive information architecture for the one? How can we understand and even experience the solution that other practices posit to deliver a usable IA from all necessary perspectives?

Matthew will examine social psychology and its importance to IA as a holistic human-centric meta-model for solutions delivery. He will draw on case studies in taxonomy and folksonomy development, interaction design, and service delivery, to show how understanding the social aspects of being human influences filtering, attention, choice, decision and usability. Specifically, Matthew’s talk will include exploration of group dynamics and compliance, identity and cognitive dissonance, equity theory, and motivational theory and their practical application to IA.