Information Architect

Definition

Information Architect

the specialized architect role that is played when a person produces the information architecture of one or more systems or applications

Classification

As illustrated in the preceding figure, Information Architect is part of the following inheritance hierarchy.

• Type: Concrete
• Superclass: Architect
• Subclasses:
  • None

Responsibilities

The typical role-specific responsibilities repsonsibilities of an Information Architect are to:

• Architect the data (content) aspects of the application:
  • Determine the data components of the application.
  • Determine the structure of the data components.

Information architects typically inherits the general role responsibilities from the Role method component.

Personal Profile

To fulfill these responsibilities, an information Architect typically should have the following personal characteristics, expertise, training, and experience:

Expertise

An Information Architect should typically have the following expertise:

• Knowledge of application requirements.
• Knowledge of data modeling and knowledge engineering.
• Strong in strategic and analytical thinking.
• Able to see and understand:
  • The context of the information architecture.
  • The big picture without being caught up in diversionary details.
  • Beyond the obvious.
  • Patterns or connections between situations that are not obviously related.
  • Key or underlying issues in complex situations.
• A bachelor’s degree in computer science or the equivalent.

Tasks

Information architects typically perform the following role-specific tasks in an iterative, incremental, parallel, and time-boxed manner:

• Architecting Tasks (of Information Architecting) :
  • Architecture Reuse
  • Architectural Patterns Selection
  • Logical Architecture Production
  • Physical Architecture Production
  • Architectural Mechanism Production
  • Architecture Documentation
• Quality Engineering Tasks:
  • Quality Control - Requirements Evaluation

Information Architect typically inherits common role tasks from the Role method component.

Teams

An Information Architect typically performs these tasks as a member of the following teams:

• Architecture Team
• Requirements Evaluation Team

Work Products

As a member of these teams, an Information Architect typically produces all or part of the following work products:

• Architecture Work Products:
  • System Architecture Document
  • Information Architecture Document
• Quality Work Products:
  • Inspection Report
  • Inspection Summary Report

Guidelines

• This role is typically required if there will be user interfaces that display significant amounts of information (especially webpage content).
• The roles of GUI designer and information architect are often played by the same person because the design of the GUI is strongly influenced by the architecture of the information (especially the content of informational websites).
• A person hired for the job title“Information Architect” often plays the information architect, GUI designer, and requirements engineer roles.
• This role typically inherits the common team guidelines from the Role method component.