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Personas Of the Information Architect

David Karemaker

This poster has been presented at the IA summit 2008 in Miami.

Goals and method

There is increasing awareness of the changing role of IAs with tools and methodologies developing that provide for agile development and co-creation. To structure the debate and clarify the different roles IAs find themselves in or create for themselves, a set of personas of Information Architects is presented.

The segmentation and creation of these personas are based on different data sources: personal experiences, interviews, discussions on IA blogs & mailing lists, theoretical papers on organizational culture and different systems development paradigms and a survey sent out among IAs.

Results

The results are different persona descriptions and some tips for practitioners that recognize they operate in a specific role. The tips are practical advice on how to counteract possible drawbacks of the specific role.