We are living in the stone age when it comes to software for information architects. The products are crude, as is our understanding of what we really need. When people get together to discuss experiences with enterprise-wide applications to support web sites and intranets, pain and suffering are dominant themes. Many organizations become so distracted and discouraged by their first web application that they fail to explore the products in related categories.

This will change. In the coming years, all large web sites and intranets will leverage software applications from a wide variety of categories. We will not choose between automated classification software and a collaborative filtering engine—we will need both, and more. And information architects will play an integral role—working closely with business managers, content managers, and software engineers to select, acquire, integrate, and leverage this sophisticated suite of applications. None of these people can successfully do this work alone.

It’s ironic that one of the toughest challenges in understanding software for information architects involves trying to define meaningful categories for the darned stuff. There are huge overlaps between products, exaggerated by overzealous marketing efforts that claim the software can create taxonomies, manage content, fix dinner, and tie your shoes. And, of course, the vendors and their products are multiplying, merging, and mutating at a terrific pace. Given this fluid, ambiguous context, this chapter is an early attempt to define a few of the product categories relevant to information architects.^[2] They include:

Within each category, we list the most popular tools (according to our survey results), and in some cases we list additional tools worth mentioning. Our lists of product examples are by no means comprehensive. We hope only to provide a framework and a starting point.

Automated Categorization

Software that uses human-defined rules or pattern-matching algorithms to automatically assign controlled vocabulary metadata to documents. This is equivalent to assigning documents to categories within a taxonomy.

Synonyms

Automated classification, automated indexing, automated tagging, clustering

Examples

Comments

We see great potential to integrate human expertise in designing taxonomies with software that populates those taxonomies quickly, consistently, and inexpensively. However, note that this software:

And, we believe that attempts to automatically generate the taxonomy itself, as Vivisimo and Autonomy attempt to do, will generally fail to produce categories and labels of sufficient quality for most applications.

Resources

Search Engines

Software that provides full-text indexing and searching capabilities.

Examples

Comments

As content volume grows, search will become the heart of most web sites and intranets. Yet few vendors admit they’re selling a search engine; they all have “solutions.” Meanwhile, the true challenge involves getting the IT people, who currently own the search engines within most corporations, to share their toys with people who understand how and why to connect users and content. The current difficulties in this category are not due to technology. It’s a people problem! However, there are some interesting developments in the technology area. Multi-algorithmic solutions like Google and guided-navigation solutions like Endeca are gaining popularity, forcing the other vendors to play catch-up.

Resources

Thesaurus Management Tools

Tools that provide support for the development and management of controlled vocabularies and thesauri.

Examples

Comments

The bleeding edge! Most early adopters have had to rely on custom development and integration. The hard part is supporting controlled vocabulary management in today’s decentralized publishing environments.

Resources

Portal or Enterprise Knowledge Platform

Tools that provide “completely integrated enterprise portal solutions.”

Examples

Comments

The vision of seamless, intuitive access to all enterprise and third-party content independent of geography, ownership, and format is compelling and completely unrealized. These tools claim to do everything. Make sure you know what they do well.

Resources

Content Management Systems

Software that manages workflow from content authoring to editing to publishing.

Examples (Enterprise)

Examples (Personal and Workgroup)

Comments

At the enterprise level, Forrester Research calls these product offerings “immature.” The problems stem from the fact that content management is very complex and very context-sensitive. Inevitably, you’ll need to buy and then customize extensively. This is a headache that few large organizations will be able to avoid. At the personal and workgroup level, the products are relatively quick and easy to set up. They’ve powered the blogging revolution and are now having a positive impact in corporate environments.

Resources

Analytics

Software that analyzes the usage and statistical performance of web sites, providing valuable metrics about user behavior and characteristics.

Examples

Comments

This is a fast-growing category that’s generated tremendous interest in recent years due to the advertising and marketing value derived from tracking and understanding user behavior.

Resources

Diagramming Software

Visual communication software that information architects use to create diagrams, charts, wireframes, and blueprints.

Examples

Comments

These are the visual communication tools that information architects use to create work products and deliverables, particularly blueprints and wireframes.

Resources

Prototyping Tools

Web development software that enables you to create interactive wireframes and clickable prototypes.

Examples

Comments

As Rich Internet Applications (RIA) further blur the lines between web sites and software applications, prototyping tools provide a powerful way to show navigation, interaction, and other functionality during the design process.

Resources

User Research

Software that supports user research, including online card sorting and remote usability testing.

Examples

Comments

These products can reduce the time and cost associated with user research, and may provide you with new ideas about how best to study user behavior and preferences. However, when it comes to developing empathy for the user, remember that there’s no substitute for being in the same room. It’s often best to combine in-person and remote testing methods, so you don’t miss out on the human element.

Resources

Whatever the category, when you’re involved in selecting complex, expensive software, there are a number of important questions to ask.

You’ll need to determine whether it’s best to build it yourself, buy a product, or contract with an ASP (application service provider). You’ll want to know about the total cost of ownership, from purchase to integration to customization to maintenance to upgrade. You’ll want to know about the long-term outlook for the vendor; in other words, will she be there to answer the phone in six months?

Most importantly, you need to find an engineer in the vendor’s firm who will answer these questions. One of the many truisms from the world of Dilbert is that engineers are like Vulcans; they cannot tell a lie. They will happily contradict their company’s marketing hype—usually without even the slightest provocation—and tell you:

So, even though engineers are the ones who are actually working hard to automate us out of a job, we should still like them because they’re helpful and honest. And they will only need us more in the coming years—to make productive use of the fascinating new tools they are building.