Key Insights

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  The history of information architecture spans three eras: technology era, experience era, and the emerging information era.

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  Many early CMS implementations assumed technology alone could solve information problems, which was naive.

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  The experience era centered around UX, smartphones, and social media placing user experience at the forefront.

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  We are entering an information era where information itself is recognized as a critical organizational asset with fiscal and organizational value.

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  Successful enterprise information architecture requires both grassroots practitioners and executive sponsors for organizational alignment.

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  Governance and evolving taxonomies are essential as information models must stay current and grow with organizational needs.

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  Ecommerce mistakes often come from directly reusing merchandising taxonomies for customer navigation without proper crosswalks.

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  An information architecture maturity model helps organizations assess and plan their progression from siloed to mastery stages.

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  Taxonomy and ontology management tools like Synaptica, PoolParty, and Semaphore help manage centralized and shared vocabularies.

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  Digital transformation depends on instrumented, centrally governed information architecture serving as a real-time service across systems.

Notable Quotes