Sometimes, it feels like there is simply no way to work through design concepts with stakeholders. There has to be a better way — and we keep thinking we’ve hit the right balance between showing literal “finished” designs prematurely and showing vague skeletal concepts that can so easily be misconstrued.

But sometimes it’s like you’ve shown how a chair works to someone a lot, and each time they leave the room acting like they got it, then when you bring it out again just to refer to what they’d seen in the past before you go on to discuss the desk, the cabinet and the other pieces to the solution, the conversation goes like this:

Them: “Ok, so you’re telling me that I’m gonna, what was the word… sit? … on that surface there… and that my head is going to dangle from the ceiling?”

Us: “No… um… just like we explained with the diagram last time, no dangling is involved.”

Them: “But there’s all that wasted space between your head and the ceiling… I really think something should go there.”

Us: *stunned countenances*

Them: “Can you be sure to usability test it with that option?”

Introducing the Information Architecture Institute

To achieve wider recognition for information architecture, the Institute’s leadership embarked on a process to create a new identity. While the AIfIA name has been well-received and well-known in the user experience community, the name has little equity in the world beyond. Difficulty with spelling and pronouncing AIfIA led us to look for a simpler, clearer alternative.

When we were trying to decide on a name, in that brightly lit room on the Asilomar grounds, we figured it would be, well, arrogant to just call it “the institute” for IA, since that would seem to imply that we claimed some kind of ownership over all of Information Architecture, whatever that was (and is).

But since in the last two years, nobody *else* has made an institute for it, I applaud the decision to just cut to the chase, as it were.

The people who stuck with this organization and continued to do the hard work of molding and nurturing it certainly deserve to make the claim — we’re the institute for IA.

Huzzah :-)