UX research principles in information architecture projects
In UX research, the principal is to make sure your interviewees feel safe and easy enough to say whatever is on their mind. The same principal applies in all information architecture projects.
One of the first things a newbie UX researcher is confronted with is clearing the interpersonal pathway to getting the information they need to make decisions with a broader base of reality.
You can ask all the questions you want, but if the interviewee feels like they have to supply the correct answer, you aren’t going to get much insight. They are going to tell you what they think you want to know. For that matter, they are going to tell you what they think you want to know even if you’re the nicest person on the planet but ask a leading question.
Take formal classes, go to a bootcamp, read books and blogs and articles, experience and try to figure out why you got very little insight, and the realization will form that the key to information gathering from human beings is to make sure they:
- Know you understand their reality is a real answer,
- Are at ease and feel safe, however long it takes to get them there,
- Truly be interested in their humanity, and somehow find a way to let them know.
Once we get information from enough people, we use critical thinking and analysis to harvest and balance the most useful bits.
A UX project will usually either be focused on a finite problem to solve, or be fishing for an idea around a particular subject. Either way, compared to an information architecture project, the scope is limited. You’ll rarely go back to your interviewees. If you secretly take your hoard of new information back to the office and dismiss their insights and/or disparage them with your colleagues, you aren’t actually creating a hurdle for future interviews; you’re just being a not-great person to someone no one else on the team has met, or is likely to meet.
Information architecture research is the same as UX research in that we need to have clear lines of easy communication. Because the juiciest (read: ambiguous, complex, deep data trove) information architecture projects are in corporate systems, it is also very different from UX research in that we will continue to interact with the sources of our information for at least the course of the project, and probably for our entire tenure at the corporation.
It won’t take long for not-great-person behavior to be recognized, understood, and chill the flow of information. Not-great-person behavior also quickly tips over into bad behavior, impacting interactions broadly and potentially resulting in office politics. Actually behave badly and it will freeze the flow of information.
Some of my favorite information architects are truly wonderful human beings. Look at how we need to continually gather information from the same sources iteratively, and it becomes easy to understand.
The easiest way to convince others we like and respect them is to genuinely like and respect people in general. The easiest way to treat everyone as though they are human is to truly believe everyone — regardless of arbitrary delineations like gender, skin color, status of any kind — is human. The easiest way to consistently not dismiss or otherwise disparage people is to accept them as-is, and learn to focus on reality instead of cognitive biases and wish states. The easiest way to not take it as a personal failing that you don’t already know something is to remember the entirety of the universe is too big for one human mind to comprehend.
If you don’t like people, if you can’t see every single person as human, if you tend to dismiss others or try to posture and intimidate your way into having them follow your lead, even if you can’t get over the idea of not understanding everything, everywhere, all the time: people will figure it out. They will stop talking to you, or only tell you what will get you out of their face faster. Either way, your sources of information will dry up.
No matter how deep the pile of reference material, no matter how many hundreds or thousands of reams of information you have to analyze, or how ‘big’ your big data repository is, it doesn’t compare to human experience. There is still a fundamental mismatch between our documentation and the richness, depth, and interconnectedness of reality.
There is no better source of information than more human beings, even with our inconsistent memories, cognitive biases, and limited perception.
If you want to produce good, usable work as an information architect, your best bet is to be a fundamentally, genuinely good human being. No one is perfect; that understanding is actually part of being a good human being. Keep the sources of information open by being consistently (not universally) open to new information, able to listen, willing to pivot and share, and developing the skill of ad hoc critical thinking and being able to question people more deeply without making them feel challenged. In other words: basic human kindness combined with critical thinking and an active mind.
Everyone responds on some level to basic human kindness. Most of us will open up, breathe in silent relief, and share a little more. A few people will be opportunistic. The opportunistic ones are not good information sources (and I’m guessing you already knew that). We wish everyone would universally respond to basic human kindness with relief; it’s not true, though. Some people just want to use, dehumanize, and force their will / reality. They are the exception, though.
Shared understanding is worth a few bumps in the road.
