Want to make an information architect squirm? Just ask this simple question: "Show me an example of good information architecture."

Chances are we'll stammer, mumble something about good IA being invisible IA, and slink away.

It doesn't have to be that way—if we're willing to turn the question on its head. Forget good IA—let's focus on bad IA. You know, the reason that information architecture got started as a practice in the first place.

Let's dig deep into the darkness of just how much life can suck at an absolutely fundamental level when people can't find and understand information.

Let's show—in a direct, visual, painful, and wildly engaging way—what happens when you blow off that IA stuff.

Let's tap the natural impulse to look—to stare!—at the horror of pileups on the information superhighway.

(There but for the grace of god go IA.)

These train wrecks will be quite instructive—in the same way as Jeff Johnson's GUI Bloopers, or as a mirror image to Peter Morville's far more constructive Search Patterns.

So I'd like to propose that some well-intentioned, communally-oriented, semi-organized group of information architects (like, say, the IAI) launch a new site devoted to examples of absolutely crappy, in-your-face, vomit-all-over-your-keyboard information architecture.

I suck at coming up with titles, so I'll offer this working name: The Journal of Fucked IA. (Crazy wild guess: domain's probably available.) Why not? The IAI already publishes the Journal of IA. What's one more publication?

Especially as this one wouldn't have to be peer-reviewed. Set it up as a community portfolio—a Dribble of what not to do. Anyone could submit their latest experience with frustrating findability follies and fuckups. The IAI could do some light curation. We could all tag examples by "search results," "contextual navigation," or whatever, and—voila—we'll have some useful IA anti-patterns. Better yet, tag by industry ("airlines") and organization name ("United") and then we'll start getting some great attention from outside our cocoon.

Yes, let's make those other bastards squirm for once.

Now wouldn't that be fun?

And wouldn't it be better to point people to train wrecks the next time they spring that godawful question?

PS: Maybe this would be a good use of the money that—hopefully—the IAI will start collecting. Soon. Right guys?

For those of you following, the Information Architecture Institute—which I co-founded with Christina Wodtke over ten years ago—is going through more existential angst than usual. The topic of the institute's future and its business model—or lack thereof—came up at the annual IAI town meeting at last week's IA Summit, as it does every year.

And every year for the past five or so, I foam at the mouth and launch spittle along with strong words about how the IAI should abandon its ill-guided dependency upon paid membership (remember, professional associations use an early 20th-century business model—almost as old as that of publishers!). Instead, I suggest that the IAI make involvement free and grow it ten-fold or twenty-fold in a year. Then make money from sponsors, who will be much happier reaching 14,000 people who are interested in IA, than the current 1,400 who are more likely to have IA as their job title.

I'm so certain that this is the way to go that I'm going to put my money—or, rather, Rosenfeld Media's—where my mouth is. Rosenfeld Media will pledge the following:

• $2,000 as soon as the IAI adopts the free membership model, and draws up a simple plan to approach sponsors
• $2,000 more as soon as the IAI increases its current membership by 50%
• $2,000 more as soon as the IAI doubles its current membership

What strings are attached? Well, I'll tell you one thing for goddamned sure: I don't want to see another IAI business plan for as long as I live. Too much analysis paralysis, folks, and too much for volunteers to create and, more importantly, maintain over time.

If anything, the IAI's business plan should be this: provide shared community infrastructure so that people interested in IA can learn more and further the field of practice. So, simple stuff—much of which is already happening—like:

• World IA Day. It's awesome. It's the gateway drug for the community. More please.
• Mentoring program. It's great; keep it going.
• Job board. Duh.
• Bring back IDEA or some other annual meeting in the fall (the season opposite the IA Summit). It'll make a little money and provide another opportunity for us all to get into one place.
• Promote stuff. Really! It's not that hard! Those social media things can help.
• Some legal infrastructure so these—and new programs—can be communally owned.

Do this, and focus on that under-served IAI use case: the person who is never, ever, ever going to call themselves an information architect, but sure does need some basic IA skills to do their jobs. There are THOUSANDS of these folks out there—maybe tens of thousands. (BTW, IxDA has over 30,000 members!) Go after them. Sponsors want oh-so-badly to reach those folks, but the IAI—as a non-profit community thing—is so much better prepared to reach them.

And us sponsors? For every Rosenfeld Media, there is an Adobe, a Microsoft, and a bunch of other huge organizations that have sponsorship budgets that would make you pee your pants. Get them to donate with graduated amounts based on how many new members join the IAI. Work with them to develop some other, less quantitative metrics for success. And get them to shower members with freebies and discounts.

Those are the strings we sponsors have attached: help us get visibility among the "dark matter" of the IA world. Those 95% of the people practicing IA—often without realizing it—who could really benefit from some IA consciousness in the form of skills and connections to a community. We'll help you and you'll help us reach those people.

How many sponsors does the IAI need? I have no idea. But I'll personally go to other UX-friendly book publishers—O'Reilly, New Riders, A Book Apart, and so on—and challenge them to at least match our pledge. Now go find someone else to do that with large agencies, someone else to do it with recruiters, someone else to do it with academic programs.

Voi-fucking-la.

Really. I promise you that the money will be there. And, I hope, the annual outbreak of existential angst will go the way of polio.

The trip to Moscow happens this week (yikes: pack! check passport status! locate winter coat!). I'm keynoting the UX Russia conference and teaching a workshop there as well. I'm also planning on eating as many pelmeni as I can possibly stuff down my gullet. My only other time in Russia was ten weeks during the summer of 1985. I officially was there to study Russian at LGU (Leningrad State University). But let's be honest—I was one about thirty 20-year olds in country that enjoyed its vodka and still happened to find us westerners quite interesting. Yep. That was a really fun summer.

Sadly, my Russian has gone to pot in the 27 years since. I also imagine the place is a bit different than my last visit. But I'm hopeful that they'll be able to hook me up with pelmeni. My introduction to the Internet involved asking rec.food.recipes for a pelmeni recipe in, roughly, 1990. To my surprise and delight, the newsgroup coughed up a bunch in a few hours' time. I haven't looked back since.

Even though I lived in Ann Arbor 23 years and have been back about once per year since moving, I'm still quite excited to be going. I'm giving a talk at my alma mater, the University of Michigan's School of Information, as part of the UM grad program's centennial celebration. Like the Muscovites, SI is rolling out the red carpet, and I'm really flattered. MJ and the kids are coming, and even my elderly parents—both in their mid 80s, and both proud Michigan alumni—are making the trip from Florida. I hope I don't let them down.

And damn, I'm excited. In many respects, it marries Rosenfeld Media, the publishing house, with what I've been doing as a solo consultant/teacher for most of the past twelve years. I think there's something unique, and potentially disruptive, in that combination. Anyway, we'll see. It's certainly nice to, after two or three years, stop talking this talk and start walking the walk. Wish me luck!

Oh, and this just came out a few hours ago. When Nathan and Chris told me about the idea for this book, it made me smile. Still smiling; what a cool concept. And, I hope, a book you'll find useful.

You'd think I'd be teaching in NYC, given that it's where I live, but I'll be making my way to Moscow that week to keynote UX Russia. I'm pretty excited—haven't been there since I spent the summer of '85 in the USSR—and I imagine things may have changed a bit.

But I will be teaching my Adaptable IA workshop in Minneapolis and Toronto. You know, the workshop that helps you avoid pointless, expensive redesigns with a wonderful practical regiment of tuning? The one that anyone involved in IA in any large or mid-sized organization absolutely must attend? Yes, it's that one.

There is a pretty amazing lineup of non-Rosenfelds presenting as well, and you'll love the courses. As always, they're intimate (capped at 50), engaging, and highly practical.

Hope to see you somewhere this fall!

Hello to members of the user experience community, UPA members, and our colleagues around the world.

Back atcha from Third Street, here in Brooklyn.

I've had the opportunity over the past 24 hours to listen to the community as it digests, either here in Las Vegas or around the world, the meaning of our announcement. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, yesterday at the UPA 2012 conference, UPA treasurer Ronnie Battista announced that the UPA is no longer. We have started a brand new organization, the UXPA, or User Experience Professionals Association.

Yes, I'd heard rumors that this was going to happen months ago.

Ronnie spent a great deal of time and effort on that talk, and I want you to be able to experience it. A transcript of that talk is linked here. Please note that this is in raw format and only represents a rough facsimile of the actual talk Ronnie delivered. While Ronnie's talk certainly introduces the change, you'll find that it is remarkably and intentionally lacking in details.

I'm not sure lack of details is such a big deal. You can always fill in the details later if you start with a strong, coherent vision, one that people can get behind.

Problem is, there's no clear vision here. But more on that later.

When speaking with our members and leaders of the UX community while considering this change, ...

Hold on there a moment.

Anyway, you were saying...

... we realized that while we have been above average in meeting the needs of the UPA community, attempting to support the needs of 50,000+ UX practitioners is a different thing completely.

It's great that you've been so successful at supporting the UPA community. So why suddenly stop? And why the urge to take a sharp turn and begin supporting 50,000+ UX practitioners?

More importantly, what problem are you trying to solve here? I just don't get it.

The salient point from Ronnie's talk is this: we want you, the UX community to determine, guide and shepherd this new organization.

I'd argue that us, the UX community, is not a community.

Generously, you might call us a loose confederation of communities. But a singular community? Just waiting to be led by a new professional organization? Methinks you don't know us very well.

We launched this change at a conference on Leadership recognizing that we, the current board, are not the people who should determine the direction of the UXPA, or what UXPA is in the first place. It's all of you.

That's great. But again, what problem are you giving us to solve here? And who asked for your help?

That being said, we do know one thing: there is a distinct and immediate need for a global, modern, innovative professional organization for User Experience Professionals.

And that is?

Look, I've been involved in UX for a good decade, arguably two, yet I somehow missed the memo on what our distinct and immediate need is. Please spell it out for me. And if there is one, I'm highly skeptical that a traditional professional association would be able to address it. Unless that need is group insurance. Which I'll grant can come in handy.

To those of you tweeting and blogging, ask yourself only one question: Are you a User Experience Professional?

I'd say so. My web site says so, so that oughta be good enough.

If you are, we consider you part of the UXPA. You have a home and a voice here, whether that voice be positive or negative at the current time.

That's nice and all, but what do you mean by "home"? If you mean "community," well, my tribe is mostly information architects. We hang out at certain events and join certain organizations. So I'm not sure what you're providing us that's new and different.

Still, I'd be open to going along with this—and the pesky absence of details—if there was a bit more of the vision thing.

In fact, I would implore you to get involved, to help out, to collaborate. Criticize, but put your money where your mouth is, and chip in. We want to work with you. There is plenty of time for discussion, but now is a time for ACTION.

I disrespect discussion, and I like action. I mean, ACTION. In fact, I've started a whole bunch of UX-related things in my career, at least half of which failed. But succeed or fail, I find action to be damned exhilarating! So if there's UX action to be had, I'm your man—I'm a veritable UX action hero!

I understand that you like ACTION too. But for chrissakes, tell me what kind of ACTION you have in mind for us? I'm glad to jump out of planes or wrestle anacondas or whatever—but tell me, what are we trying to achieve?

This much is clear: the turf war stops here. It must. We can spend the next ten years arguing which sub-discipline "owns" User Experience, but it won't come to anything.

But you just put the "UX" in your name. That feels very much like ownership. Of turf.

I call on my counterparts in all other UX-related professional organizations to look at ways we can work together.

Now hold on: you said you talked with UX leaders already. I've got to assume at least some of them were leaders at some of these professional organizations. What were their reactions? Are you publicly calling them out to work together here because they resisted when you approached them through backchannels?

If the latter is the case, and I'm one of your counterparts, I'd feel quite ambushed at the moment.

This is not a power play or land grab. With humility and respect, I would entertain any and all discussions about collaboration, integration, and investment with our colleagues from IxDA, ACM-SIGCHI, AIGA, IAI/ASIS&T, STC, HFES, British HCI, APCHI, the Service Design Network, and any others. Between these groups and the current talented and passionate membership of UPA, together we will truly be the premier global professional association supporting people who work in this field. A field that we cannot define alone. We envision a loose confederation of organizations that doesn't 'unite' us so much as it connects us. For our part, we will invest the reserves we have built up to move this mission forward.

"Loose confederation": now you're talking. That's much more realistic. I mean, I don't think you were suggesting that those other organizations close up shop and send their hundreds of thousands of dues-paying members your way.

That zero-sum game thinking is only one way that traditional professional associations are broken. It's not surprising: they employ a 20th century business model that doesn't account for the Internet, blended disciplines, social media, and lots of other cool new things. No wonder professional associations are becoming increasingly irrelevant. And yet, it appears that it's the solution you're proposing for whatever it is that the problem might be.

This is an exciting time for our industry, that is for certain. The future will be determined by those who are willing and able to take bold action. If you are in that group, email me your thoughts atpresident2012@uxpa.org, get involved in our discussions on Twitter or LinkedIn, and let's get to work.

On what?

After all, this is a UX design problem if there ever was one. (At least I think so; I'm still not entirely sure what it is.) Practice what we all preach, and the problem might get solved. So good luck and godspeed!

• Been teaching my Adaptable Information Architecture workshop; last one of the spring is May 23 in NYC (and, yes, still some seats open). Planning more cities for Rosenfeld Media's fall workshop tour—likely in Toronto, Minneapolis, NYC, and Tel-Aviv.
• Hey, speaking of my workshop, Smashing Magazine just (minutes ago) published my very related article "Stop Redesigning And Start Tuning Your Site Instead".
• Consulting for a couple select clients whose names I dare not speak. Yes, I continue to make a living as an information therapist.
• Publishing new books like crazy! Rosenfeld Media has published eight titles so far, but it looks like—thanks to the perverse gods of scheduling—we'll double the catalog this year. John Ferrara's Playful Design debuts in a few days, and Rachel Hinman's The Mobile Frontier in a couple weeks. And we have about eight more in the pipeline (and more signings coming soon).
• And traveling (and usually speaking) like crazy. Highlights include WebVisions (in NYC and, soon, Barcelona), UX Hong Kong, the IA Summit in New Orleans, and, in about an hour, this talk at Confab in Minneapolis.
• Finally, planning something big that will launch in a couple weeks. In a nutshell, Rosenfeld Media 2.0. We'll tell you all about it in our next (free) newsletter.

In New York City, I'll be teaching my IA workshop on May 23; Rachel Hinman teaches Mobile Prototyping Essentials on May 24, and Steve teaches his usability workshop on May 25.

These are really practical workshops—very small, very hands-on—and a great way to boost your UX team's skillset quickly and cheaply. Please spread the word; hope to see you there!

P.S. We're looking to add a third city. What should it be?

I've taught my full day workshops probably seventy times over the past decade. I've increasingly downplayed what I call "top-down navigation"—you know, main pages, site hierarchies, and the such—in favor of the other two hugely more important areas of IA: search and contextual navigation. You know, the stuff that unlocks your deep content.

And site maps and wireframes? I don't think I've addressed them since the second edition of the Polar Bear book.

Well, it happened again today. I heard someone mention "IA and search". As if they're separate things. Folks, IA is all about helping people find information. That means helping users browse and search and ask questions, as well some other things, like orienting them.

(Worst thing is that I sometimes hear self-styled information architects talk this way.)

Well, dammit, once again I'm going to try to dispel some myths about IA. And offer some concrete suggestions about what IA can do for you aside from wireframes. On November 3, I'm teaching the UIE virtual seminar: "8 Better Practices from Information Architecture". During the talk I'll map out some new directions for what IA (and information architects) should be about, and some concrete areas where IA can make a difference for your organization.

Please join us. It's 90 minutes of your time. If I don't make a reasonable case for IA at this seminar, I'll surrender and just stew in my frustration. Silently alone. For eternity.

No pressure.

PS Code "ROSENFELD" gets you $40 off lifetime access to the seminar's recording. Once more, here's where to learn more and register.

1. First ask yourself if a book is the appropriate package for your content (and its users). 
2. If it is, ask yourself if you really want to spend at least a year of your precious time and effort to write one.
3. If you do, ask yourself if you want to publish it yourself, or if you see value in having a publisher work with you. Some people can pull off a book on their own; others like/need to have editorial, production, promotion, and distribution handled by someone else.
4. If you want a publisher, find the one whose audience most closely matches the one you wish to reach. While I believe that some publishers are far superior to others ;-) ultimately we do much of the same thing: match books with our audiences. 
5. If you have identified multiple publishers that might be appropriate, figure out which one will actually help promote your book. (You'll still have to do a lot of it yourself, but it'd be swell if your publisher would also shoulder some of the promotional burden.)
6. If one publisher seems to promise to promote your book more than others, then examine their track record and see if it's covered in bullshit.

That's it! Hope this helps.

(This one was kindly created by the incomparable Eva-Lotta Lamm.)

Onion-layer models help make the case for and rather than or approaches to solving problems. They are a powerful visual way to communicate the shades of gray that invariably color the solutions required by complex design challenges.

Here's an example that came up during a recent client engagement. Their challenge: work in a variety of new features—many which would require some sort of authentication—into their commerce site. Part of the challenge was the disturbingly large number of features that needed to be integrated. The other part was the risk of hitting users with too many features too soon or, conversely, hiding too many behind a daunting, crocodile-infested registration moat.

Clearly some sort of framework was necessary to introduce those features at the right pace and at the right time. If successful, this framework would transform visiting lurkers into fully engaged, fully registered customers. If not, we would all be screwed.

I came up with this simple approach for the onion layers:

• Layer 0: User visits the site (unauthenticated; no cookies, no nothing)
• Layer 1: User asks the site a question (for example, a search query)
• Layer 2: Site asks the user a question (would you like save this product to a wishlist?)
• Layer 3: Site suggests something to the user (you might enjoy these products ordered by people like you)
• Layer 4: Site acts on the user's behalf (we've gone ahead and saved these products to your account's list of frequently-ordered items)

There are lots of good models for this sort of dialogic approach, ranging from the reference librarian's interview and expert systems design to permission marketing and Luke Wroblewski's concept of gradual engagement. And my layers here shouldn't be taken too literally. In fact, the client team quickly came up with a smarter and more sophisticated version of this model.

But the onion-layered approach is useful nonetheless, because it underlines the importance of gradualism. And it forces us to answer some important questions:

• How do we actually get user to move from one layer to another?
• Have we demonstrated the next level's value?
• Have we earned users' trust yet?

Design is rarely black-and-white, rarely a binary decision-making process. We need more models, even ones that are smelly and make us cry, to help demonstrate the power of and over or.

• Washington, DC: September 9
• Seattle: September 26
• London: October 4

This is part of the growing Rosenfeld Media UX Workshop tour, and I'll be joined by Indi Young, Steve Portigal, Anders Ramsay, and (in all three cities) Steve Krug.

As always, the sessions are small and intimate. Also highly practical and, I like to think, very engaging. And, as much as it pains me, we've cut prices (given how crowded the UX workshop calendar is getting, this is a given).

My workshop starts with a fiery version of my Redesign Must Die talk, and then digs deeply into the many more effective (and less expensive) alternatives. I can pretty much assure you that what you bring back to work will be far more valuable than the $495 you paid to attend.

If you'd like to learn more, check out the session description or peruse the slides:

D'oh.

Well, it is! Grab a copy of Search Analytics for Your Site: Conversations with Your Customers directly from Rosenfeld Media: US$39 gets you the book in paperback and (instant, DRM-free) PDF, ePUB, and MOBI. US$22 gets you the digital versions only.

The testimonials and tweets are nice; hopefully the Amazon reviews will be as well.

Apropos, UX Matters published a sample chapter and an interview with me, and SearchEngineLand has run the first of a two-part interview. (Thanks to respective interviewers Kristina Mausser and Shari Thurow!)

And more thanks to the many of you who helped and prodded me lo these many years to finish the thing!

Anyway, please grab a copy and let me know what you think. Even better, post your reactions on Amazon.