This poster is a follow up to “Better Cross-Channel Experiences with Metadata,” a presentation delivered by Adam Ungstad to the IA Summit in New Orleans 2012. It was Adam Ungstad’s submission to Euro IA 2012 poster night. Here’s the original description:
To date, the Information Architecture and User Experience fields have focused largely on how information should be presented to users: finding the best way to structure, organize and present information in order to facilitate a user’s understanding or to encourage a desired behaviour.
In recent years the IA/UX field has recognized the demand to access and use information from multiple channels – in a cross-channel experience a user will need to complete tasks in different channels in order to accomplish their objective.
The use of multiple channels to complete a single objective invariably requires that information be exchanged between channels… and users themselves should not be the exchange mechanism. In fact, one of the most common causes of breakdown within cross-channel experiences occurs when information is not exchanged between channels for the user.
This creates a need for Information Architects that can structure information in a machine-readable format so that it can be exchanged between parties or channels.
This poster provides an overview of 3 aspects that must be defined for any exchange of information:
- Semantics (meaning)
- Syntax (expression)
- Lexicon (vocabulary)