“There are many near-term benefits to applying analytics to user experience design. And the long-term promises so much. So there needs to be a wedding of web analytics and user experience. Designers need to get better with data to finally be able to design for finding, as well as to better communicate with managers, business analysts, and, to a degree, information technologists and developers. Designers will have to learn a foreign language to win them over. That language is data.” – Louis Rosenfeld

Read Louis’ article “The road to finding is paved with data: Web analytics and user experience” for more thoughts on the importance of data driven design.

1. Designers can use data to yield better products and new ideas
2. Information architecture is about mission-critical infrastructure
3. Solve problems by moving from data, to information, to knowledge, to wisdom

“Information architecture is not about surface glamor; it’s about mission-critical infrastructure.  And infrastructure has widespread and long-term impact. The ripples of our designs spread outwards, affecting the work of interface designers, programmers, authors, and eventually users… As we design the legacy information architectures of tomorrow, we should consider our responsibility to the big here and the long now.” – Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville

Purchase Information Architecutre for the World Wide Web for a great overview of Information Architecture.

1. Information Architecture helps people get better at sharing information
2. Good IA increases both human satisfaction and your company’s profits
3. Information architecture is at the very center of the electronic information storm