What is the difference between a UI designer and an Information Architect?

Question

What is the difference between a UI designer and an Information Architect?

Answer 1

Information Architects are concerned with how data flows through the application, and are concerned primarily with data. UI Designers will take that information and produce an interface to represent that flow, and are primarily concerned with users.

Answer 2

The User Interface designer designs the part of the application the user sees. The Information Architect designs the part they don't.

Both parts are important if the application is to be usable. They are distinct, but must work well together (or at least their designs must),

Answer 3

'Information Architect', like 'Architect', has at least as many different meanings as there are organizations.

1. In some organizations, it's a fancy-sounding title you may bestow on the intranet web master (and which might be justifiable if the intranet is seriously engineered for searching and navigating, with some nice ontologies and taxonomies thrown into the mix).
2. In some organizations, an information architect might as well be called a data warehouse or business intelligence architect, being responsible for ensuring data quality and both usable and timely analysis of historical and current data. Star schemas, SQL databases, entity-relationship diagrams, business object modelling are among the artifacts that may be used and produced.
3. In some organizations, information architects supplement the integration of inhouse and external systems by working towards uniform logical data models and integration schemas. XML schemas, business object modelling, data flow diagrams and business terminologies are among the artifacts dealt with.
4. In some organizations, information architects work primarily or even exclusively with the business side of things, and ensure that everyone across the organization agrees on what we mean by things like 'customer', 'order', 'product', how we uniquely identify them, and what attributes they have and what taxonomical categorizations we may apply. Business object modelling and business terminologies are among the chief artifacts which may be processed.

But most frequently, it's a mixture of all of these, and some more, depending on the individual. User interface design is just a small part of the whole scope of information architecture as practiced in many organizations.

Answer 4

Typically, an Information Architect works with the business to determine:

1. data ("what data does the user & business need to complete this task?")
2. flows ("what's the process for accomplishing this task? what are the specific steps and in what order?").

On the other hand, a UI Designer would work with users and deal with platform-specific issues. On the iPhone, for example, a UI Designer would:

1. Determine which UI controls are used for each datum/task defined by the Information Architect ("use a UITableView for simple option lists; use a UIPicker for multi-level selections");
2. Determine which transitions are used for which activities ("horizontal slides for progressing through a multi-step process; vertical slides for picking options") and other UI-specific standards
3. Work with the Information Architect to streamline, simplify, or otherwise optimize the data and processes to meet the requirements of the specific platform (e.g., iPhone) and how it's typically used by end-users
4. Be an expert on the official UI guidelines (by Apple, for example)

An Information Architect might work with wireframes (rough locations of things), whereas a UI Designer would work with mockups using a GUI tool like Interface Builder or just pretty pictures in a tool like OmniGraffle and/or Photoshop (pixel-perfect renditions).