Joe Lamantia.com
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MicroSoft's Philosophy on Information Architecture
September 17, 2004 02:57 PM | Posted in: Information ArchitectureWhile looking around inside the Sharepoint documentation, I found this tasty snippet that explains a great deal about the way Microsoft approaches information architecture, probably design and architecture:
"Creating an effective category structure requires planning and some understanding of how others might organize the content."
Yes, that's right - you only need SOME understanding of how others MIGHT organize the content. No need to get the right people, even - anyone off the street will do, as long as they are clearly a member of the group 'others', so maybe even the neighbor's kid would be fine.
Besides, I'm sure the inconvenience associated with trying to develop a decent information architecture informed by knowledge of users' mental models would probably get in the way of all that planning that's so important to the success of your portal project.
local tags: collaboration, ia, microsoft, philosophy, sharepoint
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This is what happens when anyone creative gets too involved with the money side of business instead of just creating. I have recently read Pride Before the Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the Microsoft Era by John Heilemann, which is supposedly a non bias book. In the book it is all to clear that he cares nothing for the advancement of technology only the power and money associated with selling mediocre products, which his domination of, only hinders true leaps and bounds in the software industry. A company like Microsoft has helped society, but have they hurt our software and hardware economy more by using bullying and monopolistic tactics. That is the real question and after using Microsoft products since their birth I feel that we are no longer getting what we think we are and what we should have after so many years of research.