The Information Architecture Institute (IA Institute or IAI) was a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to advancing and promoting

information architecture Information architecture (IA) is the structural design of shared information environments; the art and science of organizing and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability; and an emerging ...

. The organization, originally known as the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture, was incorporated in November 2002, and was a

501(c)(6) organization A 501(c) organization is a nonprofit organization in the federal law of the United States according to Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 501(c)) and is one of over 29 types of nonprofit organizations exempt from some federal income taxe ...

. It grew to become one of the world's largest professional groups for web specialists, with over 1200 members in 60 countries, It was dissolved in September 2019 and is no longer a professional board of trade. The institute broadly defined "information architecture" as: * The structural design of shared information environments. * The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability. * An emerging

community of practice A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who "share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educat ...

focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

Founding of the Institute

The Information Architecture Institute was founded in 2001 by

Peter Morville Peter Morville is president of Semantic Studios, an information architecture and findability consulting firm. He may be best known as an influential figure and "founding father" of information architecture, having coauthored the best-selling book ...

, Lou Rosenfeld, Erin Malone, Lisa Chan, Christina Wodtke, Andrew Hinton, Michael Angeles, Jesse James Garrett, Karl Fast,

Thomas Vander Wal Thomas Vander Wal is an information architect best known for coining the term " folksonomy". He is also known for initiating the term "infocloud". His work has primarily dealt with the Web and with information design and structure especially i ...

, Jess McMullin and Todd Wilkens, who met in Asilomar to define and create the organization. The founding board, elected in 2002 consisted of Christina Wodtke, President, Lou Rosenfeld, Treasurer, Victor Lombardi, Secretary,

and John Zapolski. During the first week of the creation of the Institute, 163 charter joined. This number became 400 by August 2003. Thes members came from 26 countries. These first member where of crucial importance to make progress to the IAI first projects: * AIfIA Translations * Metrics for IA * Membership Directory * Education Curriculum * F2F, a face-to-face project for IAfIA members meet-up * Job Board The Institute at its foundation, with its mission of advance in the field of shared information environments, defined goals for the first year: * Bring value to practitioners of IA * Advance in the field of information architecture * Support these goals by creating sustainable infrastructure & operations

Publications

The Journal of Information Architecture is an independent initiative of REG-iA, the Research & Education Group in IA. It published papers from 2009 through 2013 and was sponsored by the Information Architecture Institute and by Copenhagen Business School.

Conferences

The IA Institute had its own IDEA Conference until 2010. In 2018, the IA Institute Board voted to be an executive sponsor for The IA Conference 2019.

References

External links

Information Architecture Institute
International professional associations 501(c)(6) nonprofit organizations {{us-org-stub