What lies beneath: excellent article
What lies beneath: excellent article by Adam Greenfield shedding some light on that thing called "business requirements". (You know, the one we need to make play nice with user requirements). An important article in the struggle to cross boundaries between disciplines. IA has been doing well in understanding other disciplines, except for branding (making headway there) and business. Many IA's lack an understanding of branding and business issues like positioning, business strategy or lock-in. We need this: business strategy has a direct and observable influence on the design of products (including websites). When IA's lack understanding of business issues, that direct link between business goals and design gets severed. The business guy won't understand design in depth. The designer won't understand business in depth. IA's should be able to ask good questions in both domains, thus helping making design accountable .