Arquitetura da Informação (em Português)

["Livia Labate" <liv AT livlab.com>]

                                                {{cross-posting to
AIFIA-pt}}

: The Brazilian Usability and Information Architecture scene is minimal and
I
: confess I feel lonely. I have a blog on Usability but since there's almost
: no one on Brazil to read it, I'll be posting in English from now on, and
: I'll also be gradually translating the old posts. Show up, I could use
some
: company.

Close to five years ago I felt the same way as you did. As an information
architect in São Paulo, it seemed as though the only possibilities for
career growth were abroad. Then I remember how large our country is and how
it didn't make sense that the opportunities were so scarce.

Despite the knowledge that we aren't regarded as a top technological nation
and our own perception that nobody gives a damn about method, particularly
Web firms (spawned from the Ad agencies), I decided to go after the people
who could potentially be doing something.

I am glad to inform that I have found a great deal of work being done in the
universities (though still more prominently on software usability). On July
2003 I attended the first Latin-American HCI congress in Rio and found even
more evidence about such interest, only this time, to my surprise and joy,
with much larger participation of private companies and much larger focus on
the Web.

What we lack is communication. We have people scattered around the country
doing a bunch of interesting stuff and nowhere we can share all this
production. As you would expect (and as is national tradition), university
research is almost entirely disconnect with the market. Universities are
very protective of their production and we don't have a culture of sharing
knowledge. Though there is outstanding work being done, it's more of an ego
trip for the researchers than actual contribution to the industry. But this
is cultural and requires time to change.

I am really bothered by wasted resources and potential so two years ago I
created the WD-Use usability discussion list (which you can join here
http://www.10minutos.com.br/wduse). It's the only on of its kind in
Portuguese. I expected the sign-ups to come mainly from the Rio-São Paulo
axis, but we have contributions from over 500 people in 10 states, which is
far beyond what I had hopped for.

Apart from this, you should be happy to know that we have been successful
bringing the theme of usability engineering into popular events such as the
annual Encontro de Web Design by Artecom, the Semana Web from Universidade
Anhembi-Morumbi (where I have spoken about UX and IA) and a series of
workshops in Rio and São Paulo by www.WebsInsider.com.br, the main source of
articles/reviews on these topics.

Slowly the HCI crowd seems to be moving on to the Internet as well. The fact
that our national Internet industry grew from the expansion of the big Ad
agencies is one of the reasons why (I blame them for) such a disconnect (due
to their lack of interest in producing long-lasting solutions).

The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture also has an entire
Portuguese-language session (http://aifia.org/pt) with articles for those
who are entering the field and do not have access to this sort of
information in our language. In the near future we expect to move on to more
advanced topics and some tools. Apart from this, there is also the list
Arquitetura de Informação, which you can join at
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/aifia-pt. It is also the only one
of its kind in Portuguese and is particularly interesting because it has
contributors from other Portuguese-speaking countries (still growing with
130 members so far. It's fairly recent too).

My point is, it takes effort. Things are not going to happen on their own.
You must be familiar with our lack of literature on these topics. Though I
don't mind learning from resources in other languages, I know this is not a
reality for the majority of Brazilians entrants to the field, which results
in folks going to work with minimal background.

Your 'loneliness' is understandable and shared. It is also probably the
reason why I have become a more social person -- to try and find all others
who share the same interests. I hope you find some encouragement in this
message! Let me know if you want references for any of the resources I
mentioned.

Boa sorte!

Livia Labate
Director, Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture
liv AT livlab.com | http://livlab.com | http://aifia.org

It's that time of the year again: IA Summit 2004!
http://www.iasummit.org Austin, TX, Feb 27-29, 2004.