What are the benefits of IAs at your company?

A wireframe is worth a thousand requirements – James Martin

We know that IAs provide a lot of value to organizations worldwide. However, the role of an IA is different between organizations. IXD3 Information Architects Evolve Ideas, Facilitate Envisioning Process, Interpret Requirements, Communicate Vision, Build Consensus, Drive Progress and Increase Developer Efficiency; in an Agile environment:

Evolve Ideas – We work with Stakeholders, Usability Researchers, Field Associates and Subject Mater Experts to generate intuitive concepts for presentation to broader audiences.

Facilitate Envisioning Process – We steer Blue Sky sessions, support user research and generate preliminary supporting documents prior to the Agile development process begins. We build documents such as Heuristic Evaluation, Gap Analysis, Personas, User Modeling, Role Definition, Workflows, Screen Maps and Low/Medium/High Fidelity Wireframes to help with the envisioning process.

Interpret Requirements – We take complex linear lists of business requirements and produce multidimensional mentally digestible visual models with annotated logic.

Build Consensus – We uncover challenges between requirements and technology implementations and help negotiate a good balance of cost and value returned.

Drive Progress – We ourselves become Subject Matter Experts who can also contribute an IAs perspective of technical and business needs to project initiatives. We use this knowledge to keep projects objectives and efforts in line with industries' needs.

Increase Developer Efficiency in an Agile environment – We assist in estimating by presenting high level FLEXIBLE wireframes on which the teams can focus, estimate on and discus which modules can fit into planned iterations. We tie wireframes to Stories giving the developer a unified source of direction.