Interview with Dani Torres Burriel

Daniel Torres Burriel (aka torresburriel.com) is a Spanish information
architect and usability professional, working at Net2u_, a company located in Zaragoza. He writes on his weblog about web standards,
usability, accessibility and information architecture.

1. Len: What would your definition of Information Architecture (IA) look like in less then 256 characters?

   Dani: IA is the first step to make a rational design of anything

2. Len: This is a very short one, what do you mean with "design"? Can you tell a bit more about that?

   Dani: IA is the first step to make a rational design of anything. When you think about a (web) design, there’s a first step: the schema of this design. How very little elements must be placed, ordered and located

3. Len: Is there a specific way or method in Spain that you feel is different then in Europe with this approach?

   Dani: No. I think there’s no specific method to make this work. Fortunately technical issues are independent of places, countries and cultures. The only difference with Spanish people is about language. Because Spanish is a very rich language, Spanish has a lot of different words to express the same concept. I think this is an advantage, but it has no direct relation with methodology.

4. Len: You make a clear distinction between language, which relates to labels in IA, and the methodology that you use.
   As you mention that Spanish is a rich language, doesn’t that mean you need richer tools to get the best result?

   Dani: Interesting question. But I think it’s not an issue about tools. IMHO different languages and semantic features can become great tools to make good IA. I only can work with spanish, my native language, but is possible that other languages and his semantic features give IA’s tools to get the best result. Finally I thnik, again, it’s a very interesting question to think about

5. Len: Are you working on multi lingual websites/systems?

   Dani: Yes, but generally these multilingual sites are related with two Spanish languages: Catalan and Basque

6. Len: Which means you are using a one to one translation and no localisation?

   Dani: In catalan case, semantic features of the language are very very similar to Spanish; in case of the Basque language, work is more one to one translation than localisation

7. Len: If you talk to clients and companies, do you feel that they know about these things: IA, usability and related fields?

   Dani: Not generally, but practice application of deliverables are a grateful thing to them. Obviously some clients request work about IA and usability, but the major clients don’t know about this. These kind of clients must be seduced by presenting them deliverables: wireframes are a key deliverable to make clients understand the importance of information design in a web project.

8. Len: So you don’t talk about IA to clients, you just show them IA?

   Dani: Yes. I don’t talk about IA to clients, if clients don’t talk about IA. I try not to "spam" clients with concepts that they don’t care about. Clients want usable web sites where the information about their product can be found and is clear to the visitor.

9. Len: What is the future of IA in Spain, is there a movement towards IA?

   Dani: I’m just a little practitioner to say what the future is of IA in Spain I can tell you there is a professional community of IA’s and usability professionals called ‘Cadius’ ( www.cadius.org ) of which I’m member. Every month there are meetings in different cities, called ‘Cocktail Cadius’, where professionals and interested people about IA and usability (and web design) talk about day-to-day and professional issues in this field. I organize Cocktail Cadius in Zaragoza, the city where I live.

10. Len: Can you give IAs some tips and or resources that can help them to become good IAs?

    Dani: Wow… I only can give one: read, read, and read. The best resources I know are books, and some web sites: www.cadius.org/weblog , www.alzado.org and www.thinkepi.net (in Spanish). And Boxes and Arrows ( www.boxesandarrows.com ), Guuui ( www.guuui.com ), and Bloug ( http://louisrosenfeld.com/ ) in English. But, again, my favorite tool: read, read, and read.

11. Len: Ok, thank you for the somewhat distracted interview.

    Dani: Thx to you