Another question I have about this whole thing. Does it make sense to profile “IA practitioners” or does it make more sense to profile UX professionals (making sure more or less IA practice is identified as an attribute)?

Nice post. What about

Doer & Self Identifier They do it, but don’t know it

How about the difference between those people who are IAs, do IA, and self identify versus those who might do it but don’t know it or would call it that. Perhaps differences of language, vocabulary, philosophy.

I just got an email from Linda N with some great ideas too. In the interest of sharing this ongoing discovery, here are some other aspects she suggested considering (my comments below each):

Principal IA < ----> UX Team Manager

I can definitely see how career path choice might affect people’s motivations and needs, so I like this, probably a spectrum of career choices like “managerial track versus individual contributor track”.

Academic < ----> Self Taught

As Whitney mentioned, formaly taught versus self-training can be another dimension to consider. But I wonder, do people with these two different training backgrounds treat their practice differently? How so? Do they have vastly different needs (is it their learning style that distinguishes them?). I don’t know many folk in our field with extensive academic background so I’m interested in hearing more.

24/7/365 IA < ---- 9 to 5 IA

That's a very interesting observation. I wonder if this distinction is universal for people in any praxis. I always feel like people who treat their profession as just a job are much less likely to be involved in the community, so I guess this is a useful spectrum even if just to identify people who we are NOT going to target or perhaps a secondary audience.

Content Strategist IA <----> Interaction Designer IA

I think this is the hardest facet to think about. Many would argue that these really are information architecture focus < ----> interaction design focus. I think it would be a helpful to identify what may be different needs of people who’.s central concerns are in either of these, but I don’t know that this is the right way to convey them.

If I were profiling all UXD practitioners, maybe an IA < ---> IXd spectrum could have some use, but I am not sure. Would there be another spectrum to consider visual design, information design, etc? I feel like these get caught up on the wrong attributes and could easily mud the waters. There has to be a better way to identify different needs based on a person’s central area of concern/practice.

Really excited to see next steps.