Richard Saul Wurman (1936 - ) is an American architect and graphic designer. He is considered the pioneer in the practice of making information understandable. He has written and designed over 80 books and created the TED conferences. In 1976 he coined the phrase information architect out of his reaction to a society that daily creates massive amounts of information, but with little care or order. Created the popular ACCESS travel guide books which was innovative in its use of mapping content by neighborhood. Simple, but effective use of colored text allowed the reader to quickly separate, locate and evaluate restaurants, museums, parks, and other categorical destinations. With this series of books, Wurman firmly established the role and responsibility of an information architect. TED (short for Technlogy Entertainment Design) is an annual conference in Monterey, California founded by Richard Saul Wurman. ... Information Architecture (IA) is the art and science of structuring knowledge (technically data), and defining user interactions (also see use case). ...
On creating the term "information architect": "I thought the explosion of data needed an architecture, needed a series of systems, needed systemic design, a series of performance criteria to measure it." - Richard Saul Wurman
References
Dirk Knemeyer (January 2004). Richard Saul Wurman:The InfoDesign interview.
RichardSaulWurman and 12 information architects spent one year and $1 million to produce a book that creates useful information on everything from crime and politics to business and the Net.
Which is why RichardSaulWurman, 64, an architect, author, and conference organizer, has created "Understanding USA." The result of a yearlong crusade on Wurman's part, this 324-page, graphic-rich book is designed to provide Americans with the right information, in the right format, in the right amount.
Wurman enlisted the help of 12 "information architects" (a term that he coined), who worked with him to produce 13 chapters of wide-ranging material.
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