In a recent interview, Peter Morville made some salient points that addressed the importance of medium-independence for information architecture, incorporating information flows and feedback loops into information ecosystems, facilitating understanding, and developing information architectures that are based on a deeper awareness of culture and cognition.
Use context, organizational goals, user needs, and incorporating appropriate mental models and metaphors have always been an important part of information design. But when considering the future of wearables, ubicomp, and the Internet of Things, information architecture will become increasingly complex.
Information architectures will have to be much more scalable and flexible than in the past. Also, there will likely be both visible and invisible information architectures. Practitioners will still develop traditional information architectures that support users interacting with a visible interface. But they will also have to manage architectures that support users performing information-seeking tasks that don’t require a visible interface, and that also support devices interacting with other devices.
More and more, physical spaces are becoming information spaces. This will make it increasingly difficult to manage the movement of users and devices through these blended environments using traditional information architecture implementations.