The boundary between BA & IA

I had the pleasure of spending an evening in discussion with Eric Scheid - IA Peers convener and principal at Ironclad networks - at what I'm starting to think of as the Boomworks annual spring bash.

The topic of discussion was standard methods and procedures in the IA's toolkit and, whilst we covered this in some detail - and I'll leave it to Eric to steer the discussion after the next IA Peers meeting - of more interest to me was our discussion of what the BA/strategist contributes to the solution design process, and how best they can interact with the information architecture and user experience crowds.

I've only just begun to think about how the border between the two disciplines might look, so I'll have to come back at some future point with my thoughts. In the meantime, I'm already certain that, whilst there are certain things obviously falling into each camp, there are some components of the user-centred design process that would be more fruitful as areas of strict collaboration.

More on this later...