tl;dr: An information architect is a librarian for the internet.
As with every position in every industry, you'll come across good, mediocre and bad people filling the role of an information architect.
Info-architects should not produce code, specs, interaction design or anything visual beyond a high-level site map. And they should not be asked to do so unless they can write production code, produce visual design or architect the full user experience, something most cannot do.
Their role is to understand what information the system is receiving, analyzing and transmitting, how the information relates to itself and how that information should be best organized and disseminated in order to meet business requirements.
If you meet one who knows their shit, cozy up and learn as much as you can because it's been my experience that many of the root causes of adoption failure lie in the engineer's inability to properly organize, relate and disseminate information to the user. Not scale, not coding skills, not lack of design.
As with every position in every industry, you'll come across good, mediocre and bad people filling the role of an information architect.
Info-architects should not produce code, specs, interaction design or anything visual beyond a high-level site map. And they should not be asked to do so unless they can write production code, produce visual design or architect the full user experience, something most cannot do.
Their role is to understand what information the system is receiving, analyzing and transmitting, how the information relates to itself and how that information should be best organized and disseminated in order to meet business requirements.
If you meet one who knows their shit, cozy up and learn as much as you can because it's been my experience that many of the root causes of adoption failure lie in the engineer's inability to properly organize, relate and disseminate information to the user. Not scale, not coding skills, not lack of design.