Richard Saul Wurman has been called the father of information architecture. And properly so given that he not only coined the term, but also came up with – among many other things – the acronym of LATCH to describe some core information organization possibilities. So it’s with some trepidation I dare to suggest extending his model. And yet, with time has come our collective experience of dealing with more varied forms and volumes of information via digital channels for which the base model seems dated.
TL;DR version: The LATCH model of information organization includes the following aspects: Location, Alphabet, Time, Category and Hierarchy. It is, however, missing at least the following: Ordinal/Numeric, Distance, and Random. As well, the model lacks depth when it comes to faceted metadata and purpose-focused organization schemes. Okay. That’s it. You’re done. Unless you want to really dive in…
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