In April 2010, Methodbrain, LLC, a private information architecture consultancy, officially established the DSIA™ Research Initiative. The Initiative is a private think tank dedicated to advancing a formalized discipline of information architecture based on IA theory, research and practice. The goal for DSIA Research is ambitious: to frame a cohesive thread of intellectual and practical knowledge around information architecture.

In 2011 the Initiative started its first campaign to recruit contributors to assist in the publication of DSIA subject matter and create a collaborative bridge between the professional field of information architecture and academic institutions.

Documentation, theoretical probing and testing have been ongoing since January 2007. Nathaniel Davis, founder of DSIA Research, formulated several theoretical frameworks that are currently undergoing evaluation in practice.

Davis is convinced that the IA discipline can be intellectually self-reliant — breaking away from the passive tradition of information architecture as an interdisciplinary field without a theoretical core, vocabulary and fundamental concepts.

As a way to disseminate formal concepts around information architecture, DSIA Research launched the DSIA Portal of Information Architecture. The DSIA Portal of Information Architecture provides a public body of knowledge that offers educational and technical content to the general public, business stakeholders, information architects, as well as user experience design practitioners whose responsibilities include or must consider the organizational function of information architecture.

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