"Strategic UX Through Information Architecture" presented by Andrew Hinton and Dan Klyn of The Understanding Group at UX STRAT USA 2015

1. Strategic UX
Through
Information
Architecture
a workshop with Andrew Hinton & Dan Klyn at

2. Introducing:
Andrew Hinton @inkblurt
Co-founder of the IA Institute
Works as an IA consultant
Wrote a book: Understanding Context
Dan Klyn @danklyn
Former Treasurer of the IA Institute
Teaches at the University of Michigan School of Information
Works as an IA consultant
Assistant on Richard Saul Wurman’s new book project
Abby Covert @Abby_the_IA
President of the IA Institute
Works as an IA Consultant
Wrote a book: How To Make Sense of Any Mess
Exercises co-developed with
Abby as part of the
IA Summit 2015

3. 1990s 2000s 2010s More on the way!1970s– 80s
Ideas from
IBM, Xerox
PARC, and
Information
Theory …
Plus RSW’s
1976 AIA
conference in
Philadelphia
First IA Summit
An evolving discipline.
Parallel (but
not “IA-
specific”
examples of
similar
thinking…)

4. 150X/DAY
40HRS/MO
@davidpetersimon

7. Photo from Library of Congress Detroit Publishing Collection, Call Number LC-D4-3320

8. United States Of America by Joao Santos from the Noun Project

9. Photo from Library of Congress Detroit Publishing Collection, Call
Number LC-D4-3320

11. James Jerome Gibson (/ˈɡɪbsən/; January 27,
1904 – December 11, 1979)

13. Information Architecture
is about the
structural integrity
of meaning
across contexts
What Things Are
@jarango

19. Steelcase Corporate Development Center in Gaines Township, Michigan Photo by
Wikipedia contributor “Trance88”
1989
$111,000,000

20. Steelcase Corporate Development Center in Gaines Township,
Michigan Photo by Dan Klyn
2015
$2,800,000

21. With kind permission of John Auchter, Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, July 27,
2009

22. Christian Norberg-Shulz
PLACES
REPRESENT
ARCHITECTURE’S
SHARE IN
TRUTH

23. “There needs to be
a place… one place.
One complete thought
around music…
Trent Reznor

24. A PLACE
MADE OF
INFORMATION

25. Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut – Ronchamp by Le Corbusier.
Photo by Jopa Elleul
1955

26. “Sculptured House” by Charles Deaton, photo credit unknown,
Wikimedia Commons
1963

27. 1963
“Sculptured House” by Charles Deaton, photos by user
“digijeff” on Flickr
I WANTED THE SHAPE OF IT
TO SING AN UNENCUMBERED
SONG

28. 1962

29. 1962
West elevation blueprint drawing of TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport in New
York City by Eero Saaranen
ALWAYS DESIGN A THING
BY CONSIDERING IT
IN ITS NEXT LARGER CONTEXT
Eliel Saaranen

30. https://flic.
kr/p/awoXAa
https://flic.
kr/p/awoXAa
19631962

31. WHAT IS
GOOD
STRUCTURE?

32. WHEN DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’VE GOT IT?
WHERE IS GOOD STRUCTURE DEVELOPED?

33. WHOSE JOB IS GOOD STRUCTURE?

35. !?!

36. Shaping information architectures
to better ensure the realization
of experiences for users
that’re well- aligned with strategy
Ontology - Particular Meaning
What Things Are
Taxonomy - Arrangement of Meanings
Where Things Should Go
Choreography - Stitching Experiences Together
How Things Connect

37. strategem

38. strategy

39. What Things Are
Ontology: Particular Meaning

41. The way in which you are and I am,
the manner in which we humans are is
dwelling.
Dwelling itself is always
a staying with things.
- Martin Heidegger

45. Words And Pictures Help, Except When They Don’t

47. What’s a hammer? What’s a store?
Facets
Location
Search
Learning
Relevance
Cross-sellingUtilities
Channels

48. What Do We Mean
When We Say What We Say?

49. “Interested”
≠
“Like”
*hypothetical wireframe

50. structures exist in environments and ecosystems

51. information isn’t just one thing
Machine to Machine
Person to Person
Body to Environment

54. Invariants are
important for
semantic
information,
not just
physical stuff.

55. Semantic Information Across Layers & Channels

56. What Do We Mean
When We Say What We Say?

57. Each category valorizes
some point of view and
silences another.
Peter Morville
Intertwingled
Semantic Studios, Ann Arbor
2015

62. What Do We Mean
When We Say What We Say?

65. Status Objects
Media Services
Infrastructure

66. products/services exist in a landscape

67. Information Architecture
is about the
structural integrity
of meaning
across contexts
What Things Are
@jarango

68. Words
We
Don’t
Say
Kurt Anderson
New York Magazine

69. Break

70. Activity:
What Are The Things?
Pair off and dig into the world of the retail catalog you’ve been given. On what
bases are these people thing-ing this catalog? Make a bubble diagram to
differentiate among clusters of more and less related things in order to arrive at
a configuration of bubbles which indicates the relative sizes and meanings of
the clusters.
Start with the biggest thing, and the slightest thing. How many orders of
magnitude bigger is one from the other? How much overlap or circumscription
is true based on what you see in the catalog?
After setting up biggest and slightest, next you can ask: what are the least and
most connected things of all the things?

72. Note: The Ontology of Shapes

74. Bubble diagrams

75. Where Things Go
Taxonomy - Arrangement of Meanings

76. Andy Fitzgerald @andybywire

77. Lists
Hierarchies
Polyhierarchies
Continuums
Matrices
Facets
System maps
etc …
taxonomy
Not just hierarchy
“the rules or
conventions of
order or
arrangement”
Organising Knowledge
- Patrick Lambe

78. Socks
faceted classification
Many relationships
between
There are many ways of
ordering, rather than a
single, fixed hierarchy.
String multiple
taxonomies together at
once…
S.R. Ranganathan
1892 – 1972
http://w3.uniroma1.it/
color::pattern::material::function::length
blue::solid::nylon::dress::14in

79. Where does this go?

80. What’s next?

85. ORDERLY
≠
ORDER

88. “Taxonomies provide
the lenses by which we
perceive and talk about
the world we live in.”
- Patrick Lambe,
Organising Knowledge

89. places made of connected language

90. Web Store
Physical
Store Books
Poetry
we understand places as “nested” structures

92. taxonomy of place, not just objects

93. Web Store
Physical
Store Books
Poetry
people encounter the ‘what’ …
Information on
3rd
party
platforms (maps,
review sites,
etc.)
3rd
party book
retailers
Culturalhistory…
…across many contexts.

94. Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind
“culture”
“love”
“fun”
“nature”
“jazz”
“economy”
“smart”

95. “Recipe Box” – Desktop Web
+ Mobile App
Membership Card –
Physical + Virtual
ecosystems made of language

96. taxonomy = sensemaking

97. taxonomy = placemaking

98. Information Architecture
is a series of arguments
for arranging things
a particular way

100. Activity:
How are things arranged?
1. Propose a taxonomy strategy for your brand based
on the brief of your intended audience.
2. Hang up your work and be ready to discuss it.

101. Lunch

102. Organizing
information isn’t
the hard part.
Agreeing is the hard part.
- Abby Covert

103. Real Agreement
Requires Accurate Maps
A map is not the
territory it
represents, but,
if correct,
it has a similar
structure to the
territory, which
accounts for its
usefulness
- Alfred Korzybski

104. service acquire

105. service acquire

106. service acquire

107. service acquire

108. Activity:
What now?
1. Split your group in half, and combine with a group
working on the other brand
2. Model this new group’s intent for the way this
merger plays out in terms of experience strategy
“When strategy and structure meet people and process, our maps must be
subject to change, because things rarely go according to plan.”
- Peter Morville

109. How Things
Choreography - Stitching Together Experiences
Should Connect

110. Architecture is a choreography of the familiar and the surprising.
Charles Moore

113. COMPOSITION
The ‘rules’ make dynamic systems out of labels &
relationships …

114. Links create rules.
(And rules can change links.)

115. Information = multimodal
Machine to Machine
Person to Person
Body to Environment

116. Chris Risdon / Adaptive Path -- http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/the-anatomy-of-an-experience-map/
products/services = multimodal

117. The ‘rules’
make dynamic
systems out of
labels and
relationships.

119. Rules For How Things Should Connect

120. Rules For How Things Should Connect

121. Rules For How Things Should Connect

128. Final Activity:
Make a concept model to help explain the arguments
being made in your intention model and experience
strategy in terms of structure.

129. DUMB
ENOUGH?

131. Rhetorical > Pictorial

133. case study
design story
product
Case
Studies
SOLUTIONS
DESIGN _
ABOUT
designers
materials
research
resources
mag
case study
design story
product

135. Show & Tell
Let’s do some comparative admiring of each other’s
approaches to the taxonomy strategy and conceptual
model for these merged businesses, and hear about
the intention they’re meant to line up with.

136. What’s Next