information design
Contextualizing | Information architecture | UX Design | Content Design
Information is at the center of productivity, interaction, and human behavior.
It’s our reason to articulate
It’s what we organize, code, and process
It’s the tools we build, our research, our money, and our libraries
All our emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and actions are predicated on information
architected information
Enables what it includes
Designed to coherently hang together, information architecture will contextualize data and make it more findable — which makes it more usable.
that’s why it needs to be human-centered
considers cognitive biases
What willfully won’t be perceived doesn’t exist
What is being looked for is everywhere
Useful information architecture provides guardrails away from the extremes
that’s why we need to think about
win-win scenarios
This is both the abstraction and power of information architecture:
Information — whether useful/wrong, perceived/ghosted, aided/disabled — bends perception
What bends perception,
bends problem solving, and
bends potential solutions.
Ethical use of information sets more people up for success — the ultimate win-win.
makes ghosts of what it leaves out
Data not included in architected information effectively doesn’t exist. It’s not implicated and can’t be found — even when it’s the key to understanding.
that’s why it needs
ethics
Coherence is built
Building by imposition — from the top down — sets up for a multitude of failures
Coherence
( between your content and your app, amongst a software ecology, in a functional design system, amongst your high-craft teams
and subject matter experts and customer-facing teams and reps and admins and C-suite and customers )
benefits from thoughtfully designed information architecture.
In our lived experience, information patterns emerge. Put IT in the mix, and what is emergent isn’t captured — there isn’t a place to save it. IT in its current state has formalized and prioritized confirmation bias. Look for what you know exists, and it will find the matches that proves its value. But the flip side has real impact, too:
What isn’t built, can’t be captured
What isn’t in the database, can’t be linked
What doesn’t have a connection, isn’t navigable
What someone can’t get to, isn’t findable
Data that isn’t captured, can’t be linked, isn’t navigable, and isn’t findable: can’t be used — even if the physical being it represents is eating your toe
Just because there’s no input field for eye color, doesn’t mean eyes don’t exist, nor have color. It just means that whoever decided to leave it out thought it wasn’t connected, and is now imposing that belief — right or wrong — on the person filling out the inputs.
My work
My work is in the connections,
searching for balance amongst a bevy of information characteristics and details,
as it aligns to the project — people — budget — and it’s evergreen (or not) nature.
It is science, art, and psychology.
Information architecture can
audit the existing past
Purely based on what already exists, it makes sense of content, design, UX, information, and design systems patterns.
Information architecture can
focus on a far-future objective
Data moves, and if you lack a construct for that movement — across teams, acknowledging potential innovation, through time — getting and keeping traction is hard.
Information architecture can
make sense of a new concept
Every new concept is a node in search of connections. It’s all gap, so the potential when the right connections are found and bridges are built is tingly-nerve amazing.
(yeah, it’s my favorite)