Dave Weinberger is blogging bits of the valuably fecund “Reboot” conference this week. Included is a nice summary of Jaiku-founder Jyri Engestrom’s talk. In the past, he’s been very influential among social design folk for pushing the idea of “social objects” — a powerful notion that helps clarify why people do what they do socially […]
Entries Tagged as 'Information Architecture'
Jyri Engestrom on “Nodal Points”
June 27th, 2008 · No Comments · Information Architecture
Tags:davidweinberger·Design·jyriengestrom·reboot
Context and “Choice Architectures”
June 23rd, 2008 · No Comments · Information Architecture
Within a larger, and more political, point in his column, George Will explains something about structuring systems so as to “nudge” people toward a particular behavior pattern, without mandating anything: George F. Will: Nudge Against the Fudge
Such is the power of inertia in human behavior, and the tendency of individuals to emulate others’ behavior, that […]
Tags:·informationarchitecture
The Hyperlink
June 18th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Information Architecture
Whenever I say that the Hyperlink changed the world, people look at me like “huh?” The lowly hyperlink is often overlooked as just a ‘feature’ of the Internet or the Web in particular. But I’ve always thought that was a bit backwards. The hyperlink is what made the web possible — it is for the […]
Tags:History·hyperlinks·informationarchitecture·internet
IDEA 2008
June 3rd, 2008 · No Comments · Information Architecture
I’d like to encourage everyone to attend IDEA 2008, a conference (organized by the IA Institute) that’s been getting rave reviews from attendees since it started in 2006. It’s described as “A conference on designing complex information spaces of all kinds” — and it’s happening in grand old Chicago, October 7-8, 2008.
Speakers on the roster […]
Tags:conference·idea2008·speaking
A Model for Understanding Professional Identity and Practice
May 7th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Information Architecture
In the closing talk for this year’s IA Summit, I had a slide that explains the various layers that make up what we use the term “Information Architect” (or “Information Architecture”) to denote. I think it’s important to be self-aware about it, because it helps us avoid a lot of wasted breath and miscommunication.
But […]
Tags:communities of practice·Information Architecture·profession·ux·wenger
The Cultivation Equation for Social Design (Part 1)
February 25th, 2008 · 5 Comments · Information Architecture
Note: This is something I had embedded in a few very long presentations from last year, and I’m realizing it would probably be useful (to me if nobody else) to elaborate on it as its own topic. Here’s the first part.
There’s a lot of writing and thinking happening around the best approaches to designing […]
Tags:Design·Human Systems·Information Architecture
A Quick Reminder about IA’s Role in Social Design
February 20th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Information Architecture
There’s been a lot of talk over the last couple of years about a collective Eureka moment where we’ve all come to realize that the Internet, the Web, and designing User Experiences for those platforms, is “really about People … not products and information.”
I think it’s great that more folks are coming to this […]
Tags:Design·Information Architecture
Kelly - Bottum-Up Not Enough
February 20th, 2008 · No Comments · Information Architecture
Kevin Kelly’s article Bottom Up is Not Enough is making the rounds, and rightly so. Here’s a snippet:
Here’s how I sum it up: The bottom-up hive mind will always take us much further than even seems possible. It keeps surprising us in this regard. Given enough time, dumb things can be smarter than […]
Tags:Design·Human Systems·Information Architecture
Random thoughts on Space, Rules, Play & IA
January 29th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Information Architecture
I haven’t written here in many weeks, but it’s not because I’m not writing.
Lately, though, my thoughts have been too fractured to coalesce into anything that felt like a real blog post. I’m now realizing, however, that they never will unless I unclog the cognitive drain, as it were.
So, this post, in a […]
Tags:Design·Information Architecture
Facebook Dystopia
January 29th, 2008 · No Comments · Information Architecture
I’m sick of Facebook. The noise and annoyance, the confusing permissions, the beta-intrusions into privacy and the rest are bad enough.
But what really chafes me about it is the Facebook Apps framework. I’m in full agreement with this post about Facebook, except that I’m not going to blame the developers that much.
The developers […]
Tags:Design·Information Architecture
Joi Ito on Content vs. Conversation
September 5th, 2007 · No Comments · Information Architecture
Joi Ito, back in March, posted from the Game Developers Conference, where he is going to be doing a talk on the topic of “More than MMOs: Let Them Build It. How user-created content has transformed online games into a new web platform.” (Wish I could hear that talk! It’s one of my favorite things-to-obsess-upon, […]
Tags:Business·Design·Information Architecture
Arch-Conv Redux in SL Friday
July 19th, 2007 · No Comments · Information Architecture
The lovely people of the IAI have arranged for me to give an abbreviated, Second-Life-friendly version of my presentation tomorrow at 3pm Linden Time (i.e. the time in Second Life), or 6pm Eastern US.
It’s abbreviated by necessity — the presentation has many many slides normally, that I go through quickly, but in Second Life […]

