Making Connections

Christina Wodtke

• Boxes and arrows• Book• Conference• Yahoo• Asilomar

www.aifia.orgwww.eleganthack.com

www.Boxesandarows.comwww.blueprintsfortheweb.com

Themes

• Things you learned from a past life– Lessons from retail– Lessons from waiting tables– Lessons from daycare

• What would you do if you weren’t an IA?– What do you love?– What is the nature of your interest?

Who are we

• What is IA?

• AIfIA definition1. The structural design of shared information environments.

2. The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability.

3. An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

Who are we

Community of practice1.Something was broken

2.We stepped up to fix it

Too much data, too little meaning

Data, Information, Knowledge

We design for movement

From data

To information

To Knowledge

Complete solutions

We design for• Usability• Findability• Understandability

Or do we? How complete is this? Are we good at it yet?

Bad Mantras

• That’s me

• That’s not me

• I don’t do that

• Nothing to do with me

• That’s not relevant

We’ve locked down too early

My Obsessions

• Psychology• Marketing• Usability• Library sciences• Sociobiology• Existentialism• Winemaking

• Architecture• Retail• Information Design• OO programming• Poetry• Stage Magic• Ethnography

Bad model

• Why the separation?

Little IA Big IA

Better model

• Are they closer?

Little IA

Big IA

Best model??

• A new shape

Little IA

Big IA

Best model??

• Generalists, specialist, shared knowledge base

TaxonomistOntologistIndexerContent strategistInteraction designer?

IA – classification, interaction design, interface/information design, and?

Strategy?Graphic Design?

Html/css?Usability?

Rebirth

Calling for the return of the renaissance (wo)man

– Learn fundamentals– Choose a place to go deep– Stay curious

Rebirth

Some possibilities:– Travel– Get engaged– Learn to program– Read poetry, fiction, science– Eat, drink, walk, live– Keep your eyes open

There is no other

There are only people who know stuff you don’t... yet.

What will you do to change that?

Long bets

10 years from now?

Long bets

IA standardized

Long bets

Many many well-trained generalists, few specialists

Long bets

Fewer pioneers, more educated for practice

Long bets

An international practice

Long bets

Media goes from web to digital– but stays in digital

Long bets

What are yours?

Why I am Not a PainterFrank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in "Sit down and have a drink" he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. "You have SARDINES in it." "Yes, it needed something there." "Oh." I go and the days go by and I drop in again. The painting is going on, and I go, and the days go by. I drop in. The painting is finished. "Where's SARDINES?" All that's left is just letters, "It was too much," Mike says. But me?

One day I am thinking of a color; orange. I write a line about orange. Pretty soon it is awhole page of words, not lines. Then another page. There should be

so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. Days go by. It is even in prose, I am a real poet. My poem is finished and I haven't mentioned orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.