The Information Architect And The Fighter Pilot
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Matthew Milan The Information Architect and the Fighter Pilot 1
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My IA Summit 2008 presentation on the relationship between Information Architecture and the theories of John Boyd.
Transcript of The Information Architect And The Fighter Pilot
Matthew Milan
The Information Architect and the Fighter Pilot
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Friday was a Howard Hughes kind of day 2
Warning!No WireframesNo Clear AnswersNo Happy Ending
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“We are survival machines”
Richard Dawkins
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“He who can handle the quickest rate of change
survives”
John Boyd 6
The purpose of this talk:
To explore how the work of John Boyd can help us to think about the practice and discipline of Information Architecture
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1.John Boyd2.Learning from Boyd3.Plating the Bird
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1John Boyd
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Themes10
conflic
t
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conflic
tem
erg
ence
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conflic
tem
erg
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dest
ruct
ion
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conflic
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erg
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dest
ruct
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synth
esi
s
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conflic
tem
erg
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dest
ruct
ion
synth
esi
sag
ility
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conflic
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erg
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dest
ruct
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synth
esi
sag
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ad
ap
tati
on
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conflic
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ruct
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The Evolution of BoydThe Evolution of Boyd
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1. The Fighter Pilot2. The Fighter Mafia3. Genghis John
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John BoydFighter Pilot
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40 Second Boyd22
Plating the Bird
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Aerial Attack Study
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Seeing Patterns 25
John BoydFighter Mafia
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Fast Transients
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EM Theory
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The Father of F-16
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Practice from Theory
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John BoydGenghis John
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Slumming at the Pentagon
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Changing the Game
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Synthesis34
The Snowmobile35
Blitzkrieg36
Maneuver Warfare
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conflic
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erg
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Boyd’s TheoryBoyd’s Theory
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• Destruction and Creation Patterns of Conflict Organic Design for Command and Control The Strategic Game of ? & ? Revelation A Discourse on Winning and Losing The Conceptual Spiral The Essence of Winning and Losing
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• ObserveOrientDecideAct
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How the loop is often seen:
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Observe
OrientAct
Decide44
How Boyd saw the loop:
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More than just fast looping
A way of thinking about survival and success
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• Destructionand Creation
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Chi/Cheng
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Cheng:
OrthodoxExpected
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Chi:
UnorthodoxUnexpected
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Novelty
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Understanding Novelty allows
us to create Novelty
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Novelty produceschange
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Boyd left his theory deliberately incomplete
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Boyd and BriefingBoyd and Briefing
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A discourse to make the audience think
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The snowmobile again58
A loser is someone who cannot build snowmobiles when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change
A winner is someone who can build snowmobiles and employ them in an appropriate fashion when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change
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• A discourse to make the audience think
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2Learning from Boyd
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unDesigning Experiences
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org
anic
desi
gn e
merg
ence
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dest
ruct
ion cre
atio
n
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ad
ap
tati
on
fast tra
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nts
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novelt
y chang
e
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Cheng C
hi
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John BoydPostmodern Strategist
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Godel Heisenberg Popper Kuhn Polanyi DawkinsSun Tzu Liddell-Hart Clausewitz Napoleon
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Proliferate discourses without trying to fit them
into a permanent grid
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Postmodern IAPostmodern IA
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Is IA a postmodernist discipline?
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complexity
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contradiction
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ambiguity
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diversity
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interconnectedness
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Proliferate discourses without trying to fit them
into a permanent grid
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January 222002
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Are we closer to
Boyd then we think?
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3Plating the Bird
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“He who can handle the quickest
rate of change survives”
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Avro ArrowAvro Arrow
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What killed the Avro Arrow?
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Capability, but no adaptation in a changing
environment
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201891
What killed information architecture?
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RISKCapability, but no adaptation in a changing
environment
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1/2Information Architecture is
a discipline94
We overthink the damn thing.
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Creation
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Destruction
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In IA terms:
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Structure
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Unstructure
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We’re too passive about unstructuring
things
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We can’t adapt if we aren’t living in the loop
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And we can’t live in the loop until we’re able
to deconstruct.
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Our Conceptual SpiralThe Conceptual Spiral
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• aExploration Thinking Learning
Comprehending Discovering
Doing Unlearning
Shaping Innovating Achieving
Relearning
Adapting105
Which Generates
Insight Imagination Initiative 106
A paradigm for survival and growth
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We need our own conceptual spiral
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• We need to get inside the loop
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• We need to focus more on the discourse
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• We need to brief more
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• We need to get better at breaking things
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We need to embrace novelty
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We need to Chi as well as Cheng
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Boyd left his theory deliberately incomplete
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So should we
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