I write about humans, computers, and information.
I’m an information architect, product strategist & people manager.
Currently leading site experience for Microsoft Learn.
Around the internet
Information architecture and metaphor
What happens when a load-bearing metaphor breaks down?
The parable of the railroad
A useful metaphor for information architects.
Websites are not living rooms and other lessons for information architecture
An introduction to the idea of architectural skeuomorphism and how to resist poor architectural metaphors.
Understanding architectural scale - Tabletops and landscapes
A theoretical approach to what the architectural difference between apps and sites are.
On The Informed Life
Talking about architectural scale and IA with Jorge Arango.
On The OOUX Podcast with Rachel Price
Talking about IA and accessibility with Sophia Prater.
Your information architecture is an accessibility problem
IA and accessibility aren't usually discussed in the same breath, but IA is the cause of most serious accessibility problems.
IA in practice - Getting to structured content
An example of how we built out a section of Microsoft Learn to use structured content.
On TUG's Sunday Service
Talking about scale, maintenance, and the ratio of hours of making stuff happen to minutes of doing IA with Dan Klyn.
Evidence and Antelopes
An explication of Buckland's "Information as Thing" as it relates to information architecture.
Updated notes
Process
Spandrels
A pattern library of architectures
If your org was going to result in good IA, it already would have
Information technologies travel together
Information technology bends toward speed
A history of navigation affordances
Vertical files
Systems
Switching between reference systems
Speak to be understood
Spatial scale
Spatial knowledge is phenomenal
Sondheim's creative principles
Something good
Relevance can be system- or user-based
Architecture is what's expensive to change
Biases are cognitively alluring
Counter stress with moments of joy
Moving up and down the ladder of abstraction
Attention is the beginning of devotion
Architectural skeuomorphism
Architectural metaphors
Architectural debt
An intellectual tradition can provide meaning
AI's modern synthesis
Add signs
Add landmarks
A parable of the railroad
A label is a way to stop thinking
Hierarchies
You can't see the pattern and weave it at the same time
We have two different reference systems for spatial memory
Uses of geographic knowledge
The feeling of a thing and the reality of it often differ
Brilliant conman syndrome
Content dictates form
Gas vs brakes
Notetaking workflow
A career in IA
IA is orthogonal to other disciplines
Collaboration models
Levels of distance for making change
God is in the details
Domain-driven design
Bounded contexts keep large models usable
Discussion as an activity in the classroom
How to do the reading
Create edges
Taskscape
True IA is emergent
Metaphors
Visual skeuomorphism
We form and lose memories of tabletops and landscapes at different rates
What vs. How
Process directs your attention to impact
CEO Exercise
Make friends and wait twenty years
Write it down
Creativity needs empty moments to process
Benefits of IA
Systems affect and enable certain kinds and shapes of documents
Executive presentation framework
Vocabulary is not all-purpose
Windows of opportunity
The earth is flat and square
Wayfinding for legible landscapes
Working agreement
Thinking happens on paper
The opposite of IA is doing nothing
The job will never love you back
Tabletops
Taxonomy
Signs of things going wrong
Regular output is essential for creativity
Reference systems are intrinsic to an experience
Program entrepreneurship
Program entrepreneurship for beginners
Process mitigates bias
Process teaches
Process creates resilience
Process allows you to relax
Precision and recall
Planning for enterprise adoption
Pace layers
Plan for what won't change
Personalization
Pave paths
Objects are more useful than actions
Overconfidence bias
Organizational problems manifest in the site
Nobody understands information architecture
Nobody cares about information architecture
Networking is hard
Naïve geography
Navigation in an ecosystem
Metaphors limit our technology
Multitasking
Multiple maps at different levels of detail
Method of loci
Metaphor requirements
Metadata
Maps need to be visually coded as such
Maps are more real than experience
Mapping
Man the artist
Many difficult experiences are difficult because of poor use of scale
Management philosophy
Maintain a sense of progress
Make maps
Maintain critical distance from your organization
Limit choices
Library science tradition
Letters and books diverged a long time ago
LATCH & PMEST
Language is beautifully various
Landscapes
Knowledge is constructed via connections
Intrinsic cues for reference systems
Inputs to spatial memory are functionally equivalent
Inspiration is overly abundant
Information is at least three different things
Incomplete geographic information is fine
Identify locations
IA is a creative discipline
IAs are well-suited to program entrepreneurship
IA needs community more than other fields
IA maturity model
IA is more apprenticeship than schooling
IA is everywhere and accidental
Go toward what feels most alive
Geometric cues
Generous interfaces
Gen z can't use file structures
Findability
Establish sight lines
Files are and have always been relational objects
Extrinsic cues for reference systems
Experience bias
Expedience bias
Establish precedent
Elements of information architecture
What's a documentalope?
Distance is measured in travel time
Different scales need different focuses
Creativity
Creativity is making connections
Continuity of community beyond teams
Creativity is a cycle
Create shared experiences
Controlled vocabularies promote communication
Content type
Content classification
Complexity is not complicatedness
Complex areas don't have clear answers
Community
Communication
Balance originality in life and work
Burnout
Attributes
Autotagging
Attribution bias
My expectations of people who report to me