Writing

This is my ongoing file box of notes. Nothing in here is ever really done, it’s where I work out ideas and develop new work. If you’re curious how it works, I’ve written up my process.

Working agreement

Uses of geographic knowledge

Sondheim's creative principles

Technical architects and IAs

Create edges

Architecture is what's expensive to change

IA maturity model

If your org was going to result in good IA, it already would have

Taskscape

Systems

Community

Attention is the beginning of devotion

IA is a creative discipline

Process

Spandrels

A pattern library of architectures

Information technologies travel together

Information technology bends toward speed

A history of navigation affordances

Vertical files

Switching between reference systems

Speak to be understood

Spatial scale

Spatial knowledge is phenomenal

Something good

Relevance can be system- or user-based

Biases are cognitively alluring

Counter stress with moments of joy

Moving up and down the ladder of abstraction

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

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

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

Vocabulary is not all-purpose

Executive presentation framework

Windows of opportunity

The earth is flat and square

Wayfinding for legible landscapes

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

Precision and recall

Process creates resilience

Process allows you to relax

Planning for enterprise adoption

Plan for what won't change

Personalization

Pave paths

Pace layers

Objects are more useful than actions

Overconfidence bias

Organizational problems manifest in the site

Navigation in an ecosystem

Nobody understands information architecture

Nobody cares about information architecture

Networking is hard

Naïve geography

Multitasking

Multiple maps at different levels of detail

Method of loci

Metaphors limit our technology

Mapping

Metaphor requirements

Metadata

Maps need to be visually coded as such

Maps are more real than experience

Man the artist

Many difficult experiences are difficult because of poor use of scale

Management philosophy

Make maps

Maintain critical distance from your organization

Maintain a sense of progress

Letters and books diverged a long time ago

Limit choices

Library science tradition

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 everywhere and accidental

IAs are well-suited to program entrepreneurship

IA needs community more than other fields

IA is more apprenticeship than schooling

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

Communication

Balance originality in life and work

Burnout

Attributes

Autotagging

Attribution bias

My expectations of people who report to me