IAC23 Schedule

This immersive workshop provides practical tactics for designing, building, maintaining, and governing taxonomies and ontologies. Based on hard-won lessons learned from work with everything from large fortune-50 enterprises to small ecommerce sites. The workshop provides: Taxonomy/Ontology basics: a foundation to start creating a consistent vocabulary within your organization. We also call out the unique needs of building a taxonomy to serve the needs of large enterprises.A framework for shifting to…

As Information Architects, we get called into projects to structure, organize, and optimize complex information systems to meet business and user goals. All too often, however, these systems are plagued by unwritten assumptions and tacit rules. Domain Modeling is an activity designed to uncover and create a shared vision of the conceptual information space—the ""Domain”—in which an organization and its users operate. This full day, hands-on workshop will situate domain…

Information architecture and UX are practiced as forms of design—the design of products, systems, and desired futures to satisfy human needs and values. In practice, we use models of ""the design process” that are over 20 years old, if not a half century old. Our field is rapidly changing, and we know that the Double Diamond doesn't tell the full story of how we work. Are existing models of the…

Extended Reality (VR, AR, MR, collectively XR) promises to change, or possibly replace, the world around us, immersing us in a different ""here and now”, be it a company-controlled Metaverse, a remote location on Earth, a fictional world, or a different, augmented version of our home or of familiar places such as our workplace or our favorite supermarket. But XR "elsewheres” are unique blends of digital and physical that introduce…

Use design for good—create consentful tech for people, mitigate hate & bring ethics to the forefront. This workshop will give you the questions to ask & the tactics for creating new ways to engage with your users/customers without creating harm.

A well-designed workshop is an excellent way to get things done. And as UXers, our skills uniquely position us to help clients and teams explore options and come to consensus, both in person and online. But successful workshops don't happen by accident. And workshop design and facilitation aren't really taught in school or on the job. Workshop 101 gives participants a flexible workshop-building framework. Participants will explore workshop activities, tools,…

Are you new to information architecture? This workshop teaches you the basic things you need to design digital places where information is easier to find and understand.

This workshop provides a framework to address scale in enterprise information environments, so you can create information architectures that are more coherent across systems and platforms, more resilient to organizational evolution, and more sustainable and useful over time as the organization changes. Workshop activities focus on practical, real-world examples with common enterprise systems like SharePoint, ServiceNow, Workday, SAP, OneDrive, Box, Slack, Teams, and low-code application environments like Appian and Power…

Join Dan Klyn for this half-day workshop, which is designed to equip participants with the BASIC framework for looking at the architectures of complex systems.   Attendees will get out of the conference hotel and into the streets of downtown New Orleans in a facilitated exploration of the myriad ways that features in the built environment are configured by people to store, distribute, and reify different kinds of information. No special…

Heard about Card Sorting and Tree Testing but not sure where to start? Ready for some hands-on fun with these techniques? This workshop explores the who, what, when, where, why, and how of Card Sorting and Tree Testing. Great for novices and for intermediate practitioners looking to refine this skillset.

If you are new to the IA Conference (IAC) in-person, this session is for you. Led by an experienced member of the IAC community, this session is meant to give you a broad overview of the whole event and how to make the best of it.

Get to know other first-timers and meet IAC veterans over dinner. Each dinner is hosted by two long-time members of the community.  The reservations are made and all you have to do is cover your food and drinks.  Space is limited. See March 14 email for details! Contact info@theiaconference.com if you have any questions.

Farai will talk about how you and your manager can use your One-on-One meetings (1:1s) to manage change and unlock meaningful career progress.

There is a growing interest in knowledge graphs to organize information and make it findable in organizations with large amounts of data and content. Unlike other data technologies, a knowledge graph has a structure that is typically based on a taxonomy and ontology, and thus should involve information architects. Knowledge graphs also have more benefits than information findability, including discovery, analysis, and recommendation. Knowledge graphs bring together content and data.An…

Experience debt never sleeps. As our digital ecosystems grow ever more complex, the ensuing content sprawl pays IAs no favors. And yet, data-driven designs—from notifications to recommendations—can start small, and even stay small, while delivering powerful results. This talk will highlight: A personalization model showing the base parameters (ingredients) required of every automated or personalized interaction (recipe)The zone-targeting method of isolating small "precincts” of your digital experience's surface area to…

Information is not a thing. It's a resource. Information is somewhat useful when we consume it. That's reading a book, scanning social media, or listening to a podcast. But information is vastly more useful when we break it down, mix it together, and transform it into something else. That's how patterns are revealed. That's how problems get solved. That's how understanding develops. It's also how we generate insights—that revelatory moment…

We gain resilience from each other! In just 20 minutes, you'll learn how to facilitate strong collaboration between CS and UX leaders on your teams. Goodwin brings over 15 years of experience in UX and is passionate about CS as a critical part of the UX practice. By learning each other's "side of the story”, UX and CS can see how they're really both sides of the same coin and…

You experience interactive rhythm whenever you scroll a social network feed, play an online game, or compose a PowerPoint slide. Eleven years have passed since Rhythm and Flow was last discussed at this conference in New Orleans. It's time to revisit the topic, evaluate how far we've come, and update the findings and recommendations. Hint: not all of it has been healthy. Where are we today, and how can we…

Enterprise software systems create and store massive amounts of data created by the processes carried out within them. But, that data isn't automatically useful information for assessing those processes. System data represents the translation of the reality of the processes as understood and enacted by people into the structure of the system. What data is captured and how it's structured represents what happened in the system, but the relationship of…

Being “the first” to do something can come with a lot of reward. It’s the classic superhero tale that proves the “impossible” possible. At the same time, it’s not always happily ever after. What happens after you’ve reached your goal or after you’ve slayed the dragons of adversity and won the war? This inspirational session provides a non traditional approach to product design. Looking through the lens of adversity through…

Around the world not everyone views time in the same way, and its perception has a striking impact on how cultures have developed and how they act both in business and in the personal sphere. Time and its understanding affect more than how we schedule or how we structure our days, and they are one of the many dimensions we should be aware of when we are working among other…

It takes effort to cross boundaries The primary goal of Information Architecture is moving information across boundaries: From one place to another, from one person to another. Boundaries can be created by distance, culture, language or experience. Systems, workflows, organizations, or interfaces also present boundaries, each with its own set of challenges that need to be addressed. Understanding the information, senders, receivers, and technology allows IAs to mitigate the friction…

Using clear language is an ethical imperative in today's world. Learn why, and see how you can ensure your communications are clear by following the eight guidelines for writing with plain language.

Governance can help people to manage change. It allows us to both respond to changes in our environment and to direct changes in the behaviors of our organization. This session will explore the architectural elements of governance and identify the dynamics of how people interact with various parameters. We'll explore the inter-relationships between various nodes: actors, groups, roles, rules, incentives, access, availability, and permissions. The talk will draw on the…

Emotion has always played a role in how humans make sense of the world, yet taxonomies, categorization and information architecture practice tend to privilege logic over affect. While UX methods like card sorting and tree testing don't necessarily dictate to users what criteria they must use to create categories and arrange content (especially if its open or hybrid card sorting), these methods are still generally considered quantitative and encourage users…

Design Principles are guiding values that help members of any organization ask constructive questions and make decisions that pull the organization in a unified direction. Hear how we made ours, and let us help you start yours!

We no longer need to be in-person to have great workshops. Over the past few years, we learned how to navigate remote workshops. While in-person and remote workshops had level playing fields in their own right, we're faced with a new challenge. Many teams are hybrid, and hybrid workshops don't always create a level playing field for participants But that doesn't have to be the case! In this talk, you'll…

After an ideation workshop it can be hard to know what to do next. This session will take you through a concept testing framework that is fast and focuses on the right things to help your team prioritize and iterate.

Connecting the Past to our Future: The Call for Resilience and Inclusivity in our Information Structures As the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States, which catalogs and manages over 179 petabytes of our cultural data, it is essential that the Library of Congress adapt, innovate, and continuously improve. Much resilience is needed to preserve the past and meet the needs of the present, let alone plan for the…

Non-information. Dark UI patterns. Misinformation. Unclear terms of use. Misuse of personal data. Our sources of information have shifted from editor-supervised to algorithm-derived, and expanded. Published in 1989 and 2001, Information Anxiety and Information Anxiety 2 by Richard Saul Wurman spoke of the deluge of "bits” and proposed solutions including the importance of a questioning and curious human perspective and the need for human control of the bits. Controlling the…

We've all seen the cute dog with the fire raging all around, proclaiming "this is fine" when things are anything but. We've often *been* that cute dog: stuck in situations that are a bit out of hand but that we have no choice but to get through. When things feel like they're being enveloped in flames, people have the tendency to look to their leaders — not just for answers, but…

Expanding Information Access: Conceptualizing Conversational Dialogues with Black Older Adults

Complex applications that support experts' specialized work with large amounts of content and data like cloud computing, user analytics, or catalogs depend on good information architecture to make them usable. Come hear an overview of the best UI patterns for handling complexity and density and how to grow them over time because, yes, that complicated thing you're managing is only going to become more so.

How do we stay resilient in a fast changing, media and tech infused world? It’s easy to get overwhelmed juggling our many responsibilities, info sources & notifications, or the many ways we might pivot our company’s strategy. We’ll talk a bit about brain chemistry & structure, this fast changing world, and then a few tools to stay resilient. With mental fitness, we know we can’t avoid the surprises, but we…

I'm living in this liminal space. I'm in a transition, but to what, I don't know. For 10 years, I saw working in our field not only as my career, but as my home. And then, at the beginning of 2021, I left. At first, I believed what I told others. I had left in order to become a writer. I set up a Substack, and I sent 500-1000 word…

"Headless” CMS tools, in which the structure of content is decoupled from its presentation as "pages” on the front end, have seen rapid and growing adoption over the last several years. This is with good reason: decoupled approaches to content are unrivaled in their support for creating flexible, reusable omnichannel and personalization-ready content. In practice, however, many organizations struggle with adopting a "decoupled” mindset: when our familiar "page-focused” shortcuts for…

This case study reviews the successes from a recent knowledge management implementation that used new ways to harvest knowledge from the minds of scientists and engineers at a small tech company near Seattle, while providing a systematic way to enhance internal search and content management systems. Implementing a knowledge management framework has been (and still is) a mystery to many knowledge workers. These examples will help you understand more about…

Spaghetti Diagrams, Lasagna Models. As IAs we look at our projects and at the world through different levels of abstraction. When faced with complicated systems we can make sense of them by documenting the minutiae, or sometimes by simplifying things into tidy relationships. Join Mike for a fresh roll through the messy and organized ways we visualize things. Spoiler warning: it's okay to order spaghetti and lasagna.

For Information Architecture to become embedded in the product development process, we must use the language of product: What user problems does IA solve and what are the commercial/organizational benefits of IA? The methods of IA can be explained later once you have buy-in. In this talk I will share ideas and approaches: A better way to explain IA to product people/stakeholdersShow the impact of IA through identifying the targeted…

IA, as "design for understanding," is needed in many places in our digitalized society. However, IA is recognized as required as a specification of a created artifact. However, when IA is viewed not only as a deliverable but also as a process to be considered, the process in which teams collaborate toward the deliverable to be created can find its value. In this session, using the concept of boundary objects…

Are accessibility and inclusion part of an information architect's responsibilities? We maintain that they are not just a part but an important part of doing great IA work. In this fast-paced session, we will discuss the reasons why and share several examples of inclusive and exclusive IA. Attendees will leave with a renewed sense of purpose and a job aid to keep and share with their teams to help keep…

Information architecture is broken or missing in too many UX settings. Let's talk about fixing that, especially in the enterprise world. Let's dismantle the Dribbleization of design and focus on intentional architecture.

As an information architect or UX content strategist working on enterprise systems, large, significant changes are often the outcome of the work. We are change management professionals in disguise, and this presentation will detail the skills the presenter learned while failing as a young Peace Corps volunteer, and how she applies them to a holistic information architecture practice.

In this talk I would like to share with you a successful story about a project that made a difference in my career and made me a UX advocate. This project showed the value of UX and how using the right methods at the right time can bring a project to a higher level. One day, I overheard my manager talking about a tool called bridal configurator. By conducting a…

Join Noreen as she shares how being curious and exploring the edges of our discipline can help us stay resilient in times of uncertainty. As the job market shifts, it's natural to feel apprehensive, but by feeling our way to the places where IA connects with other disciplines, we can discover fresh ideas, emerging trends, and untapped opportunities. Noreen will map out a path to help you focus your curiosity…

Driving human-centered change requires resilience, efficiency, energy. In this talk, senior UX research leader, Alesha Arp, will share how to maintain resilience, employ effective collaboration techniques, and recharge your energy to catalyze change.

This talk explores the power of long-form narratives as a way to improve organizational velocity and avoid the trap of business-as-usual. As companies struggle to effectively address their future, narratives serve as a way to explore change and support resilience. While a chaotic present can rob us of clear vision, long-form narratives can help increase organizational velocity while avoiding the traps of business-as-usual. Amazon had famously banned PowerPoint presentations in…

When the pandemic caused the Washington Metro to make an abrupt shift to remote work, the focus of a project to eliminate legacy paper records and relocate to much smaller office buildings shifted to helping a bureaucracy which had no culture of remote work be able to work remotely, literally overnight. This presentation discusses what we learned about taxonomy while working on the railroad, and how we helped Metro begin…

Enlightenment means many things. A state of wisdom, a well informed understanding, an elevation of knowledge. Enlightenment often includes mindfulness, the practice of being present and focused in the moment. Design can sometimes feel nearly opposite, out of the box, haphazard, abstract, and creative, pulling inspiration from a variety of sources and situations and thrown on the wall like spaghetti to see if it sticks. How can we enlighten our…

Whether we're talking about design, content, search, or engineering, we all need an information model that captures what the user needs and cares about. But we don't all need the same parts, or even start in the same place. I'll look at information modeling approaches I've encountered across programming, design, content architecture, and SEO teams, and the priorities they serve. Then I'll share how we can integrate these approaches to…

The first generation of IAs are still out there, many of us now in leadership roles, often on product teams, or coaching up-and-coming professionals. In this panel, three veterans will reflect on what happens once you've "made it" and whether it's possible to find purposeful satisfying stable work without an overhanging sense that just one more raise, promotion, or opportunity will finally get us "there."

We are IAs and We Matter We live in the information age. Never before has the need for design, construction, and organization of information been greater. Never before has humankind needed people who think deeply about planning and designing information to make sense to other people. That's where you come in. Whether you have the title "information architect” or not, you are responsible for creating systems of organization, classification, labeling,…

Knowledge models are always a work in progress. Ontologies modeling knowledge domains and the controlled vocabularies describing specific instances within those domains change and evolve over time. Language is fluid, and new terms and concepts are surfacing to reflect change just as old terminology is retired from use. Disruptions in an organization, such as a merger and acquisition or a global pandemic, have repercussions in an organization's information landscape. When…

A student-hosted community conversation about our hopes, fears, and ideals around diversity, equity, and inclusivity on the teams and in the workplaces where UX design and research get done in our world today. On Saturday afternoon, please join 5 graduate students from the University of Michigan School of Information in a structured conversation about prospects for career development, personal growth, and social justice in the global community of IA practice…

Are Information Architects a thing of the past? Or the only folks out there who are going to make sense of this mess? And if not them, who is best positioned to shepherd the structure of our shared information spaces into a better state? How do we ‘future proof' our discipline? In this debate, we'll pit industry experts against each other to determine answers to these questions and more, once…

You found a profession that you love. Maybe love is too strong for you, maybe you just enjoy it. You've learned, you've grown, you've arrived. And then, CHANGE. You get a new boss, and they don't like the way things are done. Or you find out from a peer that the best practices have changed in light of new regulations. Perhaps a global pandemic suddenly changes the way the world…

Companies, governments and humanitarian entities are capturing, storing and sharing an ever increasing volume of identity data, much of it pertaining to "third party" individuals who may never interact directly with the databases where their data is stored. While many countries have enacted legislation to establish baseline safety protocols for protecting personal data, and online privacy and security standards like GDPR are becoming more ubiquitous, the reality is that protecting…

One primary tension in taxonomy construction is between best practices (as defined by various taxonomy standards) and practical (business) requirements. That is: the tension is between categorization according to *what things are* versus *where people will look for them*. How can we balance or reconcile these priorities? Can we model our way out of them? And what are the options? This issue is paramount in Topic taxonomies; Topic or Subject…

Working in a fast-paced environment, but instead of enjoying innovation driven transformation you're feeling trapped in daily chaos? Make change fun! Learn how to:- Create a safe space to express your frustrations about organizational change- Find a way to start positive & constructive discussions- Use new, practical strategies in order to tackle change efficiently in real life Join us in connecting concepts such as system dynamics, pace layers and game…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is dramatically changing—reshaping—the human and design landscape of computers, the internet, and society. It is increasingly used in engines behind many decision-making tools and information resources, as well as in machines (vehicles, drones, robots, etc.). AI uses information models, structured data/content, real-world contextual sensor data, and formalized instructions to shape the machine's "understanding” of information spaces and tasks. These elements are familiar to anyone working in the…

Digital media, and software in particular, is a very verbose, very precise incantation of how we want an information system to behave. The highest level of detail, however, is also the most perishable, with material trading off precision for durability. The Specificity Gradient is a framework for thinking about all of the precursor material: the research, prototypes, documents, that go into product development, as well as a general process for…

Content strategists sometimes talk about structured content as a panacea. Good structure sets content free, we say: it helps content teams adapt to change as new channels proliferate, and it guarantees resilience by 'future-proofing' content. But that's not how it always works in practice. Sometimes, even getting stakeholders interested in structured content is a challenge – they can't get on top of content in a single channel, so the future…

Explore the lessons learned from using practices and principles of Information Architecture and service design methods to develop a game that teaches service innovation. Investigate the game as a thinking and teaching tool that produces new methods of connection between people, organizational units and subject matters. Join the journey to deconstruct the principles and methods of service innovation in order to reconstruct them in a serious game. Find out how…

Wendy will speak about how we continue to evolve IA as the entire design in tech industry matures and recenter around inclusive, people-first methods...