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IAC: Information Architecture conference

IAC: Information Architecture conference

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Home / Past conferences / IAC 2020

IAC 2020

Online

Sense and Sensemaking

This year we want to celebrate the science of making sense and and the art of making mischief. We want to talk about how, when and why we encode, transmit, receive and interpret information. We’ll discuss what we can perceive and make available to the senses, the intelligence we use to interpret and understand things and the intentional actions that result when things make sense. In New Orleans we’ll explore sense-making (with a dose of serendipity) to see how we make sense of the world and the futures we face.


Co-Chairs

Sandra Lloyd
Noreen Whysel
Dan Ramsden

Keynote Speakers

Abby Covert
Amy Ross
Cassini Nazir
Christian Crumlish
Mutale Nkonde
Regine Gilbert

Preconference Workshops

May 13, 2020

4:00 PM to 8:00 PM CT

$149

Applied Designing Connected Content

Content is the whole point of the digital products we create. It needs to be omni-channel, ready for AI and machine learning, and easily maintained. It needs to be connected explicitly so computers can extract meaning and deliver it in a meaningful way to the intended audience. Information architects, content strategists, and product managers are responsible for creating the foundation on which to build information spaces. Since Designing Connected Content…

Headshot for Carrie Hane
Carrie Hane

April 10, 2020

CT

$149

Building Up, Building Down: Content Modeling For Projects That Have To Ship

In modern digital publishing projects, content modeling can feel like a high wire act, balancing an organization’s big communication dreams against the ugly realities of design, technology, and legacy content constraints. Tilt too far in either direction, and the project falls. Fortunately, there’s good news! By approaching content modeling as a communications challenge rather than One More Deliverable, it’s possible to design better, more accurate models in less time than…

Jeff Eaton
Jeff Eaton
Greg Dunlap
Greg Dunlap

May 14, 2020

4:00 PM to 8:00 PM CT

$149

Collaborative Improv: Building Better Products Through Improvisation

Flexibility within project dynamics is a key to success – be it adapting to project dynamics, client needs, or interpersonal relationships. Improvisational theater offers many constructs to “go with the flow” and build on our teammates ideas, successes, and even where we stumble. This workshop teaches the foundations of improv and provides direct correlations to UX research, design, and collaboration. Practitioners of all skill levels are welcome, and no previous…

David Farkas
David Farkas

May 12, 2020

4:00 PM to 8:00 PM CT

$149

Designing and Building Taxonomies for the Enterprise

This immersive workshop provides practical tactics for designing, building and maintaining 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…

May 14, 2020

4:00 PM to 8:00 PM CT

$149

Effective Human-Machine Conversation

Like any other designed outcome, good conversational experiences don’t happen by accident. Whether you’e augmenting your skills or shifting your career toward voice apps and chatbots, you’ll need additional tools, abilities, and product methods. Come dive deep into the new world. Conversational interfaces are powered and constrained by hard- wired psychological, linguistic, and environmental boundaries that make even state-of-the-art conversational technologies a challenge to implement successfully. Mapping out and structuring…

Phillip Hunter

April 10, 2020

CT

$149

Information Architecture Essentials

More of our transactions and social interactions are moving online every day. People access these digital products and services using a growing variety of devices: notebook computers, mobile phones, wearables, voice-driven smart assistants, and more. Good experience requires that these systems be coherent and understandable. As a result, information architecture (IA) is more important today than ever before. This full-day workshop is an introduction to information architecture by one of…

Jorge Arango
Jorge Arango

Main Sessions

April 10, 2020

CT

A Different Animal: .govs and Designing for a Dead Horse

Government websites don’t have a reputation for CX excellence. Often, that’s because – like most large, institutional sites – they bring with them many unique challenges: Architectures driven by org-charts, out-of-date content, complicated polyhierarchies for wide-ranging services. Sometimes, customers just need simple answers to simple questions, like: who do I contact to report a dead horse? We’ll take a look at the practical methods we employed in our award-winning redesign…

Jaime Shycko
Javier Ruiz

April 10, 2020

CT

A hard look in the mirror: language, structure, and privilege in IA

As information architects, we deal in categorising information and using language to give meaning to the categories we create. This shapes the world around us. The categories we create determine what is deemed possible/impossible, real/unreal, natural/unnatural. Our work is hence not only a matter of sense-making but also of meaning-making: it normalises certain ways of living while obscuring or even invalidating others. Inspired by critical discourse studies, a discipline that…

Lara Portmann

April 10, 2020

CT

A Sensible Framework for Information Architecture Projects

Learn about a proven framework for structuring your next IA project. This talk will discuss a framework for structuring IA projects that has been successfully used for projects ranging from small targeted interventions to site redesigns to large scale restructuring of multi-site ecosystems. The framework was developed by a team of IAs and has been refined over the course of a hundred+ projects. The whole framework will be discussed, but…

Bob Royce
Bob Royce

April 10, 2020

CT

Adventures in User-centric Taxonomy: Getting Job Seeker Feedback into the Back-end

Indeed’s mission is to help people get jobs, and we constantly strive to provide the best search experience. This presentation focuses on job seekers in the healthcare industry and describes how an agile collaboration among UX, Product, and Taxonomy enabled us to make sense of our users’ feedback and incorporate their mental models into the back-end. Our journey started with the realization that, as Margaret Kelsey from InVision noted, “Design…

Leora Yardenay
Amanda Krauss
Alexandra Teodorescu

April 10, 2020

CT

All Sorts Great and Small: Reflections on Card Sorts, Citizen Engagement, and Creating Better Federal Government Website IAs

In 2012, President Barack Obama introduced his Digital Government Strategy (DGS) attempting to create citizen-centric Federal Government websites and requiring that they include Voice Of the Citizen/Consumer (VOC) feedback mechanisms. This gave rise to a new breed of US Government websites and helped usher in an era of digital citizen engagement, including the development of a Federal Government-centric approach to usability testing activities. This presentation provides a brief overview of…

Headshot of Jeff Pass, a middle-aged, bald, bearded white male wearing glasses, a shirt, jacket and pocket square, with a squinting smile.
Jeffrey Ryan Pass

April 10, 2020

CT

Become a Synthesis Savant – From Messy Data to Meaningful Insights

Overwhelmed trying to uncover something meaningful from messy enterprise data? Today’s decision-makers are deluged with data, which is likely structured inconsistently and pulled from multiple functional teams or problem spaces. Questions are constantly evolving, and the boundaries between projects may be indistinct. Hone your skills as a Synthesis Savant to succeed amidst the chaos. Join us to learn effective techniques for finding insights within the complexity and creating compelling stories…

Sarah Flamion

May 7, 2020

CT

Being is Believing: Engaging a sense of space with 360-video storytelling

360-video storytelling has the potential to upend the audience experience from that of looking into a framed scene to free exploring an active space. This immersive experience not only expands the canvas of the creator but offers the audience free choice in navigation that offers an experience that is more akin to video-game than traditional video. Beyond the gee whiz factor of the medium, there is a key shift in…

Ravi Jain

April 10, 2020

CT

Beyond “Politically Correct”: How to stay up-to-date on correct inclusive terminology

Using the correct terminology and not offending people feels like it’s getting harder and harder, even when you have the best of intentions! You want your product or website to be inclusive, but you didn’t get the memo when LGBT became LGBTQ+ or LGBTQIA… In 7 minutes, we’ll explore reputable, up-to-date sources of inclusive language and other ways to know who to listen to when it comes to the “right”…

Sam Raddatz
Sam Raddatz
View all sessions

Posters

7th Academics and Practitioners IA Roundtable and Make-a-Thon

Presenter(s): Dan Zollman, Sarah Rice, and Andrea Resmini

A Scenario Creation Tool for Ethical Design (Ethics & IA V2.0)

Presenter(s): Jeffrey Ryan Pass

Accessible Gateways

Presenter(s): Shari Thurow

But Why are They Round?

Presenter(s): Kat King

Card Sorting with GitHub

Presenter(s): Shannon McHarg

Chat with Polar Bear Bot

Presenter(s):

CO-oPS: Community Oversight for Privacy and Security

Presenter(s): Christy LaPerriere and Zaina Aljallad

Cognitive Load: The Elephant in the Room

Presenter(s): Rajeev Subramanian

Communicating Domain Knowledge: The Outcome Map

Presenter(s): Michael Zummo

View posters

Sponsor IAC

We’re looking for organizations who share our commitment to building and sustaining programs that drive a more inclusive industry. Learn more on the Sponsor IAC23 page or contact us directly at info@theiaconference.com for more information.

Thanks to this year’s sponsors!

Logo for sponsor Optimal Workshop
Platinum sponsor
Optimal Workshop
Logo for sponsor Factor Firm
Gold sponsor
Factor Firm
Logo for sponsor Last Call Media
Silver sponsor
Last Call Media
Logo for sponsor Design for Context
Scholarship sponsor
Design for Context

Logo for sponsor A Book Apart
In-Kind sponsor
A Book Apart
Logo for sponsor Balsamiq
In-Kind sponsor
Balsamiq
Logo for sponsor MURAL
In-Kind sponsor
MURAL
Logo for sponsor Rosenfeld Media
In-Kind sponsor
Rosenfeld Media
Logo for sponsor UX Camp DC
Community sponsor
UX Camp DC
Logo for sponsor World IA Day
Community sponsor
World IA Day

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