Dan Klyn teaches information architecture at the University of Michigan School of Information while maintaining an active consulting and training practice through The Understanding Group (TUG), which he co-founded.

For more than a decade, he led TUG’s IA practice, delivering strategic information architecture solutions for clients including Apple, Ford Motor Company, WalMart, The Kresge Foundation, The Ford Foundation, MIT and Yale University Libraries.

Klyn’s art-historical research into “the architecture part of information architecture” in the early 2000s led him to Richard Saul Wurman, beginning a collaboration that has defined his career trajectory ever since.

As custodian and curator of the Richard Saul Wurman Archive, Klyn has been developing an authorized biography since 2010, positioning him as a key steward of the history of information architecture’s roots in the built-environment practices of Louis I. Kahn and Murphy Levy Wurman.

Past president of the Information Architecture Institute and co-creator of World Information Architecture Day, Klyn enjoys the liminal space between academic theory and professional practice.

His writings on information architecture philosophy appear in Advances in Information Architecture (2021) and Reframing Information Architecture (2014).

He holds degrees from Wayne State University (MLIS) and the University of Michigan (BA English Literature), and lives with his high-school sweetheart and a few of their kids near Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Research: Spatial Hermeneutics, Architecture, Philosophy