Information is at the center of human behavior, and how we build functional things.

  • It’s our reason to articulate
  • It’s what we organize, code, and process
  • It’s the tools we build, our research, our money, and our libraries
  • It’s the data, software, process, and objects that we use to understand and navigate our world
  • It builds up into culture and society
  • All our emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and actions are predicated on information

Coherence is built

and benefits from thoughtfully designed information architecture.

connecting:

  • between your content and your app,
  • amongst a software ecology,
  • in a functional design system,
  • in complex backend and internal processes,
  • where information describes and helps us understand the physical

designed well, it enables:

  • high-craft teams
  • subject matter experts
  • customer-facing teams
  • representatives
  • admininstrators
  • C-suite
  • customers

—-

In our lived experience, information patterns emerge. Put IT in the mix, and what is emergent isn’t captured — there isn’t a place to save it in most environments. Look for what you know exists, and it will find the matches that proves its value. But the flip side has real impact, too:

  • What isn’t built, can’t be captured
  • What isn’t in the database, can’t be linked
  • What doesn’t have a connection, isn’t navigable
  • What someone can’t get to, isn’t findable
  • Data that isn’t captured, can’t be linked, isn’t navigable, and isn’t findable: can’t be used — even if the physical being it represents is eating your toe
  • Just because there’s no input field for eye color, doesn’t mean eyes don’t exist, nor have color. It just means that whoever decided to leave it out thought it wasn’t connected, and is now imposing that belief — right or wrong — on the person filling out the inputs, and who might use that data
  • Right-sizing data at every step is the key to traction

Building by imposition — from the top down — sets up for a multitude of failures.

Building from the bottom up, combining in-the-weeds expertise with information literacy and information architecture sets people up for success.