The Architecture of Understanding (Peter Morville at Enterprise UX 2015)

The Architecture

of Understanding

Peter Morville, Enterprise UX 2015

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The Library of Congress“To further the progress of knowledge and

creativity.”

FragmentationFragmentation into multiple sites, domains, and identities is a major problem. Users don’t know which site to visit for which purpose.

Findability Users can’t find what they need from the home page, but most users don’t come through the front door. They enter via a web search or a deep link, and are confused by what they find. Even worse, most never use the Library, because its resources aren’t easily findable.

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Web Governance Board

Nature

Isle Royale National Park

Planning

Inspiration

Planning

PlayingPracticin

g

“With respect to learning by failure, it’s all fun and games until someone gets a larval cyst in

the brain.”

“There is a problem in discussing systems only with words. Words and sentences must, by necessity, come only one at a time in linear, logical order. Systems happen all at once. They are connected not just in one direction, but in many directions simultaneously.”

“It is the responsibility of the

architect to know and

concentrate on the critical

few details and interfaces

that really matter.”

The design and management

of information systems.

Understanding the nature of information in systems.

Categories

Categories are the cornerstones of cognition and culture.

We use radio buttons when checkboxes or sliders would reveal the truth.

Connections

HyperlinksPages

Web

PathsPlaces

Space

ConnectionsCategories

Mind

ConsequencesActions

Time

“The system always kicks back.”

If you think information architecture hasn’t changed

since the polar bear, you’re simply not paying attention.

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“Tell me about a day in your life.”

“How can I know what I think until I see what I say?”

Culture

Double-loop learning in organizations (and individuals) is rare.

The relationship between information and culture.

“There’s a secret about MRIs

and back pain: the most

common problems physicians

see on MRI and attribute to

back pain – herniated, ruptured,

and bulging discs – are seen

almost as commonly on MRIs of

healthy people without back

pain.”

“If you want to accelerate

someone’s death, give him

a personal doctor. I don’t

mean provide him with a

bad doctor. Just pay for

him to choose his own.

Any doctor will do.”

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Limits

Daylighting

Daylighting

“Where architects use forms and spaces to design

environments for inhabitation, information architects

use nodes and links to create environments for

understanding.”

Jorge Arango, Architectures (2011)

Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas

Vitruvius, De Architectura (15 BC)

“Each step is a potential place: place

to worship, place to wash, place to

sell, place to sleep, place to die and

be burned.”

Donlyn Lyndon (1962)

No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it.

morville@semanticstudios.com

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The library is an act of inspiration architecture and a keystone of culture.

Thank You!IA Therefore I Am