A Model for Information Environments
A Five-Minute Summary for the “Reframe IA” Workshop
IA Summit Baltimore MD | 2013
Andrew Hinton | @inkblurt
Information Architect |The Understanding Group (TUG)

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
What do we mean by
“ Information Environment” ??
Notes: For over a decade, the community that calls this conference home has defined
information architecture as, in part, "the structural design of shared information environments,"
yet we still lack a consensus for what we mean by that phrase.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: This has contributed in many ways to a years-long circular discourse about what IA is
and does, preventing IA from having a central, shared domain as a community of practice that
can properly evolve into a full-fledged discipline.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
YOU ARE NOT
YOUR F***ING
WIREFRAMES.
Notes: It has also contributed to the perception of IA as a bucket of methods one can learn in a
day-long workshop, or as a narrow specialization for fussy card-catalogers, or worse yet a
backward vocation for wireframe fetishists. Image: Fight Club
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: I contend that, rather than a fuzzily meaningless phrase of weasel-words, “information
environment” is a sound concept that only requires more effort on our part to fully articulate
and develop into a real foundation for understanding our medium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mustela_nivalis_-British_Wildlife_Centre-4.jpg
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
START
HERE
Notes: Rather than starting with technology and information theory, I believe IA’s best value
comes from starting with deeper, core layers of perception, cognition, and language – the
slower moving foundations underneath the areas of typical focus.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: I should point out that these ideas borrow from a movement some have called “radical
embodied cognition theory” that seeks to replace conventional cognitive science. Embodied
cognition argues that cognition is a whole-body perceptual system, with the brain in a supporting
role.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: The model outlines three
modes for how we experience
information: ecological, semantic,
and digital. Let me be clear that this
People communicating with people. is not an academic definition of
information, or a comprehensive
model. It’s offered as a pragmatic
Semantic step toward something we can use
in practice.
Digital
Ecological 10100010
01001000
10100010
01001000
01110011 01110011
Digital systems transmitting to
& receiving from other digital
systems.
Animals (including people) perceiving the environment.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: The ecological mode has to
do with the relationship an animal
has with its so-called physical
environment. It’s the intrinsic,
People communicating with people. structural information we perceive in
the surfaces and objects of nature
and the built environment.
Semantic
Digital
Ecological 10100010
01001000
10100010
01001000
01110011 01110011
Digital systems transmitting to
& receiving from other digital
systems.
Animals (including people) perceiving the environment.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: This mode is based on the perception science of ecological psychologist James J
Gibson. It posits that cognition comes from bodily perception of intrinsic information about
affordances “picked up” from the structural qualities of our environment.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
AFFORDANCE = INFORMATION IN THE ENVIRONMENT
SPECIFYING AFFORDANCE FOR BODILY ACTION
Notes: In fact, Gibson is the originator of the concept of “affordance” – an idea that has been
popularized and appropriated inaccurately since Gibson’s final work in the 1970s. Gibson
believed all perception to be perception of environmental affordances.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: This is rich work that is impossible to fully
explain in a five-minute summary. But I believe it to be
essential for us, because I believe an embodied
understanding of ecological information to be the first
principle upon which everything else rests.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: The second mode for
information is “semantic.” This is
information we pick up from
language for communication
People communicating with people. between people. It includes oral
speech, and written text, as well as
graphical communication such as
Semantic pictures, maps, icons, and
diagrams.
Digital
Ecological 10100010
01001000
10100010
01001000
01110011 01110011
Digital systems transmitting to
& receiving from other digital
systems.
Animals (including people) perceiving the environment.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
LANGUAGE
IS
ENVIRONMENT
Notes: Language itself is not information. It is environment. Our cognition perceives language by
using exapted mechanisms that evolved from ecological perception of the physical world, as birds
evolved to exapt warming feathers for flight.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
LANGUAGE
MAKES
ARCHITECTURE
Notes: The semantic mode is what we tend to focus on for information architecture practice. But
what’s often missing is the realization that by creating and connecting labels – “mere language” –
we’re actually creating architecture.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
LANGUAGE
IS
INFRASTRUCTURE
Notes: That is because language is infrastructure. And we create inhabited environments with it –
whether through conversations, games, corporate structures, or even government-defining
constitutions. Not to mention software.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
LABEL
LABEL
LABEL
RULES
LABEL
LABEL
Notes: Information architecture works with written and visual language in the form of labels,
connections and rules, to create inhabited structures, and bring sense-making and place-making
to our environment.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: The third mode, Digital
information is the coded symbols
and rules made for (and even by)
machines to communicate with
People communicating with people. machines. This is a mode we
normally don’t experience directly,
but mainly in its effects on the
Semantic ecological and semantic modes.
Digital
Ecological 10100010
01001000
10100010
01001000
01110011 01110011
Digital systems transmitting to
& receiving from other digital
systems.
Animals (including people) perceiving the environment.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Notes: Pervasive digital information technology has
disrupted the previously invariant affordances in which
we evolved. This has made necessary an explicit,
sophisticated attention to how language functions as
environment.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
DIGITAL
SEMANTIC
ECOLOGICAL
Notes: In all, this model is a step toward re-framing information architecture as environmental
architecture of the semantic landscape, with knowledgeable attention to the ecological and digital
modes and their interdependencies.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
DIGITAL
SEMANTIC
ECOLOGICAL
Notes: This frame frees IA from the trappings of specific techniques and technologies. Instead it
more clearly positions IA where I believe it has always been: as architecture for an essential
dimension of our shared reality.
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE

ANDREW HINTON
A MODEL FOR INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS
Andrew Hinton
andrewhinton.com | @inkblurt
TUG | understandinggroup.org
For the full “position paper” in PDF form:
http://inkblurt.com/media/Hinton_IAS_reframe_wo
rkshop2013.pdf
Ideas from this short talk adapted from an in-
progress book on how information creates and
shapes context.
http://www.inkblurt.com/contextbook/
REFRAMING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A ROUND TABLE WORKSHOP AT THE IA SUMMIT 2013 - BALTIMORE