The document discusses several key concepts related to information architecture and understanding systems. It covers 3 main points: 1. Fragmentation of information across multiple sites and domains creates problems for users in finding what they need. Users enter via search or deep links and are often confused by what they find. 2. Categories are fundamental to cognition and culture, yet we often use interfaces like radio buttons that obscure the true relationships. 3. Understanding systems requires looking at connections in many directions simultaneously, not just in linear, logical order with words and sentences. Systems occur all at once in a web of interrelationships.

1. The Architecture
of Understanding
Peter Morville, World IA Day 2016, Boston

6. 6
The Library of Congress
“To further the progress of knowledge and creativity.”

7. Fragmentation
Fragmentation 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.

8. 8
Web Governance Board

10. Goodness
Complexity

11. Simple
Complex
Simple

12. Nature

15. Isle Royale National Park

16. Planning
Inspiration

17. Planning
Playing
Practicing

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

22. “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.”

23. Food Scarcity
(overpopluation)
T T
Inflow
(birth rate)
Outflow
(death rate)
Stock
(population)
T T
Disease
(canine parvovirus)
Immigration
(via ice bridge)
Parasites
(moose tick)
Weather
(mild winter)
Inflow
(birth rate)
Outflow
(death rate)
Stock
(population)

24. “It is the responsibility of the
architect to know and concentrate
on the critical few details and
interfaces that really matter.”

25. The design and management
of information systems.
Understanding the nature
of information in systems.

27. Categories

29. Categories are the cornerstones of cognition and culture.

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

31. Connections

32. HyperlinksPages
Web

33. PathsPlaces
Space

34. ConnectionsCategories
Mind

35. ConsequencesActions
Time

36. “The system always kicks back.”

37. If you think information architecture hasn’t changed
since the polar bear, you’re simply not paying attention.

38. “Tell me about a day in your life.”

39. Culture

40. Underlying
Assumptions
Espoused
Values
Artifacts
Visible organizational
structures and processes
(hard to decipher)
Strategies, goals,
philosophies, justifications
Unconscious, taken for
granted beliefs, perceptions,
thoughts, feelings
(source of values, action)
Three Levels of Culture

41. The outcome is the goal (or problem) you want to work on.
If a problem (Current state, change is needed):
- What is the outcome we are seeing?
- How do we know it’s a problem?
If a goal (Desired state):
- What is the outcome we want?
- How would we know we succeeded??
Behaviors are activities that are
observable.
- Ask people to share stories about
good (or bad) experiences they
have had with the culture.
- Look for concrete, tangible
examples.
Stated levers are explicit. They
include how people are rewarded
and punished, rules, resources and
budgets, policies, processes, physical
office layout or distribution, and
organizational structure.
Unstated levers are implicit. They include
unwritten rules, “the way we do things around
here,” routines and habits, values, beliefs, and
politics that may be unconscious or hidden. They
are not usually discussed openly, although they
may be “open secrets” that everyone knows and
discusses in private.
Use the Culture Map to explore and understand your organization’s readiness for
change or growth. You can also use the Culture Map to design new incentives and
structures that will increase your initiative’s chances of success.

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

43. The relationship between information and culture.

44. “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.”

45. “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.”

46. 46 Roger Bannister, Iffley Road Track, Oxford, 1954

47. Limits

49. Daylighting

50. Daylighting

51. 51
Making the Invisible Visible

53. Doctoral Work
E x p l o r a t i o n
R e s e a r c h ,
E x p e r i m e n t ,
F i e l d w o r k
A n a l y s i s ,
S y n t h e s i s
W r i t i n g ,
E d i t i n g ,
F e e d b a c k
P u b l i s h i n g
I d e a
G e n e r a t i o n
P r o m o t i o n
Methodology
Data Awareness
Network,
Colleagues,
Teaching
Harvard
Business
Review
Conferences,
Workshops,
Networking
Popular
Press
Literature Review
Writing
Cases
Books
Journal Articles
HBS Working Papers
Data
Fieldwork
Interviews
Observations Experiments
Research Program
Clean &
Integrate Data
Working
Knowledge
Conceptual Framework
Reading
Research Question
Google /
Scholar
Books
Syllabi
Data
Visualization
Data
Analysis
Global
Research
Centers
Harvard
Business
Publishing
Research
Computing
Services
Software
Programming
Find & Acquire:
data, images,
multimedia, etc.
HOLLIS
Research
Exchange
Storage and
Archiving
Article
Databases

54. MBAStudents
ResearchActivities
Pre-HBS Post-HBSYear 1 Year 2
CareerCourse Individual
Admissions
Recruiting
Previous Career
Orientation
Nearing Graduation
- copy before losing access
- academic research winds down
- career search ramps up
Request Cases
- via library site
- hard to search
Library Overview in Class
- depends on faculty invitation
Internship
Papers and Projects
FIELD 1
FIELD 2
FIELD 3
Personal Interests and Entrepreneurship
CPD: Industry 101 Presentations
CPD: Target List Presentations
CPD: Interview
Presentation Prep

56. Map the System
Map the Context Share the Map

57. “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)

58. 58

59. Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas
Vitruvius, De Architectura (15 BC)

60. “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)

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

62. 62
The library is an act of inspiration architecture and a keystone of culture.

63. Bhinneka Tunggal Ika

64. Thank You!IA Therefore I Am