No Static: IA for Dynamic Information Environments

Duane Degler
duane@designforcontext.com
@ddegler
IA Summit • March 24, 2018 slides posted at: designforcontext.com/insights
! #dynamicIA #ias18
No Static:
IA for Dynamic Information Environments

#ias18 #dynamicIA @ddegler No Static: IA for Dynamic Information Environments | IA Summit 2018 2
Focus areas
for this talk

#ias18 #dynamicIA @ddegler No Static: IA for Dynamic Information Environments | IA Summit 2018
Your Information Environment
3
Content
streaming
Embedded
content
External
vocabulary
External
deep nav
User-
generated
architecture
Evolving
internal
search
indexes
Related
links,
content
User’s
external
search/nav
User profile
refinement
Partner
portals, APIs

The NETWORK is the norm
4
Place
Space
Ecosystem

DANAH BOYD (2018) “You Think You Want Media Literacy… Do You?”
…until we start understanding [young
people’s] response to our media society,
we will not be able to produce responsible
interventions. So I would argue that we need
to start developing a networked response
to this networked landscape.
danah boyd
“You Think You Want Media Literacy… Do You?”
Data & Society: Points blog. March 9, 2018.
http://points.datasociety.net/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you-7cad6af18ec2
And it starts
by understanding different ways of
constructing knowledge.

COCO CHALFANT (3.2.2018)
…as information architects, we have the
responsibility and skills to affect positive
change in society with our designs.
Coco Chalfant, IA Summit blog, Mach 2, 2018
http://www.iasummit.org/social-conscious-convergence-ia-summit/

“What if…?”
7
Marsha Haverty “What we mean by meaning”
IA Summit 2015. http://bit.ly/MH_mean-by-meaning

“What if…?”
8

“What if…?”
9
These are dynamic scenarios

DYNAMIC INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
10

Architecture
Structural, long-lived…
the deliberateness of
the physical
(change is hard and expensive)
Information
Fluid, forgiving, volatile…
and often unstructured
(change is cheap)
Dynamic
Flexible, evolving, mutable…
applications as the contact
point of experience
(change mustn’t disrupt
meaning-making
– it shouldn’t be too cheap)
11

Dynamic Information Architecture
12
“Dynamic information architecture helps provide
a coherent framework for a user’s experience,
allowing many contextual forces to interact with each other
in a way that is transparent,
yet able to be controlled by the user.”
D. Degler
Dynamic Information Architecture: External & Internal Contexts for Reframing
In Resmini, et al, Reframing Information Architecture (2014)
http://reframe-ia.org

How do we
do that?
13
Some thoughts how
I do Dynamic IA
…but first, a model

SITUATION
SIGNALS
SITUATIONSIGNALS
Location
Co-occurring events
Date / time
Conditions
Devices / connectivity
SITUATION
SIGNALS
USERSIGNALS
Usage patterns
Experience
Interests / profile
History
Community
CONTENTSIGNALS
Link relationships
Text patterns
Categories / keywords
Metadata
TASKSIGNALS
Outcomes / goals
Rules / requirements
Criticality
Sequence / status
Frequency for user
Context Signals
Degler (2013). Supporting Relevance for Users: A Design Challenge http://www.designforcontext.com/insights/supporting-relevance-for-users
14

“BLENDED” ENVIRONMENTS & EXPERIENCES
15

SITUATION
SIGNALS
USERSIGNALS
Usage patterns
Experience
Interests / profile
History
Community
CONTENTSIGNALS
Link relationships
Text patterns
Metadata
TASKSIGNALS
Outcomes / goals
Criticality
Sequence / status
Frequency for user
SITUATION
SIGNALS
SITUATIONSIGNALS
Location
Co-occurring events
Date / time
Conditions
Context Signals
16

What is an Information Environment?
17
“BLENDED” ENVIRONMENTS
…The chat application becomes your shared environment, its boundaries defined by the
app’s user interface much as the boundaries of a physical room are defined by its walls and
ceiling… This environment where you’re meeting is made almost entirely of information…
Jorge Arango: What is an Information Environment?
https://jarango.com/2018/03/18/what-is-an-information-environment
Jonathan Eyler-Werve, Jan 21, 2017. https://www.flickr.com/photos/46866170@N07/32066902410

What is an Information Environment?
18
…The chat application becomes your shared environment, its boundaries defined by the
app’s user interface much as the boundaries of a physical room are defined by its walls and
ceiling… This environment where you’re meeting is made almost entirely of information…
Jorge Arango: What is an Information Environment?
https://jarango.com/2018/03/18/what-is-an-information-environment
Jonathan Eyler-Werve, Jan 21, 2017. https://www.flickr.com/photos/46866170@N07/32066902410
In many contexts, the app’s interface boundaries
are blended with local context and remote context.

Mapping Paths Through Ecosystems
19
Emerging work from Andrea Resmini, in collaboration with
others, to identify an analytical / structural ”language” to
visualize paths across multiple devices.
Andrea Resmini (2017): Upcoming publication

Information & Embodied Cognition
20
Marsha Haverty
“What we mean by meaning”
IA Summit 2015
http://bit.ly/MH_mean-by-meaning

Engagement and IA in Physical Space
21
The Inviting Dark: Thinking About Information Architecture in Physical Space
Jason Alderman at IA Summit 2016 https://blueprintdigital.com/ia-summit-2016/jason-alderman

Federated Information Resources:
International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)
22
Remnants of Otto Ege MS 1, as of 2014
Rob Sanderson, Linked Data and Images: Building Blocks for Cultural Heritage (72-73), April 18, 2014. https://www.slideshare.net/azaroth42/linked-dataandimages

Connecting the Diaspora of Cultural Info
23
Otto Ege MS 1, Reconstructed, in 2014
Rob Sanderson, Linked Data and Images: Building Blocks for Cultural Heritage (72-73), April 18, 2014. https://www.slideshare.net/azaroth42/linked-dataandimages
Consider:
Changes in
source images
Annotations
Branches to
other resources
Different UI
representations
or interactions

GETTING PERSONAL
24

SITUATION
SIGNALS
SITUATIONSIGNALS
Location
Co-occurring events
Date / time
Conditions
CONTENTSIGNALS
Link relationships
Text patterns
Metadata
TASKSIGNALS
Outcomes / goals
Criticality
Sequence / status
Frequency for user
SITUATION
SIGNALS
USERSIGNALS
Usage patterns
Experience
Interests / profile
History
Community
Context Signals
25

Accessibility
26
GETTING PERSONAL
2002-2003…
“Let’s think differently about the
modality of carrying personal
profile information.”
What about a “profile on a stick”?
A USB flash drive that carried
a profile of the user’s needs for
adapting the interaction with
some device.
e.g.
Computers
Kiosks
ATMs
Biometric devices
Raised the question:
Can this apply to other aspects of personalization?
2014-2015…
● Distance – different situations
● How do our experiences and profiles carry
across interactions
with multiple institutions and domains?
● Time – longitudinal evolution
● How do our experiences and preferences
evolve as we learn, experience… and our
tastes and needs grow and change?

Site
Set of Assets
Site
Set of Assets
Profile
Site
Set of Assets
ProfileProfile
A site has an model (information architecture)
Every asset has a model (metadata and classification)
Every user has a model (personal interests and experience)
They rarely talk to each other…!
Personalization Now: Closed-World
Degler (2015). Creating Personal Profiles Across Time & Distance http://www.designforcontext.com/insights/personal-profiles-time-distance-smartdata2015
GETTING PERSONAL

Ecosystem
Closed-World Ecosystems
28
Site
Set of Assets
Site
Set of Assets
Site
Set of Assets
Profile
Profile ProfileProfile
GETTING PERSONAL

● What attributes matter?
● How does my growth, learning, and experience affect
alignment with sites?
● If the attributes of an asset itself change in future, does that
change my interest in it? Or does it change the map between
those types of assets and my profile?
● With increasing richness and diversity comes complexity
Profiling is Uneven Across Dimensions
29
GETTING PERSONAL

Profile
Ecosystem
30
Site
Set of Assets
Site
Set of Assets
Site
Set of Assets
Context Context Context
Future of Personalization
GETTING PERSONAL
People should own
their profiles.
Pattern matching,
with rich semantics,
can align the
person’s personal
patterns with
information sources
and the ecosystem.

Time
Distractions
Participant experience
Attention
Social connections
Knowledge
Place
Goals
Experience
Context as Forces Applied to Interests
Note: The above parameters and directions of force are examples only.
31
GETTING PERSONAL

CONTEXT IN CULTURES
32

SITUATION
SIGNALS
SITUATIONSIGNALS
Location
Co-occurring events
Date / time
Conditions
SITUATION
SIGNALS
USERSIGNALS
Usage patterns
Experience
Interests / profile
History
Community
CONTENTSIGNALS
Link relationships
Text patterns
Metadata
TASKSIGNALS
Outcomes / goals
Criticality
Sequence / status
Frequency for user
Context Signals
33

Context in Intercultural Communication
34
CONTEXT IN CULTURES
High-context culture
Low-context culture
CONTEXT
…relies on implicit communication
and nonverbal cues. In high-context
communication, a message cannot be
understood without a great deal of
background information.
…relies on explicit communication.
In low-context communication, more
of the information in a message is
spelled out and defined.
Brian Neese, Intercultural Communication: High-
and Low-Context Cultures. August 17, 2016.
https://online.seu.edu/high-and-low-context-cultures
See also:
Elizabeth Würtz, Intercultural Communication on
Web sites: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Web
sites from High-Context Cultures and Low-
Context Cultures. Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 11 (2006) 274–299.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.tb00313.x

Context in Intercultural Communication
35
CONTEXT
“Experienced” users may
engage easily. How to adapt
information and interactions
if the context is not explicit?
Recognize where the level of
context may be dynamic.
Where a wider array of users
– and uses – exist, provide
more framing and control to
allow users to set the pace.
CONTEXT IN CULTURES
High-context culture
Low-context culture
…relies on implicit communication
and nonverbal cues. In high-context
communication, a message cannot be
understood without a great deal of
background information.
…relies on explicit communication.
In low-context communication, more
of the information in a message is
spelled out and defined.

ANDREW HINTON (2015) Understanding Context
…no matter how enabled by artificial
intelligence, such metamaps and compasses
tend to become less accurate as they try to
be smarter and more richly relevant to
context. The bigger the gap we’re trying to
bridge, the more it’s subject to the fog of
ambiguity… (pg.104)
Andrew Hinton
Understanding Context. 2015.
http://www.contextbook.com
A small note
of caution

DYNAMICALLY SUPPORTING CONTENT
37

TASKSIGNALS
Outcomes / goals
Criticality
Sequence / status
Frequency for user
SITUATION
SIGNALS
SITUATIONSIGNALS
Location
Co-occurring events
Date / time
Conditions
SITUATION
SIGNALS
USERSIGNALS
Usage patterns
Experience
Interests / profile
History
Community
Context Signals
CONTENTSIGNALS
Link relationships
Text patterns
Metadata
38

Why
Subjects, goals
Where
Presented, approved,
deployed, cited
When
Created, presented,
published, changed
Who
Authors, reviewers,
consumers
Context Wrappers
39
SUPPORTING CONTENT
What
The metadata needs
to be captured at a
systemic level, based
on organizational
structures, rather than
assuming each
individual content item
can be tagged.

Leveraging Your Taxonomies’ Structure
40
Search Engine
Receptor signaling
Pluripotent stem cells
Spherocytes
Schistocytes
ReticulocytesChimerism
Antigens
Immunogenicity
Cytomegalovirus
Epstein-Barr virusMalaria
Babesia
Filarasis
Leishmania
More than just
pouring a bucket of
words into your
search engine’s
indexer
SUPPORTING CONTENT

User-facing
● Topical browsing
● Facet filtering, other page
content filtering
● Relationship links between
content items
● Personalization &
preference-setting
● General IA / site organization
Roles that Taxonomies Play
41
Internal engines
● Search indexing and relevance
ranking
● Algorithmic tuning for related
links & personalized content
● Automated & manual
classification
● Map to content-specific models
● Recommendations, alerts and
notifications
SUPPORTING CONTENT

Relationship Modeling
42
Subjects
Content Types
User Roles
Conditional boosting
“If the user is a Clinical
Practitioner, boost these
branches”
SUPPORTING CONTENT

MODELING CONTEXT AND RELEVANCE
43

SITUATION
SIGNALS
SITUATIONSIGNALS
Location
Co-occurring events
Date / time
Conditions
SITUATION
SIGNALS
USERSIGNALS
Usage patterns
Experience
Interests / profile
History
Community
CONTENTSIGNALS
Link relationships
Text patterns
Metadata
TASKSIGNALS
Outcomes / goals
Criticality
Sequence / status
Frequency for user
Context Signals
44
MODELS FOR RELEVANCE

A Context Stack
45
SIGNALS
User’s Location
Subject Areas
Rules
Domain
Environment
Questions / Needs
Path / Approach
Tasks
Role / Responsibilities
User’s Experience(s)
Actors in Task
Persistent Focus Points
Immediate Focus Points
Most dynamic / short-lived signals
Least dynamic / long-lived signals

● Concept of “Shearing Layers” by Frank Duffy, Architect (1970s)
● “A building properly conceived is several layers of longevity of built
components”
● Elaborated by Stuart Brand
in How Buildings Learn (1994)
● Extended to the broader concept
of “Pace Layering” to explore how
civilizations can evolve in
The Clock of the Long Now (1999)
Background: Pace Layering
Stuart Brand article (2018) “Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning”
https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-brand
46

Applying Pace Layering to a Context Stack
47
MODELS FOR RELEVANCESIGNALS
Knowledge Base
Rules
Domain
Environment
Persistent Focus Areas
Path / Approach
Tasks
User’s Location
Actors in Task
Questions / Needs
Immediate Focus Areas
Scenario: Managing search filters

48
Knowledge Base
Rules
Domain
Environment
Path / Approach
Tasks
User’s Location
Actors in Task
Questions / Needs
Scenario: Form-filling during an interview

49
Knowledge Base
Rules
Domain
Environment
Path / Approach
Tasks
User’s Location
Actors in Task
Questions / Needs
Scenario: Answering a question for a colleague / friend

50
Knowledge Base
Rules
Domain
Environment
Path / Approach
Tasks
User’s Location
Actors in Task
Questions / Needs
Scenario: Answering a question for a colleague / friend
Scenario: Seeking information while traveling abroad
Monitor and
manage the
stack at every
interaction…

Applying Pace Layering to Context Stack
51
Knowledge Base
Rules
Domain
Environment
Path / Approach
Tasks
User’s Location
Actors in Task
Questions / Needs
That sounds
complicated…
How do we architect
all this data?

It’s about
relationships
Linked/Graph Data Underpins Our Work
52
Subject
(a noun)
Object
(a noun)
Predicate
(a verb)

Business ontology Person ontology Education ontology
Ontology: Agreed Structures = Machine-Readable Meaning
53
PersonOrganization
Post-Grad
Degree
University
Qualification
Line of
business
Business area
Products
Hobbies
Manager
Works asHas job
role
Has
degree
Confers
Controls
Operates
in
Knows
Makes
Valid type of
Practices
Requires

Let’s get
LOUD!
Linked Open Usable Data
…with thanks to David Newbury, J. Paul Getty Trust
Rob Sanderson, Publishing & Retrieving Linked Open Usable Data, US2TS Conference, March 1, 2018. http://bit.ly/RS_LOUD

FEEDBACK SUSTAINS ECOSYSTEMS
55

SITUATION
SIGNALS
SITUATIONSIGNALS
Location
Co-occurring events
Date / time
Conditions
CONTENTSIGNALS
Link relationships
Text patterns
Metadata
TASKSIGNALS
Outcomes / goals
Criticality
Sequence / status
Frequency for user
Context Signals
56
SITUATION
SIGNALS
USERSIGNALS
Usage patterns
Experience
Interests / profile
History
Community

● Feedback from use
● Analytics and user evaluation
● Assessing the strength of patterns and alignment
● Understanding user goal alignment… and drift
● For example, how do we manage the incremental transition from
novice to expert in applications?
● Recognizing the role of “investment”
● Engagement, habit-formation
● Do feedback loops help with capturing user intent ?
Feedback Sustains Ecosystems
57

Fostering an Enhancement Ecosystem
58
Linked Collections and an Enhancement Ecosystem, ARLIS/NA, Feb 26, 2018. http://www.designforcontext.com/insights/linked-collections-and-enhancement-ecosystem

SITUATION
SIGNALS
SITUATIONSIGNALS
Location
Co-occurring events
Date / time
Conditions
SITUATION
SIGNALS
USERSIGNALS
Usage patterns
Experience
Interests / profile
History
Community
CONTENTSIGNALS
Link relationships
Text patterns
Metadata
TASKSIGNALS
Outcomes / goals
Criticality
Sequence / status
Frequency for user
Context Signals

● “Blended” Environments and Experiences
● Getting Personal
● Context in Culture
● Dynamically Supporting Content
● Modeling Context and Relevance
● Feedback Sustains Ecosystems

The NETWORK is the norm
61
Place
Space
Ecosystem

No Static: IA for Dynamic Information Environments

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