A variation on my talk for the UX community on Urban Planning as it relates to User Experience, tailored to a Developer / Engineering Audience. Originally given as the Keynote at the Verizon Tech Day Event on July 17th, 2019. What does urban planning have to do with UX? Well, cities are experiences, and we can learn a lot from how they are designed and what makes them easy (or hard) to navigate to inform our own approaches to user experience.

1. URBAN PLANNING FOR
DIGITAL EXPERIENCES
Rachel Knickmeyer
Capital One Design

3. A plan for a well-ordered
and convenient city is
seen to be indispensable
Daniel Burnham
Architect, Father of Urban Planning, Owner of a Great Mustache.

4. The Plan of Chicago 1
Improvement of the Lakefront
A regional highway system
Improvement of railway terminals
New outer parks
Systematic arrangement of streets
Civic & cultural centers

5. Planning for Scale
“... from Kenosha on the north, around to
DeKalb on the west, and thence to Michigan
City on the south, all roads lead to Chicago;
and this entire region might well be included in
a metropolitan area.”
- Daniel Burnham

8. Houston is the Wild West of
development, so any mention of
regulation creates a hostile reaction
from people who see that as an
infringement on property rights and a
deterrent to economic growth
Sam Brody
Director Center for Texas Beaches and Shores at Texas A&M University

10. Harvey Hits Houston 2
30% of the county underwater
43,000 structures damaged or destroyed
7000 Buildings constructed on known
flood plains

11. City Maps to Site Maps
What’s All This Have To Do With Software Design?

12. Information Architecture
“the art and science of
organizing and labelling
websites, intranets, online
communities and software
to support usability and
findability”
USERS
CONTENT CONTEXT
IA

14. The Information Architecture
The City Layout
The User Experience
How You Get There

15. Making a Plan
Information Architecture is the backbone of
sound requirements gathering.
CONTENT INVENTORY
USER RESEARCH
SITE MAPS / TAXONOMIES
GOVERNANCE PLAN

16. DATA
INFORMATION
FEATURES
APIs MEDIA

17. CONTENT
Description Customer Value Business Value Type
Product Owner Tech Team Designer APIs
Current Location Status Keep or Remove

23. A Few Simple Steps to Governance
DEFINE DECIDE UPDATE
Define & Document what
the guidelines are for
what goes in each
neighborhood. IE:
establish some zoning
rules.
When a new feature is
being added, use those
zoning rules to determine
where it belongs in the IA.
If it’s unclear, conduct
user research to help
determine the best
position.
Update your IA
documentation and/or
master feature list to show
where the new feature
landed.

25. “Have No Small Plans”
Daniel Burnham
(allegedly)

26. References
1 “The Plan of Chicago, A Regional Legacy”
(http://www.chicagocarto.com/burnham/summary.html)
2 “Houston’s ‘Wild West’ growth”, Shawn Boburg and Beth Reinhard at The Washington Post, Aug 29 2017
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/harvey-urban-planning/?utm_term=.e1a8ef9efe4a)