1) The document discusses how language shapes our environment and is a medium for making the world. 2) It explores how language creates maps and contexts that become the territories we inhabit together, with examples of how organizational diagrams, labels, and conventions create shared understanding over time. 3) The key point is that language introduces complexity into our world but the role of information architecture is to bring clarity to complexity through composition, not just simplify but make complex systems understandable.

1. PRESENTED BY
Andrew Hinton | @inkblurt
IASummit Italy, October 2015
VERUM FACTUM
Making the World with Language

2. WHAT IS “SHOPPING CART”?
2

3. WILL THE REAL CART PLEASE STAND UP?
3

4. 4
=
Business rules
Software services
User behaviors
Interfaces
Serial processes
What parts of “cart” do you mean?
All of these involve language.

5. 5
Physical Object
Virtual Object
Design is
obsessed
with
tangible,
visible
objects...

6. 6
“That’s just semantics...”

7. 7

8. Language is a real medium for making.
8

9. 9
ENVIRONMENT

10. 10
Language is
physical.

11. 11
Wikipedia

12. 12
“Vico’s Philosophy of Imagination” - Verene & Berlin, 1976

13. 13

14. Ecological Psychology
James J. & Eleanor Gibson
Radically empirical approach to understanding perception & behavior.

15. 15
Affordance
James J Gibson
“Dispositional properties of objects and
events that provide opportunities for
action to complementary organisms.”
- Sabrina Golonka, PhD

16. 16
Invariants
That which does not change
in the midst of change.
James J Gibson

17. ENVIRONMENT
wikimedia
Invariants

18. ENVIRONMENT
wikimedia
What manner
of invariants?

19. 19
Words
Pictures
Symbols …
Language is
environment.

20. 20
WE LIVE IN MAPS

21. CONTEXT CONTROLS CONDUCT
THE WAY WE SHAPE OUR ENVIRONMENT SHAPES OUR LIVES
21

22. LANGUAGE MAKES MAPS THAT ARE TERRITORIES
ENVIRONMENTS WE INHABIT TOGETHER
22
Organizational diagram of the New York and Erie Railroad, 1855

23. LANGUAGE IS ENVIRONMENT
23
Language is “a form of mind-
transforming cognitive scaffolding...”
... “Simple labeling adds a new realm
of perceptible objects.”
- Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CantileverScaffold.jpg

24. 24
LANGUAGE IS THE
INTERFACE WITH
COMPLEX HUMAN
SYSTEMS

25. 25
Language is
invariant only
by convention.
Many layers of
“meaning.”

26. 26
VARIANT!

28. 28
“elevator”
“button”
over a century of
cultural invariant
convention
[context]

29. 29

30. 30
Understanding Context, Andrew Hinton, O’Reilly Media 2014

31. 31

32. 32
Wikipedia

33. 33

34. wikimedia
Digital
agents,
behaving
invisibly.

35. APPROXIMATE INCREASE IN ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLEXITY OVER TIME*
Complexity added
to human
environment
No big whoop.
OMG PLEASE
MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!
What’s complexity?
We’re so modern!
Learn a new app? Uh. Ok.
I have no idea what my
phone is doing.
I have no idea what my
house is doing.
Time
Olden times Fin de siècle
* according to Andrew Hinton’s feelings on the subject.
Industrial
Revolution
“Information Age” 21st Century

36. THERE’S NO SUCH
THING AS “NO UI”

37. 37
wikimedia
Interface
(Machine to Machine)

38. 38
Interface
(Machine to Human)

39. 39
https://www.google.com/patents/US8558759
From Google’s patent for telling a
digital agent you “love” something.

40. 40

41. 41
Captured from Twitter on September 22, 2015

42. 42
Mashable
XBox reading user’s skeleton & heartbeat

43. APPROXIMATE INCREASE IN ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLEXITY OVER TIME*
Complexity added
to human
environment
No big whoop.
OMG PLEASE
MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!
What’s complexity?
We’re so modern!
Learn a new app? Uh. Ok.
I have no idea what my
phone is doing.
I have no idea what my
house is doing.
Time
Olden times Fin de siècle
* according to Andrew Hinton’s feelings on the subject.
Industrial
Revolution
“Information Age” 21st Century

44. Often, the assumed answer to
complexity is simplicity.

45. THE “CLOUD”
45

46. 46
Interviewer: What do good information
architects do?
R.S. Wurman: They make the complex
clear; they make the information
understandable to other human beings.
If they succeed in doing that, they're good
information architects. If they fail, they're not.
http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=334428

47. The answer to COMPLEXITY
is CLARITY…
not mere “Simplicity.”

48. 48
IA “Composition” …

49. Your mission …
Go forth and compose
a better human world.

50. 50
GRAZIE!
ANDREW HINTON | @INKBLURT
AH@ANDREWHINTON.COM
CONTEXTBOOK.COM