Making places

MAKING PLACESINFORMATION ARCHITECTURE IN A POST-DIGITAL WORLD
ANDREA @RESMINIANDREA @RESMINI
ZURICH, FEB 21ZURICH, FEB 21

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosimoes7/124758243
Let me tell you the story of what happened last summer
when my daughter decided to brush up her French and
attend a language school abroad.

INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU (THE SCHOOL)
As the story might get a little complicated to follow
here and there, I’ll be providing visual clues.
Namely, the school will be represented by Peter
Sellers’ own Inspector Clouseau from the original Pink
Panther movies.

SPECTRAL TARSIER (ME)
For reasons that will become clear as we proceed with
the story, a spectral tarsier will play me.

AIRLINE
FLIGHT NUMBER
THE SCHOOL’S WEBSITE
Now, finding real information about language schools
online is nigh to impossible. No forum discussions, no
Tripadvisor reviews, nothing. Just their websites. I’m
pretty sure they pay good money to get anything they
do not like off the Web. Or plain kill people.
Anyway, we made up our mind, went for a school in
Paris, and started filling in their enrollment form.
Midway, probably after giving them information about
what her grandparents thought about the Winter War and
the Finnish Interim Peace, this screen popped up.

So I fired up my mail and asked them.

...
A few days went by. Nothing happened.

So I picked up the phone and called France.

We exchanged pleasantries we didn’t really mean, and
then I asked them “I can’t complete your online form
to enroll my daughter in one of your classes unless I
provide a flight. Now, am I really supposed to book a
rather expensive flight when I do not know if she will
be accepted, since you have yet to confirm you have
places available in that period?”

“Yes”

“Swear to me you will have a place for her”

(legally speaking, *no*
binding value whatsoever)
It goes without saying that, legally speaking, they
could say whatever they wanted and plead
misunderstanding any time.

THE AIRLINE’S WEBSITE
But time is ticking away, so airline website it is.

PERSON PICKING UP THE MINOR
PASSPORT NO.
Only we have a very unsurprising request from them.
After all, we are talking about sending a 15yearold
somewhere on a plane, right?

At this point we have started two processes which are
caught in a Catch 22 deadlock. So I call the school
again.

“I need the name of the chauffeur who will pick my
daughter up at the airport in Paris”

“Impossible. We raffle them up 23 days before
students arrive. Just give them any name”.

Moar international phone calls.

“Hello, airline? I’d like to have my 15yearold
daughter fly with you to her language camp in France,
but you ask for the name of the person picking her up
at destination, the school says they will not have a
chauffeur until close to the departure date, and I
can’t get her ticket which I also need to sign her up.
Listen, it’s complicated. What do I do?”
(this was of course mixed up with a lot of ranting,
moaning and complaining)

EDDIE KESSLER (THE AIRLINE)
(A note: the airline will be represented by Eddie
Kessler from Boardwalk Empire. No particular reason, I
just like the idea. It’s my presentation after all.)
“Sir, just write your name for the destination as
well, then call us as soon as you have the correct
name and we’ll do the necessary changes”

“Oh, that’s nice, but what do you mean call us? If
names can be changed, can’t I simply access my booking
and make the necessary changes there?”

EDDIE KESSLER (THE AIRLINE)
“No. Call us”

(TOTALLY FAKE NAME HERE)
(NOW ENTER THE REAL ONE)
This would be too easy, right? It would probably rob
you of all of your selfesteem. I mean, if you don’t
sweat it, it’s not worth it, right? Anyway, I
temporarily entrusted my daughter to the care of
Pennywise the clown and we secured a seat on the right
flight to Paris. Armed with date, time and flight code
I went back to the school ...

PROPOSAL COMPLETED
YOUR TOTAL IS
AN INSANE AMOUNT OF MONEY
WILL MAIL TO CONFIRM ENROLLMENT
WILL MAIL FOR PAYMENT
... where I found out that the reward for completing
the form was more waiting, as they had to confirm
enrollment and send me further instructions for
payment. Using a carrier pigeon, if I had to guess.
Status: flight booked and paid, but we still have no
100% guarantee we’re on.

...
And of course a couple of days go by with no mail, no
confirmation, nothing.

+
This is how I read it, actually. Bottom line: while
the form asked you if you wanted chauffeur service or
taxi service (I chose chauffeur), both are necessary
for minors. Because reasons. And of course, that means
you have to pay more.

You remember we booked the flight, right?

VOILÀ
ENROLLED!
IT WAS EASY, RIGHT?
So I pay.

That brings in good news (enrolled) and more
ridiculousness. Passport scan?

What the ..?

Moar writing. Where I try to keep it polite but do not
really succeed.

...
A few days pass without no mail back.

Then this finally comes in. Apparently not a big
problem.
(Worth stating: my daughter spent a wonderful week in
Paris, studied and practiced her French, and came back
home a happy girl)

so many things
are broken here

these have
everything to do with

Here some of you might say: wait, isn’t information
architecture that set of methods you use to create the
structure for a website? Like labels, menus, and so
on?

Sort of. But what we structure today is larger,
pervasive systems where the website is just one piece
in a much more complex clockwork. Mail, the Web, phone
calls, a banking system, the airline, online forums,
these were some of the pieces we stitched together to
enroll my daughter to French camp.

http://is.gd/h4me67
To explain this change, I have to take you back to the
mid90s.

computing was
precisely bounded in
space and time

When this book came out in 1998, Lou and Peter were
working in a world that was strikingly different from
the world of today.

“smeared across multiple
sites and moments in
complex and often
indeterminate ways”
– W. J. MITCHELL, ME++ (2003)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33689131@N07/15900592780
If you took pictures in the 70s, this is the closest
to the conceptualization of a selfie you could get
back then. You would definitely say what you have here
is “photography”, right? There’s a camera, you guess
there’d be film, a dark room along the way, and a
printout that was at a later point in time turned into
the file I’m using here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewfysh/14437303498
Taking a picture today probably happens most of the
times this way. Remember that photography after all
means drawing or writing with light, implying that
light gets transferred to some support and made
visible.
There’s no printing, no chemicals reactions, no
lenses, no “photography”. Most of what we capture is
not even meant to last. Still, this is photography,
right? Granted, it might be bad photography, but
that’s an entirely different issue.
This is because we understand that photography is not
really bound by the technical limitations imposed by
of 19th century technology. It’s about composition,
framing, and constantly transposing the principles of
capturing what made one moment a special moment into
and through whatever tools we have at hand. Dark
rooms, photoshop. Still photography.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/27485954@N07/4940794289
Unsurprisingly, you can apply this also to other
phenomena. I was around when this was cool, and we
used to call this music. It implied clunky players,
batteries, cassette tapes, some record player and
vinyl you could duplicate songs from, and terrible
earphones.

Now this is music. Not only it generally does not
involve half the gearwork you needed to enjoy your
Sony Walkman, you do not need the Walkman cassette
player itself. You only need a way to access the
source. Thanks to technological convergence, we can
haz music on our smartphones, tablets, laptops, a
number of home appliances. Soon it will be wearables.
And we call it music.

what happens when we
all are co-creators?

Let's not even mention the phenomenon of Russian car
cameras, right? Still, can we just close our eyes and
make these go away? Or dismiss them as “bad”? This
video, online since 2012: 17 million views. Mission
Impossible – Ghost Protocol, also out in 2012, sold
24.3 million tickets.
The Ice Bucket challenge videos have globally been
seen more than a billion times.

when products
become services?

when we access and
remediate information on
the move 24/7?

CHARLES MOORE, PIAZZA D’ITALIA IN NEW ORLEANS

“a spectacle in front of
which the individual sits
powerless”
– A. KIRBY, THE DEATH OF POSTMODERNISM AND BEYOND (2006)

O.J.SIMPSONCAR CHASELIVEFEED
O.J. Simpson’s slow escape, broadcast live in 1994.

This is not necessarily a good thing, and while some
of us might find “Steven Seagal: Lawman” mildly
entertaining, “Extreme couponing” has substantially
fewer redeeming qualities in my book.

what we have is a
post-digital world

– S. JENKINS, WELCOME TO THE POST-DIGITAL WORLD
“the web is not a destination
in itself but a route map to
somewhere real”

cyberspace is not a place
we go to but a layer
tightly integrated into the
world around us
– INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE, 2010

N. NEGROPONTE
In 1998, a momentous year it seems, Nicholas
Negroponte of MIT wrote an essay for Wired titled
“Beyond Digital”.

“is digital destined for
banality? certainly”
– N. NEGROPONTE, BEYOND DIGITAL (1998)

“it will become
tomorrow’s commercial
and cultural compost for
new ideas”
– N. NEGROPONTE, BEYOND DIGITAL (1998)
At a certain point, digital will be so intertwined
with the fabric of daytoday reality that we will
only notice when it’s not there. Just like here,
when the conference wifi goes down and you can here
the “awwww” from miles away.
At that point, it will simply be a catalyst for
creating something new.

A society that understands precision and punctuality
is a society that has perfected the measurement of
time and that has turned it into a widespread
commodity through clocks, watches, and timetables.

FORD ASSEMBLY LINE – WIKIPEDIA
Precision and punctuality and linear order allow the
conceptualization of the assembly line.

What do services like Uber tell us about our own
society?

mobile is what makes
the revolution possible

activities and artifacts
merge into complex
experiences

suppose you want
to go see a movie

you talk to friend(s)
and/or significant other

you resist the temptation
to binge watch obscure
series on Netflix

you maybe arrange
for some late dinner

you choose your
means of transport

SKATING, PABLO FERNANDEZ – HTTPS://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/HADOCK/8365191212

you buy popcorn, wear
glasses, enjoy movie

ECOSYSTEMS
BUS BIKE
CAR
CAFE
HOME
NETFLIX CINEMA
TV
PHONE
IM
BIKE
SKATES
MOVIE
DINNER
CINEMA
FRIENDS
IM
Services sit at the intersection of many different,
selfcentered ecosystems. As such, this being
digital has very little to do with competencies, or
with being geeks, or with technical skills. It is
just the way we do things.

ECOSYSTEMS
BIKE
SKATES
MOVIE
DINNER
CINEMA
FRIENDS
IM
Crosschannel ecosystems are individual constructs.

information architectures
weave cross-channel
ecosystems

new places in a blended
space merging digital
and physical

is facebook virtual?
No. Can we please retire this word now?

And while Facebook is arguably a place where
pictures of lolcatz are shared in great quantities,
it is still commanding enough attention that
arguably one of the most powerful offices in the
world, that of US President Barack Obama, needs to
have a presence there.

if it is not, what kind of
place is facebook?

What it really is is the bad pub in your
neighborhood. Bad beer, uncomfy chairs, the owner
stopped caring in 1965. But all your friends are
there, so you just go there. For the stories, for
the narratives.

but blended spaces
can be devious

They are much more than a simple overlay of funky
digital information over the fabric of reality where
you can still separate the two original spaces. They
are a new brand of reality that mixes these into new
uneasy blends.

they silently create their
own new rules, logic and
affordances
... and these are mostly invisible, or more
difficult to spot.

The Ferguson riots. Intervening in physical space
has immediate visibility and consequences.

with information providing
a steady back beat to
everything we do

this is not just about
architecting happiness

telling the story is part
of solving this mess

understanding is part
of solving this mess

we make the tools
then the tools make us

acting on the
architectures makes the
processes visible and
actionable

SAMPLE IMAGERY
http://www.elektropastete.de/origami-tessellation/ http://www.elektropastete.de/origami-tessellation/
ORIGAMI
TESSELLATIONS
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7185/6881397761_470d81ae60_z.jp
g
http://www.123rf.com/photo_25126315_couple-of-buildings-in-high-contrast-black-and-
white.html
STRIKING
CITYSCAPES

THANK YOU
ANDREA @RESMINI
MAKING PLACES
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE IN A POST-DIGITAL WORLD
WIAD 2015 ZURICH

Making places

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