What is Information Architecture?

 

explaining information architecture from Dan Klyn on Vimeo.

Reliability: Packets & Routers

We've learned a bit about the communication potential of a timed system of strategically shared 1s & 0s. We've undertaken an immense thought experiment by considering the actual physicality of the internet, discovering that  it moves packets of information via electricity, light, and waves. We've explored some essential ideas about the adaptability of the internet. 

We've also gone all philosophical by hearing from software engineers and an early internet designer, who explain that the internet was shaped by a design philosophy so that it is open.This openness to participation also also makes the internet vulnerable to hacking.

Recently, we learned that the internet was designed so that it will scale to user needs. Now, in a timely conversation that seems perfectly addressed to our current COVID-19 related challenges regarding our abilities to communicate, educate, compose, design, share, and stay informed by content on the internet, we'll explore just how reliable the internet is.

In response to today's video, we'll break into groups to discuss how important internet reliability is and has been to us in 2020, given the particular challenges of a global pandemic, and, more recently, the wildfires creating new information needs, especially in the Western United States. 

I'm going to call the short clip, above, my "Making Sense of My Mess" textual representation (see Covert, Ch 1 exercise). This is my actual workspace, and the familiar objects with which I orient myself to the world via the internet. The faded icons represent the persistent likes, loves, and current informational structures that are shaping my experience of the pandemic. We'll discuss, and hopefully this will inspire ideas about how you're experiencing and processing data toward the hopeful goal of interacting with and producing useful and reliable information to the users and stakeholders in your academic, civic, personal, and professional lives. 

Changing Internet Speeds & COVID - 19

Networks, IP, DNS

source

We've learned a bit (pun) about 1s & 0s, and the physicality of the internet (moving packets of information via electricity, light, and waves). Now, we'll listen to Microsoft Engineer Paola Mejia and early Internet developer Vint Cerf describe how the internet works as a design philosophy so that it is adaptable to new technologies for communicating. 

Key concepts include:

• IP. Internet Protocol (an address, a kind of "location" in this interconnected web). It's a "bunch of numbers" that identifies where information is sent.
• DNS. Domain Name System. Generally referred to as the "phone book of the internet." It links names to IP addresses. 
• Your computer uses IPs and DNS to connect appropriately to the Internet. DNS servers are distributed into zones, such as .org, .com, .net, etc. Originally designed as an open protocol for governmental and educational institutions. Being open, it's vulnerable to hacking. Hackers can actually hack in and change an IP address, rerouting information to imposter websites. 

What are some of the conceptual concerns this information invokes for us? I recall being an early internet user and knowing of its original government design, thinking, "THE GOVERNMENT CAN WATCH ME?!" I quickly decided to just use the internet wisely and avoid detection (haHA!). No, I wasn't doing anything nefarious, and it's more true to say that I realized how big the internet was and didn't think anyone would really want to follow me. Later, I tried to learn how to use rhetorically strategic network-oriented thinking to become part of various existing networks that aligned with my interests, very much like we do IRL. 

One reason to understand how fundamental IP addresses are to the strategic flow of information on the Internet is that it sensitizes us to the importance of naming protocols, how we refer to and call up the information we use routinely. Do you have a routine protocol for naming the files you use most frequently in your daily life? Why? Why not?

Content Strategy

 

Brienne of Tarth, content strategist

“Content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design.” -- Rachel Lovinger. See her important 2007 work,  "Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data."

"Different types of strategies are needed for different types of content. For example, a marketing department creating campaigns in multiple markets will operate very differently than their product counterparts whose content is shared across product, engineering, support, and so on. Later, these strands of the profession will be given designations such as “front end” and “back end” content strategists, or strategies for structured content or unstructured content, or for pre-sales or post-sales content, though these seem to be artificial distinctions. A commonly accepted ratio for an organisation’s content for customer use is 20% persuasive content (for example, marketing content) and 80% enabling content (for example, support, training, technical, and in-product content). As these types of content have very different operational models, the most useful distinction (at least for purposes of this article) seems to be content strategies for persuasive content and for enabling content." -- Rachel Anne Bailie, from "An Uneven History of Content Strategy."

The Logic of the Internet

You've heard something about Ones and Zeros. You've heard about and maybe even claim to get Boolean Logic. But, how does this knowledge help you understand how the internet structures and moves information? The video above offers a useful introduction. 

Taking this simple introduction a bit further, here, software engineer Tess Whitlock explains the physicality of the internet and helps clarify how information circulates on this very complex and delicate system.

welcome!

schematic, "screencube" installation

what's this? 

This is the course blog, a portal for assignments, tips, encouragement, and generally helpful resources. Because I can link everything here, you will not need to purchase a textbook for this course (you're welcome!). 

I will also use Bb to coordinate class information (via announcements), but for the most part, this is the place. Eventually, as I get more facile with Slack and Basecamp, we'll perhaps move over to that paired communication option, but to start, I want to keep it very simple. 

In addition to using simple tools, I want you to have a space for exploring information structures in a publication venue that resembles published web texts. In this way, as you compose, review and revise, you gain insight into the moves composers and information designers and architects use to shape the information we encounter, use, consume, resist, and sometimes just don't get. For now, I don't fully "get" much more than these simple compositional spaces, though I've used many web platforms. We'll talk more about this in our opening Zoom meeting. 

To be clear, keep up with class Announcements via Bb; it's already integrated with your WSU email, so you should receive notifications whenever a course announcements is made. These announcements are often about updating assignment and due date information, reminding you of things we've explored in class, things that require follow-up. 

how will you be present at this blog? 

You're invited (and required) to write regularly for this course; this offers you a way to interact meaningfully and in an archived fashion with what we're experiencing affectively, creatively, ethically, intellectually, rhetorically, and in community. 

Please plan to write once-weekly reflective blog posts at a blog you'll create. Your blog will be featured at the blogroll (@ right). Please see the subsequent post for information on creating and designing your blog. Note: Blogger blogs are quite simple. Making and designing them requires little effort, but when in doubt, a Google search usually offers answers. In fact, a recent update to the platform brought changes that required me to do a google search in order to find where the new HTML button is in the editor. One screenshot away. 

Please design your blog so that it reflects a sense of who you are. What does this mean? We'll talk about it. To be sure, you'll want to create something lovely, but remember that you're writing for an audience of your class peers and professor, so keep it professional and fun and readable and all should go well. You're invited to play with some elemental design skills, which we'll refine throughout the semester. 

I hope you'll create a blog that invites you to write often. Often, something we're discussing in class provides a natural topic. Or, perhaps you attended an campus event, and either I've asked you to write about it, or you are simply drawn to think it through a bit more, in writing. 

how does this blog create and sustain community? 

Learning in communities for writers and thinkers often provides motivation and new ways of approaching new material. This blog is designed to help create and sustain community, especially given that we're unable to meet face-to-face in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic. So, in addition to writing at your blog, you are also assigned blog responses. 

Writing and responding to your peers' entries offers you a model of how many writers write --  in writing communities. A moment for "writers." "Writers" includes information architects, content designers, and more of the kinds of people we imagine when we consider working as information professionals). Our blogs, and other forms of asynchronous community-oriented writing platforms -- afford us a sense of community for those times when we are not face to face. This is especially meaningful given how inspiration often finds us not in front of a keyboard at our carefully designed workspace. Jotting a few notes and latter adding them to a blog entry is easy. Or, you may want to create the option to save a draft and/or publish directly from your smartphone or other portable device. In fact, so much writing happens in just this way, as digital media and internet access makes such collaborations easy and productive. 

Don't love writing with or for others? We'll help you get over that. You see, writers share. Most knowledge evolves in this way, through sharing, giving and receiving feedback, revising, and polishing to pleasing effect. Granted, the process isn't always pretty. Often, we have to WERQ in order to be polite and respectful to others. Practice helps! 

Write with care, here, and in all venues. With this in mind, I'd like to encourage you to avoid rants or attacks. Most of all, I want to use the course blog and your individual blogs to help each and every student to feel a part of our writing community.

essential concepts

The work of this course should be relatively easy for you because you already know a lot of what I am going to teach you. You know it from your life experience and immersion in literate culture(s). This could mean that this knowledge is very general and maybe something you don't think about very conscientiously. We're going to bring it into the light for contemplation and practice. Essentially, I am going to reanimate 4 key concepts, about which you may already have some deep knowledge. They are:

1. Data takes many forms.
2. Data is rendered as information.
3. The rendering is rhetorical ... and thus
4. The production, reception, and circulation of information involves affect and material effects; thus, it's ethically complex, and requires attention and care.

WRITING TO DO: What do you already know about these 3 concepts? Write a few paragraphs, explaining with conceptual detail and/or examples from your life and from your writing (really! bring to next class or post as an early blog entry).

We'll build on your existing knowledge and skill and reanimate it. This course should help you develop productively flexible strategies for making wise choices toward effective communication. This course focuses particularly upon a range of skills routinely used by academic writers, but these skills apply in any rhetorical situation (within and beyond the academy).

What to do with the writing you've done? Post as your first blog entry at the blog you'll create. Instructions are found in the next post. 

Welcome to the course!