SI 658 001 WN 2019

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE  

“Information architecture isn't just graphics; it's about how to choose the right way to present information and how to help people navigate through it. It's a way of thinking. It's how you go about something. It's a whole way of life in which the aim is not to make something look good but to make it be good.”

- RICHARD SAUL WURMAN

This course provides hands-on experience with the evaluation and design of information structures to support a complex product/service ecosystem. Students will learn how to build models at varying scales and degrees of abstraction in the development of analyses and recommendations. Coursework is informed by the instructor's 20+ years of research and practice in the field of information architecture, and supplemented by guest lectures and panel discussions with authors, architects and designers from the global community of IA practice.

Instruction Team

- Lecturer, Dan Klyn (dan@understandinggroup.com) 

- GSI, Ju Yeon Jung (juyjung@umich.edu)

 

Course Description

In the class this term, we’ll learn about information architecture by asking some basic questions:

• Where did information architecture come from?
  
• In what ways do info-architectural approaches differ from or complement other disciplines’ ways of thinking, seeing, and making?
  
• How might we go about evaluating the information architectures of a product or service?
  
• When physical and digital space is blended, what (if anything) must designers do differently?

 

The context we’ll focus these questions on is cities, and in particular: the complex product and service ecosystem of guidebooks to cities.  

In the 1980s, Richard Saul Wurman built a prosperous business applying the principles of information architecture in solving the problems inherent to printed city guides.  In our work together this term, we’ll try to figure out why Wurman's guidebooks were so good, and develop ideas for doing guidebooks to cities today, using whichever technological means we like.

Learning Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Use info-architectural methods to identify the objects and describe the relationships in a complex information ecology;
• Conceive and construct models at varying levels of abstraction in order to;
• Understand how the representation and organization of information creates new information; and
  
• Evaluate structural design options through comparison.

 

Assignments Structure

Each student will be randomly assigned to a project team.  Project teams remain together for the duration of the term, and use the 2nd through 4th assignments to complete the 5th.

• 1st ASSIGNMENT -  YOUR INVISIBLE CITY (20%)
  5-minute (or less) stand-from-where-you're-sitting presentation of one diagram that depicts the object-relations of two entities from one assigned city-story from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.
  
  
• 2nd ASSIGNMENT - GROUP MENTAL MODEL  (20%)
  Cognitive walkthrough with the instructor and GSI of a mental model representing some of the tasks, needs and thoughts of a user of a city guidebook.
  
  
• 3rd ASSIGNMENT - GROUP OBJECT MODEL (20%)
  Cognitive walkthrough of an object model representing some of the key information entities and modalities from each group's conglomeration of ACCESS guides
  
  
• 4th ASSIGNMENT - GROUP IN/TENSION MODEL (20%)
  Walkthrough of your group’s In/tension model representing the key tensions the group identified in making a good guidebook in 2019, and how the group's solution will balance those tensions.
  
  
• 5th ASSIGNMENT - GROUP MODERN GUIDEBOOK CONCEPT:  POSTER (20%)
  Each group member takes a "shift" as explainer of their group's poster, while their colleagues wander the room and check out all the other groups' posters. Session is complete when everybody has seen and heard the "pitch" for every poster.
  
  

Project teams are expected to spend at least an hour most weeks working together outside of class. Once you know your teams, it is strongly suggested that you schedule weekly meeting times with your teams. You can always cancel them if they are not needed.

Extra Credit for World IA Day Attendance
Students who attend World IA Day on February 23 earn an extra 5% course credit

 

Required Texts

1. ACCESS Guide to _________

I would like each student to acquire a copy of a travel title from Richard Saul Wurman’s ACCESS series, published by ACCESS Press between 1980 and 1991.  Easily acquired on the second-hand market via Amazon, Abe’s Books etc, a 2nd or 4th edition of one of these guides can cost as little as $1, post-paid.

Note: there are far more ACCESS guides on the second-hand market that were published after Richard Saul Wurman sold the imprint to Harper Collins than the ones we're focusing on this term. Be sure the copy you acquire was published by ACCESS Press between 1980 and 1991.

Guides in this date range include: Los Angeles, Hawaii, San Francisco, New York City, Washington DC, Tokyo, New Orleans, Las Vegas, London, Paris, Rome, Boston, and Chicago. Many of the requisite titles are available to borrow digitally from The Internet Archive if it proves impossible for you to acquire a physical copy.

2. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

A second book that I'm assigning for the class in Winter 2019 is Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino.  This, too, is easy to get second-hand at a negligible expense.

Schedule / Sequence

 

Class	1pm - 2:15pm	2:30pm - 3:50pm	What's Due
Class 1 / JAN14 VIDEO	Intro to SI 658 Winter 2019	Intro to information architecture	Course registration, acquire the required texts
Class 2 / JAN28 VIDEO	Architecture walk (dress warmly)	Invisible cities	Book: Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (1972)
Class 3 / FEB04	Object modeling how-to with Travis LaFleur and Daniel O'Neil from TUG	Object modeling hands-on	Article: Mapping and Cartography in Metropolitan Areas, World cities and the future of the metropoles. International Exhibition of the XVII Milan Triennale (1988)
Class 4 / FEB11 VIDEO	Invisible Cities Presentations, Block 1	Invisible Cities Presentations, Block 2	Individual Response Diagram
Class 5 / FEB18 VIDEO	Invisible Cities Presentations, Block 3	Introduction to Richard Saul Wurman DECK	Article: An Access Guide to Richard Saul Wurman, Communication Arts (1982) Book Chapter: ACCESS Guides 1980s - 2000s, from UnderstandingUnderstanding (2017)
Class 6 / FEB25 VIDEO	Guidebook to Guidebooks DECK	Individual Work: Object Model	Book: Wurman et. al., A Guidebook to Guidebooks (1973)
Class 7 / MAR11	Mental Models how-to w/ Travis LaFleur from TUG	Group Work: Mental Model	Article: What Is Your Mental Model Boxes and Arrows (2008) Optional Book: Young, Mental Models (2008)
Class 8 / MAR18	Walkthroughs: Group Mental Models	Group Work: Share Individual Object Models	Group Mental Model
Class 9 / MAR25	HATS / LATCH	Group Work: Combined Object Model	Individual Object Model Journal: Design Quarterly #145 Hats (1997)
Class 10 / APR01	In/tension modeling how-to	Group Work: In/tension Model (1)	Group Object Model
Class 11 / APR08	Group Work: In/tension Model (2)	Group In/tension Models Walkthrough	Group In/tension Model
Class 12 / APR15	Group Work Session	Group Work Session	Each Group's Final Poster printable PDF due by April 19
Class 13 / APR22	Poster Session	Critique of SI658	Group Final Poster

 

Note: UMSI wouldn't permit me to include poster printing costs as part of enrolling in SI658, so I will be personally buying the printouts of each group's final poster.  Unless the group wants to own the poster, in which case they are welcome to pay the ~ $60 themselves.

G-Drive of Decks

Academic Integrity and Misconduct

Unless otherwise specified in an assignment all submitted work must be your own, original work. Any excerpts, statements, or phrases from the work of others must be clearly identified as a quotation, and a proper citation provided. Any violation of the School’s policy on Academic and Professional Integrity (stated in the Master’s and Doctoral Student Handbooks) will result in serious penalties, which might range from failing an assign­ment, to failing a course, to being expelled from the program. Violations of academic and professional integrity will be reported to UMSI Student Affairs. Consequences impacting assignment or course grades are determined by the faculty instructor; additional sanctions may be imposed by the assistant dean for academic and student affairs.

Collaboration

UMSI strongly encourages collaboration while working on some assignments, such as homework problems and interpreting reading assignments as a general practice. Active learning is effective. Collaboration with other students in the course will be especially valuable in summarizing the reading materials and picking out the key concepts. You must, however, write your individual assignment submissions on your own, in your own words, before turning it in. If you worked with someone on your individual assignment before writing it, you must list any and all collaborators on your written submission. Each course and each instructor may place restrictions on collaboration for any or all assignments. 

Plagiarism

All written submissions must be your own, original work. Original work for narrative questions is not mere paraphrasing of someone else's completed answer: you must not share written answers with each other at all. At most, you should be working from notes you took while participating in a study session. Largely duplicate copies of the same assignment will receive an equal division of the total point score from the one piece of work.

You may incorporate selected excerpts, statements or phrases from publications by other authors, but they must be clearly marked as quotations and must be attributed. If you build on the ideas of prior authors, you must cite their work. You may obtain copy editing assistance, and you may discuss your ideas with others, but all substantive writing and ideas must be your own, or be explicitly attributed to another. See the (Doctoral, MSI, MHI, or BSI) student handbooks available on the UMSI intranet for the definition of plagiarism, resources to help you avoid it, and the consequences for intentional or unintentional plagiarism.

Equality for Students Affected by Disabilities

The University of Michigan is committed to providing equal opportunity for participation in all programs, services and activities.  Request for changes to the syllabus or learning environment by persons affected by disabilities may be made by contacting the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) Office (http://ssd.umich.edu) located at G664 Haven Hall.  The SSD phone number is 734-763-3000.  Students affected by disability are encouraged to introduce themselves to the instructor and GSA at the beginning of the term, and to schedule a conversation about making the learning environment in the course this term as equal as possible for all involved. 

Student Mental Health and Wellbeing

The University of Michigan is committed to advancing the mental health and wellbeing of its students. If you or someone you know is feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and/or in need of support, services are available. For help, contact Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at (734) 764-8312 and https://caps.umich.edu/ during and after hours, on weekends and holidays, or through its counselors physically located in schools on both North and Central Campus. You may also consult University Health Service (UHS) at (734) 764-8320 and https://www.uhs.umich.edu/mentalhealthsvcs, or for alcohol or drug concerns, see www.uhs.umich.edu/aodresources. For a listing of other mental health resources available on and off campus, visit: http://umich.edu/~mhealth/.