Abby Covert

Everything is getting more complex. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information we encounter each day. Whether at work, at school, or in our personal endeavors, there's a deepening (and inescapable) need for people to work with and understand information.Information architecture is the way that we arrange the parts of something to make it understandable as a whole. When we make things for others to use, the architecture of information that we choose greatly affects our ability to deliver our intended message to our users.We all face messes made of information and people. I define the word “mess” the same way that most dictionaries do: “A situation where the interactions between people and information are confusing or full of difficulties.” — Who doesn't bump up against messes made of information and people every day?This book provides a seven step process for making sense of any mess. Each chapter contains a set of lessons as well as workbook exercises architected to help you to work through your own mess.

Information Architecture for Everybody

How to Make Sense of Any Mess

When was the last time you felt stuck? Maybe it was because of a decision you were struggling to make, a complex topic you were trying to understand, or a project with so many moving parts that you felt somehow both motionless and emotionful. There are obvious tools for when we are physically stuck: jaws of life, life rings, tug boats, and tow trucks, just to name a few. But what tool do we turn to when we feel this kind of emotionally stuck? Diagrams are visual representations that help. Especially when we feel stuck. Like emotional tow trucks, diagrams have been helping people for hundreds of years across industries, fields, and cultures when they feel this kind of stuck. Their labels are as diverse as the contexts they serve: charts, infographics, schemas, models, workflows, information visualizations, canvases, maps, figures, etc. but at their center diagrams are just shapes, lines and labels arranged to be helpful to someone. Even if that someone is the maker. The doodle to work out a point you want to make in a meeting? Diagram. The simple map used to highlight where the birthday party will be next weekend? Diagram. The instruction manual used to put together that new who-see-ma-bob? Diagram. The visual your team used to get to that big goal? That's right, it's a diagram. But wait!? If diagrams relate to that many paths, when are we actually taught how to diagram? And are we ever taught what it takes to make a diagram be good? For too many people, the answer is never and no. And I want to change that. This book teaches you how to diagram. There are plenty of books cataloging and analyzing beautiful diagrams that helped someone or a group of someone's who were stuck. And many books provide diagram templates or visualization methods that help in certain contexts and on specific types of problems. But there is a surprising lack of education on diagramming. Like where do you start? How do you know what to do first, next and last? And how do you know if what you are doing is working? This book aims to fix that.

Abby Covert

Books

Your next favorite book is out there