Andrea Resmini

Halmstad University · Intelligent Systems and Digital Design

The paper introduces a conceptualization of experience ecosystems as semantic blended spaces instantiated by the activities carried out by independent actors moving freely and at will between different products, services, devices, people, and locations in pursuit of individual goals. This conceptualization is anchored to three distinct cultural and...

This chapter frames the ongoing epistemological evolution of information architecture as a shift, under the pressure of social and technological change, from the “classical” information architecture of the 1990s and early 2000s to a “contemporary” information architecture. It then establishes a differentiation between the two, modeled in accordance...

The chapter analyzes the organization of space and narrative in video games as an instance of the information architecture of digital environments and of the structural role it plays in shaping experience. It does so by adopting two different ways to analyze the space/narrative relationship: Lynch’s spatial primitives for cognitive mapping, and McG...

System space is introduced as a conceptual design space and as a distinct space from that traditionally addressed by most design processes. The paper intends to address the increasing complexity deriving from the ongoing blend of physical and digital in a postdigital culture and contribute to the current understanding of the effect of “systemic” wa...

For the past seventeen plus years, my research in information architecture has been theoretically transdisciplinary and pragmatically practice-centered, in that I have been engaging with the worldwide community of practice in an effort to bridge “techne” and “episteme” and figure out, if you will, the information architecture of information archite...

As AI becomes ever more embedded into daily life and spaces, the discussion of whether AI empowers or disempowers human agency has garnered significant attention. However, AI agency and human agency may not necessarily represent opposing extremes on a continuum. Previous studies have suggested that humans and AI followed different decision-making s...

The walkshop introduces participants to an embodied, structural approach to understand, conceptualize, and design experiences that blend physical and digital space to create a novel space of action, with its own sense of presence, its own affordances, and its very special challenges. It consists of an outdoors morning walking and exploratory sessio...

The article explores the Pervasive Information Architecture (PIA) framework as a theory and set of tools that support the identification of both the multiple physical/digital, spatially oriented elements that make up urban life and, importantly, the obstacles and barriers to information flow between them. As an example, the article presents the app...

This paper frames extended reality (XR) as an information-based designed environment and argues that its design requires principles, tools and methods of digital design and experience design to be revisited and revised. Approaching the design of XR environments from the perspective of information architecture, the paper stipulates that the naturali...

In an information-rich world, the information architecture of the world — from songs or movies to houses and cities, from products and services all the way to superstructures such as education or political representation — is the critical component we keep overlooking.

This paper sets out to present an ongoing pedagogical project where game design is used to let students both learn and reflect upon different perspectives of ethics relevant to the master program they are enrolled in. The paper explains the underlying logic behind the pedagogical process where students develop their own game and at the same time le...

Smart Cities have been around as a concept for quite some time. However, most examples of Smart Cities (SCs) originate from megacities (MCs), despite the fact that most people live in Small and Medium-sized Cities (SMCs). This paper addresses the contextual setting for smart cities from the perspective of such small and medium-sized cities. It star...

Causal loop diagrams are used to map relationships between nodes in a system. They can either contain reinforcing loops, where an action produces a result which influences more of the same action, resulting in growth or decline or balancing loops attempting to move some current state to a desired state through some action. Service design as a pract...

In the beginning, we digitized. We turned analog artifacts into digital artifacts. Letters for example, or ledgers. And music, of course. Then, our current reading goes, we started “digit-al-izing”, a different thing altogether: we applied digitization to the larger processes. In the 1980s, digitalization was already underway in a number of industr...

PLR (Personal-Local-Remote) is a spatially-oriented syntax for mapping digital/physical experiences as a system of relationships structuring an actor-centered information architecture that is surveyed, explored, and described by means of a set of simple rules. These rules represent the cognitive load, the relationships, and the relative importance...

Andrew Dillon, who served as dean of the School of Information, University of Texas at Austin from 2002 to 2017, is interviewed about his contribution to the academic information architecture community, the relationship between academia and practice, the critique of information architecture works, and how he considers the field part design and part...

An interview with Carol Smith, Senior Research Scientist in Human-Machine Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, in which she talks about how she practices information architecture in her artificial intelligence and emerging technologies work. She reviews the importance of information structure and organization,...

An interview with Lou Rosenfeld, co-author of Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond, originally Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, where he lays out his part in the history of information architecture as a community of practice, the emergence of interaction design and user experience from that budding community, dynamics of...

Andrew Hinton, the author of Understanding Context: Environment, Language, and Information Architecture, is interviewed about embodiment—how language, physicality and the environment all affect design in a digital realm, the importance of taking time to work on ethical and research aspects of the field of information architecture, and how service d...

The publication of the Spring 2021 issue marks the beginning of a new cycle in the life of the Journal of Information Architecture, one that brings with it a few long-awaited changes, the most immediate of which is a refactoring of the platform running the Journal itself

This volume reveals the history of Information Architecture (IA), reflects on the relationship between practice and research within the discipline, and presents educators with the latest models, frameworks and theories that have emerged from the Information Architecture Academics and Practitioners Roundtable between 2014 and 2019. The most comprehe...

A digital/physical installation part a series of pilots developed for Habo Municipality, Sweden, in the context of a public co-design effort aimed at creating a shared understanding of the possibilities offered by digital transformation and the development of a connected city framework, “Read Ahoy!” provides children with a simple game-like challen...

This paper formalizes an approach to the Internet of Things as a socio-technical system of systems and a part of the infosphere. It introduces a principle-based, human-centered approach to designing Internet of Things artifacts as elements of contextual cross-channel ecosystems. It connects the Internet of Things to the conceptualization of cross-c...

The case details the application of a systemic, actor-centered design approach to a strategic process of digital transformation in support of industry/research collaboration in one of the administrative regions of southern Sweden. Project mainstays include regional development of “digital leadership”, the creation of a digital/physical competence c...

Large-scale transformation projects have so far rather consistently embraced a dirigist, technicistic perspective. Their outcomes are on the other hand meant to be experienced by communities in a direct, engaged manner that is embodied, spatial and temporal. For processes meant to radically transform the lived experience of people, they have so far...

In this chapter we detail a spatial method to map cross-channel ecosystems based on systems thinking and the framing of cross-channel ecosystems as defined in information architecture. The spatial mapping tool is applied on a specific case in the ambient assisted living domain with the goal of exploring how such an approach might further the curren...

This paper reports an investigation and assessment of the digital information, provided via multiple channels, for the 2015 World Exposition (Expo) in Milan. Using emerging theoretical constructs in cross-channel information architecture as a lens, the researchers examined aspects of the digital information ecology that supported the Exposition eve...

Recent developments in information and communication technologies have left interaction design and human-computer interaction (HCI) with something of a conceptual gap. The distinction between physical and digital spaces is increasingly blurred. Cloud-based services have enabled a separation of information content from device so that content can be...

Convergence has been quietly reshaping not just media consumption but also the way we interact with products and services. Read/write access through personal and ambient devices enables the creation of free­flowing, actor­defined experiences that connect physical and digital artifacts, people, and locations into information­based ecosystems that va...

This paper provides a contribution to the conceptualization and design of hybrid, digital / physical spaces of action as information-based constructs, based on applying the theory of conceptual blending to the creation of novel, blended spaces on one side, and on extending these to actor-driven cross-channel ecosystems as the digital / physical pla...

This paper describes an exploratory study conducted in 2015 on the public transport system in the city of Karlstad, Sweden. A heuristic approach to cross-channel experience design was used to assess the overall structure and fittingness of the actor-driven ecosystems centered around public transport commuting and created by the interactions between...

When we think of the future, our imagination conjures images of quasi-magic interactions while holographic displays glow in shades of blue or green. These will be there in some form, but they will be tactics, not strategy. Strategy will be largely invisible, silently producing its effects while we are busy doing something else. And as we move much...

This paper provides a contribution to creativity and co-design based on applying the theory of conceptual integration (also known as conceptual blending, or blending theory) to creative design and collaboration. Our approach is based on bringing the principles of conceptual blending and applying them to the creation of novel spaces, objects and ser...

Workplace innovation (WI) is important to provide better work opportunities and increase productivity. WI at the individual task level concerns the structure of individual work tasks. A number of surveys have been done that measured WI at the individual task level, however they paid little attention to work environment, in particular to supportive...

Il cambiamento viene da lontano. Nel 1998, Nicholas Negroponte scrive un articolo per «Wired Magazine» intitolato Beyond Digital, oltre il digitale. In quel pezzo, impiegando non più di un migliaio di parole, Negroponte descrive un futuro dove il digitale, esattamente come «l’aria e l’acqua», viene notato solamente quando viene a mancare ed in cui...

Opening keynote for the WIAD14 conference in Bristol, UK.

Information architecture has changed dramatically since the mid-1990s and earlier conceptions of the world and the internet being different and separate have given way to a much more complex scenario in the present day. In the post-digital world that we now inhabit the digital and the physical blend easily, and our activities and usage of informati...

The paper maintains that in the epistemological shift from postmodernism to pseudo-modernism, technological, economic, social, and cultural elements of change have thoroughly transformed the scenario in which information architecture operated in the late 1990s and have eroded its channel-specific connotation as a website-only, inductive activity, o...

The paper maintains that in the epistemological shift from postmodernism to pseudo-modernism, technological, economic, social, and cultural elements of change have thoroughly transformed the scenario in which information architecture operated in the late 1990s and have eroded its channel-specific connotation as a website-only, inductive activity, o...

Closing keynote at the ASIS&T EuroIA 2013

Information is going everywhere. It is bleeding out of the Internet and out of personal computers, and it is being embedded into the real world. Mobile devices, networked resources, and real­time systems are making our interactions with information constant and ubiquitous. Information is becoming pervasive, and products and services are becoming pa...

L’articolo propone un modello per la progettazione di spazi mediali ed esperienziali complessi capace di sintetizzare in una visione olistica i diversi media e i gli stessi ambienti fisico e digitale, e di ricucire in una prospettiva unitaria diverse discipline o aree d’indagine (architettura dell’informazione, service design, user experience desig...

EDITOR'S SUMMARY While the distinction between complex and complicated may seem negligible, the key is understanding that complexity applies to a system that cannot be simulated, modeled and predicted. Website architecture within the Internet environment may be just such a system with evolving underlying technologies and demands, and handling their...

Information architecture (IA) is a professional practice and field of studies focused on solving the basic problems of accessing, and using, the vast amounts of information available today. You commonly hear of information architecture in connection with the design of web sites both large and small, and when wireframes, labels, and taxonomies are d...

As physical and digital interactions intertwine, new challenges for digital product designers and developers, as well as, industrial designers and architects are materializing. While well versed in designing navigation, organization, and labelling of websites and software, professionals are faced the crucial challenge of how to apply these techniqu...

This chapter introduces a multidisciplinary holistic approach for the general design of successful bridge experiences as a This chapter introduces a multidisciplinary holistic approach for the general design of successful bridge experiences as a cross-context human–information interaction model. Nowadays it is common to interact through a number of...

Andrea Resmini is an information architect with FATDUX in Sweden. He can be reached at ar fatdux.com. His website is www.andrearesmini.com. Keith Instone is an information architect lead in the CIO area of IBM in Toledo (Maumee), Ohio. He works on the user experience design team for IBM's websites. His current email addresses are available on his w...

The authors of this paper position pratice-led research (PLR) as an effective agent in the transformation of the seemingly inherent and natural acts found in casual practice into the formal arrangement of accepted truths and regulated practices of a discipline for user experience design (UXD) and information architecture (IA) communities of practic...

The authors of this paper position pratice-led research (PLR) as an effective agent in the transformation of the seemingly inherent and natural acts found in casual practice into the formal arrangement of accepted truths and regulated practices of a discipline for user experience design (UXD) and information architecture (IA) communities of practic...

In this paper, we describe how cross-mediality and bridge-experiences are playing a major role in redefining the goals and scope of information architecture as a strategic practice and discipline for the successful design of user experiences, and propose a seven-point manifesto for a holistic approach to the design of digital -- physical human-info...

As our Editor in Chief Dorte Madsen wrote in her editorial “Shall We Dance?” in our Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2009, the Journal invites everyone to the ball: being an arena for both practitioners and researchers is a demanding task, and strictly dependent of the views readers, authors and the Editorial Board express and maintain. I In the best trad...

FaceTag is a working prototype of a semantic collaborative tagging tool conceived for bookmarking information architecture resources. It aims to show how the widespread homogeneous and flat keywords' space created by users while tagging can be effectively mixed with a richer faceted classification scheme to improve the "information scent" and "berr...

FaceTag is a working prototype of a semantic collaborative tagging tool conceived for improved bookmarking, searching and re-finding of resources in specialized domains. FaceTag's goal is to show how the vast, homogeneous, flat keywords' space created by users while tagging can be effectively improved by using a richer faceted classification supers...

Information architecture (IA) is an emerging discipline within the knowledge organization field that merges concepts and approaches from several different disciplines (librarianship and information science, classification theory, logic and philosophy, user experience, web design, psychology and ergonomics, industrial design): its goal is the struct...

Information architecture is not just for the Web: information architecture has a larger impact on many offline activities and affects our daily experience in many different ways. Its contribution becomes crucial where complexity, unfamiliarity and information overload stand in the way of the user. The goal of this paper is to outline a unified mode...

An edited account of this workshop was presented in Tonkin, E., Corrado, E. M., Moulaison, H. L., Kipp, M. E., Resmini, A., Pfeiffer, H. D., & Zhang, Q. (2008). Collaborative and social tagging networks. Ariadne, (54).

FaceTag is a type of collaborative tagging systems are powerful tools for organizing, browsing and publicly sharing personal collections of resources on the World Wide Web. The user interface adapts to these two different activities, providing different support tools and different behaviors respectively. The browsing interface is used to navigate t...