Information architecture is itself a node #

With an underlying infinite network #

These have been the strata patterns I’ve leveraged across projects and industries, understood through the super-high-level movement of data. They are not meant to be used solo, but layered — just like a painting.

There will be someone who will want to add the combinatorial forms as a “known” version of baseline shapes. I hope that doesn’t find traction, because it pulls with it the cognitive bias “Curse of Knowledge”. That bias, especially, makes it difficult for those deeply embedded in a knowledge area to include the insights from those who are learning. Worse, it often makes the knowledgable disparage the learning, “too stupid for this work/subject/effort,” when in fact a high hurdle was set and learning is happening. It’s an unnecessary development in the sphere of understanding, where everyone needs to play to some degree.

The goal is understanding, not knowledge. Understanding encompasses, knowledge pins down. Understanding is growth, knowledge is exclusivity. Understanding allows for finite perception and a yet-to-be-synthesized quality of truth; knowledge is narrative.  I hope that the goal of understanding is to broaden anyone’s horizons that are interested. I know that there will always be some who try to leverage anything and everything opportunistically. My hope is that we understand that urge is primarily exclusionary: you can’t have this, it’s mine.

The basic shapes can be matched, nested, offset with multiple insights to an infinitely expressive group (practical introduction) #

Information is built for audience (contextualization) #

An architecture has built-in precepts and functions (architecture overtones) #

Any architecture is potentially one instance of a multiplicity, each built according to a primary user (point of view) #