… an actor or a group works with information across many surfaces, channels, and moments, and needs to understand where things are, how they relate, and what can be done with them.
Problem
People do not experience an artifact as isolated screens or single transactions; they inhabit it over time to carry out their work. When each view, channel, or response is shaped only for the immediate task in front of the actor, the whole fails to hold together as a place. Categories, names, and rules of access shift from one surface or moment to the next, related items sit in separate silos with no path between them, and actors have to reorient themselves every time they move or approach the work from a new angle.
Solution
Shape the artifact as a coherent information environment rather than a collection of separate views and transactions. Give it a legible structure and vocabulary that stay consistent across every surface, channel, and moment of use, so actors can build a sense of place and know who can reach what. Let the environment adapt to different tasks and ways of seeking without losing that underlying logic, and connect related items across boundaries so actors can see what belongs together and move between them.
Continuation
The artifact's interior is the counterpart of its place among other tools, which is tool ecology. The patterns between this one and the smaller ones it leads to are not yet written…
All connections
- Complements
- Tool ecology — The artifact's interior is the counterpart of its place among other tools, which is tool ecology.
Resources & references
- Morville & Rosenfeld (2006) Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd edition: information architecture as the structural design of shared information environments
- Arango (2018) Living in Information: Responsible Design for Digital Places: digital artifacts as persistent places people inhabit rather than sequences of isolated transactions
- Arango, What is an information environment?
- Resmini & Rosati (2011) Pervasive Information Architecture: Designing Cross-Channel User Experiences: place-making, consistency, resilience, reduction, and correlation across channels and touchpoints
- Resmini, Information architecture for ubiquitous ecologies: touchpoints designed as separate experiences leave structural gaps and inconsistencies, and information architecture supplies one framework that holds across channels
- Smaldino, O’Connor & Weatherall (2025) Information architectures: a framework for understanding socio-technical systems: information architecture as the structure that shapes how information moves, including who can reach it and whether it can be found again