The Informed Life

Bob Kasenchak is a taxonomist and information architect at Factor. Bob’s background is in music, and this conversation delves into what information architects can learn from studying music. We recorded two conversations on the subject: this one focuses on the structure of music itself, and the second covers how we can make music more findable. Look for that one in an upcoming episode.

Show notes

• Bob Kasenchak - LinkedIn
• Bob Kasenchak (@taxobob) - Twitter
• Factor
• Synaptica
• Access Innovations
• IAC: Information Architecture conference
• Duane Degler
• Gilles Deleuze - Wikipedia
• Félix Guattari - Wikipedia
• New England Conservatory
• Sonic Design: The Nature of Sound and Music by Robert Cogan and Pozzi Escot
• 1/1 by Brian Eno (YouTube)
• Rick Beato - YouTube
• What Makes This Song Great? Ep.61 VAN HALEN (#2) - YouTube
• Ludomusicology - Wikipedia
• Abby Covert
• N7
• JSTOR
• Apple Music Classical app

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Are Halland has worked in digital product development, strategy, design, and communication for over a quarter of a century. During that time, he created the core model, a tool for designing websites and products that align business goals and user needs. He has now written a book about the core model, which is due to be published later this year. In this conversation, he explains what the core model is and how it can help us create more effective digital products.

Show notes

• Are Halland - Twitter
• Are Halland - LinkedIn
• The Core Model
• Gerry McGovern
• Pareto principle - Wikipedia
•  Conceptual Models: Begin by Designing What to Design by Jeff Johnson and Austin Henderson
• Designing Connected Content: Plan and Model Digital Products for Today and Tomorrow by Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton
• Telenor Group
• Esperanto - Wikipedia

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Dan Russell spent 17 years working at Google, with a significant part of that tenure as a Search Anthropologist: “someone who tries to understand how people search, what kinds of things they seek, and how their tools influence their search process.” Dan is the author of The Joy of Search, which is the focus of our conversation today.

Show notes

• Dan Russell
• The Joy of Search: A Google Insider’s Guide to Going Beyond the Basics by Dan Russell
• The Library of Congress
• Felis silvestris catus - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre (Spanish)
• Sagrada Família - Wikipedia (Catalan)
• Howard Rheingold on Tools for Thought – The Informed Life
• ChatGPT
• Google Bard
• Bing
• scite: see how research has been cited

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Sheryl Cababa is the Chief Strategy Officer of Substantial, an experience design consultancy based in Seattle. She’s the author of Closing the Loop, a new book about systems thinking in design. The book emphasizes the role designers can play as catalysts for social change, and that is the focus of our conversation.

Show notes

• Sheryl Cababa - LinkedIn
• Sheryl Cababa (@SherylCababa)
• Substantial
• University of Washington - Human Centered Design & Engineering
• Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers by Sheryl Cababa
• Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows
• The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge
• Peter Checkland
• Systems Thinking for Social Change: A Practical Guide to Solving Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, and Achieving Lasting Results, by David Peter Stroh
• Iceberg Model - Ecochallenge.org
• What is the STEEP analysis? - FourWeekMBA
• Revolution 1 by The Beatles
• UXLx - User Experience Lisbon
• Enterprise UX 2023

Rosenfeld Media provided a review copy of Sheryl’s book.

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Jerry Michalski helps organizations become more trustworthy by exploring their language, processes, and intentions. That’s fascinating in itself — but I wanted to talk with him primarily because he curates an online resource called Jerry’s Brain, a deep repository of interconnected thoughts. He’s worked on Jerry’s Brain for a quarter of a century, longer than any other such experiment I’m aware of. So, I wanted to find out why and how he does this.

Show notes

• Jerry Michalski
• Jerry’s Brain
• TheBrain
• REX: The Relationship Economy Expedition
• Open Global Mind
• The Big Fungus
• Roam Research
• Graphviz
• Kumu
• Markdown - Wikipedia
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• DEVONthink
• Tinderbox
• Linking Your Thinking by Nick Milo
• Mem
• Obsidian
• GitHub
• Obsidian Git plugin
• Google Docs
• You need a wiki
• JSON - Wikipedia
• Prezi

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Andy Fitzgerald is an information architecture and content strategy consultant. He works with mission-driven organizations to produce systems that communicate clearly, align business and user goals, and scale effectively. Our conversation today focuses on moving beyond the page as a metaphor for how information is delivered toward more flexible content structures.

Show notes

• Andy Fitzgerald Consulting
• Andy Fitzgerald, PhD - LinkedIn
• Language + Meaning + User Experience Architecture
• Dan Klyn
• Richard Saul Wurman - Wikipedia
• Headless content management system - Wikipedia
• Taxonomy Boot Camp
• The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization by Elaine Svenonius
• Mozilla Developer Network Web Docs
• Schema.org
• SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System
• Groucho Marx
• End of Web Design by Jakob Nielsen (Jakob’s Law)
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

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Nicole van der Hoeven is a Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs. She is also a communicator, sharing what she learns through her writing, conference presentations, and YouTube videos. The latter are what brought Nicole’s work to my attention: she runs a YouTube channel focused on one of my favorite tools for thought, Obsidian. In this conversation, we focus on how Nicole uses Obsidian to “learn in public.”

Show notes

• Nicole van der Hoeven
• Nicole on Mastodon
• Nicole on YouTube
• pkm.social
• Grafana labs
• Obsidian
• Personal knowledge management - Wikipedia
• Work with the garage door up
• Continuous integration - Wikipedia
• Continuous delivery - Wikipedia
• Scrintal
• Roam Research
• Markdown
• GitHub
• Tabletop role-playing game - Wikipedia
• Andy Polaine
• Andy Polaine on Service Design – The Informed Life
• Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson
• The Martian by Andy Weir
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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Hugh Dubberly is the founder of Dubberly Design Office, an interaction design studio based in San Francisco. Hugh has a long trajectory in the design world. Before opening his studio, he did pioneering work at leading tech companies like Apple and Netscape. He is also a thinker and teacher of uncommon depth and breadth. He’s my colleague at the California College of the Arts, and I’m also lucky to call him a friend and mentor. I met with Hugh in his office to discuss his recent paper arguing against framing design as problem-solving, and that is the focus of this conversation.

Show notes

• Hugh Dubberly - AIGA
• Dubberly Design Office
• Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design by Jeff Johnson and Austin Henderson
• Bill Verplank - Interaction Design (YouTube)
• How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition by Michael Porter
• The product service ecology: Using a systems approach in design by Jodi Forlizzi (PDF)
• MDes in Interaction Design - CCA
• After the Bauhaus, Before the Internet: A History of Graphic Design Pedagogy edited by Geoff Kaplan
• Why we should stop describing design as “problem solving” by Hugh Dubberly
• Patrick Whitney - Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
• Double Diamond (design process model) - Wikipedia
• Horst Rittel - Wikipedia
• C. West Churchman - Wikipedia
• Wicked problem - Wikipedia
• Design Thinking by Peter G. Rowe
• Russell L. Ackoff - Wikipedia
• Herbert A. Simon - Wikipedia
• The Sciences of the Artificial - Wikipedia
• Axis Thinking by Brian Eno
• The MAYA Principle: Design for the Future, but Balance it with Your Users’ Present - IxDF
• Overton window - Wikipedia
• Environmental Design - University of Colorado Boulder
• Ulm School of Design - Wikipedia
• The Infinite Conversation (AI-generated dialog between simulations of Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek)

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Carrie Hane is an evangelist at Sanity, a cloud-based content platform provider. Carrie is co-author of Designing Connected Content, which advocates for content modeling as part of the digital design process. This is also the subject of our conversation.

A side note: Carrie is one of the keynote speakers at this year’s information architecture conference, which takes place in New Orleans from March 28 - April 1. I’ll be teaching an introductory IA workshop at the conference, so if you want to learn about IA and can get to the southern U.S. in late March, come see Carrie and me at the Conference. There’s a link below.

Show notes

• Carrie Hane - LinkedIn
• Carrie Hane - Twitter
• Designing Connected Content: Plan and Model Digital Products for Today and Tomorrow by Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton
• Sanity
• Information Architecture Conference
• Tanzen Consulting blog
• Content Modeling: What It Is and How to Get Started – Content Modeling Guide
• Sanity newsletter
• What is Lotus Notes? - Definition from Techopedia
• Gartner
• What does it mean for a database to be schemaless? - Quora
• Andy Fitzgerald

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Michael Becker is the founder and CEO of Identity Praxis, a strategic advisory firm. He’s also a prolific communicator, having produced dozens of YouTube videos explaining how to use advanced knowledge management tools. In this conversation, we discuss Michael’s approach to knowledge work and how tools such as Tinderbox can help you think and work more effectively.

Show notes

• Michael Becker - LinkedIn
• Michael’s Patreon
• Michael’s YouTube channel
• @privacyshaman
• Tinderbox
• Tinderbox forum
• Identity Praxis
• Cal Poly Pomona
• National University
• Association of National Advertisers
• Mobile Ecosystem Forum
• The Informed Life episode 99 - Mark Bernstein on Tinderbox
• DEVONthink
• Zotero
• Obsidian
• Roam Research
• Jekyll
• Scrivener
• Markdown
• Conrad Gessner
• Vincent Placcius
• Niklas Luhmann
• Zettelkasten
• Andy Matuschak
• Steven Johnson
• TheBrain
• Tiago Forte’s Second Brain
• Pandoc

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