The recordings from WIAD-Ann Arbor 2024 are below!

A conference registration table with three people

What is World IA Day?

World Information Architecture Day (WIAD)
is an annual celebration held in dozens of locations across the globe designed to teach, learn and discuss how to shape the future of Information Architecture. The organization is focused on building local communities of practice within a global network, and The Understanding Group is proud of the role we’ve played in fostering WIAD events since its inception.

This Year’s Theme: Context

Inspired by Andrew Hinton's seminal work, Understanding Context, this year's theme invited us to explore the complex tapestry of context in our digital worlds. As Andrew stated in a 2013 WIAD presentation:

“Context is all around us. It shapes the meaning in all types of communications. Without context, you can’t communicate effectively. Without context, you can’t understand meaning. Context is fundamental to the way we come to understand people, situations, and ideas. Context inspires feelings, thoughts and beliefs of groups and individuals. It is the background information that allows people to make informed decisions.”

— Andrew Hinton

Program Recordings

Context Windows and Why IA Matters in LLMs & RAG

Matt Payne, Founder and CEO of Width.ai

The conversations around large language models and RAG applications have been moving quickly with tons of good, and bad information. Much of this focuses on using real time context from knowledge bases in a prompt format. But how do we best structure that information we want to use in context with LLMs? Let’s take a dive into why you need to structure your information soundly for use in LLMs & RAG, and how context windows should be thought about from the IA perspective.

The Body Electric: Finding Ground in our New Digital Reality

Andrew Hinton, author of Understanding Context

At times, it feels like the very ground under our feet is shifting — or even dissolving — as digital information and devices disrupt and even replace parts of our world. In this talk, we’ll look at these trends, and consider the possibility of a radical re-introduction of the human body as the organizing principle of information architecture and interaction design practice.

An Approach for Finite Humans to Grapple with the Infinite

Joe Elmendorf, VP of Consulting, The Understanding Group

Explore the art of focused, impactful modeling and dive into the Model Approach Placard (M.A.P.) Technique, a methodology that champions the agile principle of doing the simplest thing that works by paying attention to what truly matters.

A Facilitated Discussion

Dan Klyn, Kaarin Hoff, Andrew Hinton, Matt Payne, and Joe Elmendorf

This is a lively conversation about artificial intelligence and context.

Our Speakers

Andrew Hinton leads teams and organizations in creating great places, products, and services for humans. His book, Understanding Context, is about how digital environments make sense to their inhabitants, and how we can make those experiences even better using information architecture.
Currently, as his day job, Andrew manages the Corporate Banking squad at Regions Bank. Otherwise, he keeps busy cooking, walking the dog, trying to play guitar, and making his amazing wife laugh at his dumb jokes. If you’d like to know more, visit his home on the web at andrewhinton.com.
Dan Klyn, Co-founder of TUG and Lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Information, focuses on the spatiality of meaning. Co-founder of WIAD and curator of the Wurman Archive, Dan's teachings and research have significantly influenced the field.
Kaarin Hoff, Director of Product Design at Glassdoor, is known for her expertise in information architecture and system design and has a passion for making complex systems visible and understandable. Her work across various industries embodies her commitment to creating clear, user-centric solutions.
Joe Elmendorf is VP of Consulting at The Understanding Group. He teaches people from all sorts of jobs how to make complex things easier to understand. Joe uses special methods that go beyond just using standard models. He focuses on making things clear and easy to use. This has made him a well-known teacher and a leader in the field of modeling.
Matt Payne is an ex-Capital One ML Engineer & is the Founder and CEO of Width.ai. Width.ai is an AI consulting & development firm focused on building ai based applications for enterprise & early stage startup clients. Width.ai is a current leader in building and consulting on production grade GPT products and has written a number of whitepapers and technical reviews on using this state of the art resource. Our key areas of customer improvement focus on prompt engineering, AI model fine-tuning, and early stage AI strategy.

World IA Day in Michigan

Having participated nearly every year since 2012, we have witnessed the way Michigan weather reminds you who is in charge. So in 2024 we decided to adopt a hybrid model. Members of the public joined University of Michigan students in North Quad for a viewing party hosted by Dan Klyn and others watched online.