Information is going everywhere, bleeding out of we thought was cyberspace and back into the real world: Internet access has moved into cellphones and hand-held devices; social networks are now mobile and constantly connect physically separated users producing unexpected scenarios; shopping remixes web sites, brick and mortar stores, and user-generated content in novelty ways; devices acquire uniqueness, stories, and a capability to generate meaning.

Many tasks we perform every day not only constantly require us to move between different media, but actually have us move from the digital to the physical environment and back: we talk about convergence, ubiquitous computing, media ecologies, and cross-media. What role do information architecture and user experience design play in such a scenario?

Well, the 5th European Information Architecture Summit, EuroIA1, is coming up this week, loaded with a lot of interesting talks, top guns, and the goal of going Beyond Structures. Me and IA extraordinaire Luca Rosati2 are going to present there our information architecture manifesto for ubiquitous ecologies, and we sure do want to go beyond structures.

Think about the traditional game of the goose board game3. Imagine it to be laid out across a number of environments, dimensions, media. As in every racing table game, users have to move through spaces, bridges, and gaps to get to the goal and win the game. All of the environments hold at least one piece of information which is necessary for the users to participate in the game. How easily and satisfactorily they get from start to finish constitutes their user experience. To make this work like a seamless process, a satisfactory bridge-experience, a change in the design perspective is needed: we need a holistic, cross-media take on the architecture of information and human-information interaction that goes beyond what the current practice and discipline consider.

If you are in Copenhagen and want to know more, show up in Room Amalienborg, the Grey Path of Wisdom4, at 12:00 sharp. We promise you a few thoughts on these matters and some entertainment, although I can assure you we won't dance.

If you are not going to be there, wait for the usual post-conference slides sometime next week or for October 28th and ACM MEDES 20095 in Lyon, France, where the academic part of all this jazz is going to be presented.

[Title image shows the Hunt the Coal Thief Board Game, circa 1930 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliodyssey/ / CC BY 2.0]

1. 1. EuroIA web site
2. 2. Luca Rosati
3. 3. And for amazing historical board games, check out peacay's board game sets on flickr
4. 4. If you don't know what I'm saying, take my word and just wait for the proceedings
5. 5. MEDES 09