the information architect and the fighter pilot

Matthew Milan

The Information Architect and the Fighter Pilot

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Friday was a Howard Hughes kind of day 2

Warning!No WireframesNo Clear AnswersNo Happy Ending

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“We are survival machines”

Richard Dawkins

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“He who can handle the quickest rate of change

survives”

John Boyd 6

The purpose of this talk:

To explore how the work of John Boyd can help us to think about the practice and discipline of Information Architecture

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1.John Boyd2.Learning from Boyd3.Plating the Bird

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1John Boyd

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Themes10

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conflic

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The Evolution of BoydThe Evolution of Boyd

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1. The Fighter Pilot2. The Fighter Mafia3. Genghis John

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John BoydFighter Pilot

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40 Second Boyd22

Plating the Bird

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Aerial Attack Study

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Seeing Patterns 25

John BoydFighter Mafia

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Fast Transients

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EM Theory

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The Father of F-16

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Practice from Theory

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John BoydGenghis John

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Slumming at the Pentagon

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Changing the Game

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Synthesis34

The Snowmobile35

Blitzkrieg36

Maneuver Warfare

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Boyd’s TheoryBoyd’s Theory

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• Destruction and Creation Patterns of Conflict Organic Design for Command and Control The Strategic Game of ? & ? Revelation A Discourse on Winning and Losing The Conceptual Spiral The Essence of Winning and Losing

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• ObserveOrientDecideAct

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How the loop is often seen:

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Observe

OrientAct

Decide44

How Boyd saw the loop:

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More than just fast looping

A way of thinking about survival and success

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• Destructionand Creation

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Chi/Cheng

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Cheng:

OrthodoxExpected

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Chi:

UnorthodoxUnexpected

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Novelty

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Understanding Novelty allows

us to create Novelty

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Novelty produceschange

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Boyd left his theory deliberately incomplete

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Boyd and BriefingBoyd and Briefing

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A discourse to make the audience think

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The snowmobile again58

A loser is someone who cannot build snowmobiles when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change

A winner is someone who can build snowmobiles and employ them in an appropriate fashion when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change

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• A discourse to make the audience think

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2Learning from Boyd

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unDesigning Experiences

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dest

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Cheng C

hi

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John BoydPostmodern Strategist

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Godel Heisenberg Popper Kuhn Polanyi DawkinsSun Tzu Liddell-Hart Clausewitz Napoleon

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Proliferate discourses without trying to fit them

into a permanent grid

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Postmodern IAPostmodern IA

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Is IA a postmodernist discipline?

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complexity

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contradiction

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ambiguity

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diversity

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interconnectedness

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Proliferate discourses without trying to fit them

into a permanent grid

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January 222002

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Are we closer to

Boyd then we think?

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3Plating the Bird

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“He who can handle the quickest

rate of change survives”

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Avro ArrowAvro Arrow

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What killed the Avro Arrow?

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Capability, but no adaptation in a changing

environment

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201891

What killed information architecture?

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RISKCapability, but no adaptation in a changing

environment

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1/2Information Architecture is

a discipline94

We overthink the damn thing.

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Creation

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Destruction

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In IA terms:

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Structure

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Unstructure

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We’re too passive about unstructuring

things

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We can’t adapt if we aren’t living in the loop

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And we can’t live in the loop until we’re able

to deconstruct.

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Our Conceptual SpiralThe Conceptual Spiral

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• aExploration Thinking Learning

Comprehending Discovering

Doing Unlearning

Shaping Innovating Achieving

Relearning

Adapting105

Which Generates

Insight Imagination Initiative 106

A paradigm for survival and growth

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We need our own conceptual spiral

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• We need to get inside the loop

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• We need to focus more on the discourse

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• We need to brief more

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• We need to get better at breaking things

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We need to embrace novelty

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We need to Chi as well as Cheng

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Boyd left his theory deliberately incomplete

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So should we

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This presentation is deliberately incomplete

• matthewm@criticalmass.com mmilan@gmail.com

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