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
conflic
t
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conflic
tem
erg
ence
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conflic
tem
erg
ence
dest
ruct
ion
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conflic
tem
erg
ence
dest
ruct
ion
synth
esi
s
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conflic
tem
erg
ence
dest
ruct
ion
synth
esi
sag
ility
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conflic
tem
erg
ence
dest
ruct
ion
synth
esi
sag
ility
ad
ap
tati
on
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conflic
tem
erg
ence
dest
ruct
ion
synth
esi
sag
ility
ad
ap
tati
on
novelt
y17
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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conflic
tem
erg
ence
dest
ruct
ion
synth
esi
sag
ility
ad
ap
tati
on
novelt
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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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org
anic
desi
gn e
merg
ence
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dest
ruct
ion cre
atio
n
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ad
ap
tati
on
fast tra
nsie
nts
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novelt
y chang
e
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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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