My IA Summit 2008 presentation on the relationship between Information Architecture and the theories of John Boyd.

1. Matthew Milan The Information Architect and the Fighter Pilot

2. Friday was a Howard Hughes kind of day

3. Warning! No Wireframes No Clear Answers No Happy Ending

5. “ We are survival machines” Richard Dawkins

6. “ He who can handle the quickest rate of change survives” John Boyd

7. 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

8. 1.John Boyd 2.Learning from Boyd 3.Plating the Bird

9. John Boyd 1

10. Themes

11. conflict

12. conflict emergence

13. conflict emergence destruction

14. conflict emergence destruction synthesis

15. conflict emergence destruction synthesis agility

16. conflict emergence destruction synthesis agility adaptation

17. conflict emergence destruction synthesis agility adaptation novelty

18. The Evolution of Boyd The Evolution of Boyd

20. 1. The Fighter Pilot 2. The Fighter Mafia 3. Genghis John

21. John Boyd Fighter Pilot

22. 40 Second Boyd

23. Plating the Bird

24. Aerial Attack Study

25. Seeing Patterns

26. John Boyd Fighter Mafia

27. Fast Transients

28. EM Theory

29. The Father of F-16

30. Practice from Theory

31. John Boyd Genghis John

32. Slumming at the Pentagon

33. Changing the Game

34. Synthesis

35. The Snowmobile

36. Blitzkrieg

37. Maneuver Warfare

38. conflict emergence destruction synthesis agility adaptation novelty

39. Boyd’s Theory Boyd’s Theory

43. How the loop is often seen:

44. Observe Orient Act Decide

45. How Boyd saw the loop:

47. More than just fast looping A way of thinking about survival and success

49. Chi/Cheng

50. Cheng: Orthodox Expected

51. Chi: Unorthodox Unexpected

52. Novelty

53. Understanding Novelty allows us to create Novelty

54. Novelty produces change

55. Boyd left his theory deliberately incomplete

56. Boyd and Briefing Boyd and Briefing

57. A discourse to make the audience think

58. The snowmobile again

59. 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

61. Learning from Boyd 2

62. un Designing Experiences

63. organic design emergence

64. destruction creation

65. adaptation fast transients

66. novelty change

67. Cheng Chi

69. Postmodern Strategist John Boyd

70. Godel Heisenberg Popper Kuhn Polanyi Dawkins Sun Tzu Liddell-Hart Clausewitz Napoleon

71. Proliferate discourses without trying to fit them into a permanent grid

72. Postmodern IA Postmodern IA

73. Is IA a postmodernist discipline?

74. complexity

75. contradiction

76. ambiguity

77. diversity

78. interconnectedness

79. Proliferate discourses without trying to fit them into a permanent grid

80. January 22 2002

82. Are we closer to Boyd then we think?

83. Plating the Bird 3

85. “ He who can handle the quickest rate of change survives”

86. Avro Arrow Avro Arrow

89. What killed the Avro Arrow?

90. Capability, but no adaptation in a changing environment

91. 2018

92. What killed information architecture?

93. Capability, but no adaptation in a changing environment RISK

94. 1/2 Information Architecture is a discipline

95. We overthink the damn thing.

96. Creation

97. Destruction

98. In IA terms:

99. Structure

100. Unstructure

101. We’re too passive about unstructuring things

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

103. And we can’t live in the loop until we’re able to deconstruct.

104. The Conceptual Spiral Our Conceptual Spiral

106. Which Generates Insight Imagination Initiative

107. A paradigm for survival and growth

108. We need our own conceptual spiral

113. We need to embrace novelty

114. We need to Chi as well as Cheng

115. Boyd left his theory deliberately incomplete

116. So should we