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Abby Covert

How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody Paperback – November 4, 2014

by Abby Covert (Author)

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Everything is getting more complex. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information we encounter each day. Whether at work, at school, or in our personal endeavors, there’s a deepening (and inescapable) need for people to work with and understand information.

Information architecture is the way that we arrange the parts of something to make it understandable as a whole. When we make things for others to use, the architecture of information that we choose greatly affects our ability to deliver our intended message to our users.We all face messes made of information and people.

This book defines the word “mess” the same way that most dictionaries do: “A situation where the interactions between people and information are confusing or full of difficulties.” — Who doesn’t bump up against messes made of information and people every day?

How to Make Sense of Any Mess provides a seven step process for making sense of any mess. Each chapter contains a set of lessons as well as workbook exercises architected to help you to work through your own mess.

Print length

174 pages
Language

English
Publication date

November 4, 2014
Dimensions

5.25 x 0.4 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

1500615994
ISBN-13

978-1500615994
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Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Who is the book for?

I wrote this book for anyone making anything. And vague as I admit that to be, I believe it to be most useful framed that way.

Because in my opinion, the same advice could be given to someone organizing a bake sale as someone organizing a global cross-channel campaign. I also think the same high-level process and consideration set could apply to a student making their first website as a major corporation redesigning their digital ecosystem.

We have spent the last thousand years inventing ever-stronger ways to transport messages from one point to another. But along the way, we haven't spent as much time considering how our messages will be interpreted and how that might impact the way people understand and use the information that our messages contain.

We spend most of the time talking about the practical and predictable parts of our world. The steps we will take, the deliverables we will produce, the thing we are making, even the value we will be creating by doing so, the organization of teams and projects to get us there -- but we spend much less time (if any at all) talking about the perceived meaning of choices we make, the impact language has on our communication's effectiveness, or playing with structures that would best serve our intent before we start to layer on the details of design and execution. I wanted to write a book that taught those lessons.

About the Author

Abby Covert specializes in delivering a highly collaborative information architecture process and teaching those that she works with along the way. Abby speaks and writes under the pseudonym Abby the IA, focusing on sharing information architecture content with those working within the design and technology communities. She teaches information architecture at The School of Visual Arts, Parsons: the New School and General Assembly NYC. Abby prides herself on being an active organizer and mentor within the IA community. She currently serves as the president of the Information Architecture Institute and as an advisor for the Information Architecture Summit. She holds credit for inventing World Information Architecture Day, a free annual conference held simultaneously in dozens of locations across the globe. Now in its fourth year, World IA Day has been held in 50+ cites. Thirty eight more locations have been added for 2015. After ten years of practicing information architecture for clients and writing about it on the web, Abby saw that too few people knew how to practice it for themselves. She decided that the best way to help would be to teach this important practice. And, after two years of teaching without a textbook, Abby told her students that she intended to write the book that was missing: a book about information architecture for everybody. This is that book. In developing this book, Abby wrote more than 75,000 words, clarified the contextual meaning of more than 100 terms, and tested three distinctively different prototypes with readers.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1.0 edition (November 4, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 174 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1500615994
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1500615994
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.4 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #134,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15 in Network Storage & Retrieval Administration
- #77 in Information Management (Books)
- #87 in Philosophy of Logic & Language

Customer Reviews:
307 ratings

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Abby Covert

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Abby Covert is an information architect, writer and community organizer. Abby served as President of IA Institute, co-chair of IA Summit, and Executive Producer of IDEA. She is a founding faculty member of SVA’s Products of Design program, Design Operations Summit and Advancing Research Conference. She invented World IA Day, bringing IA education to thousands in local communities annually.

Abby wrote “How to Make Sense of Any Mess” a book teaching IA to everybody. She is currently working on a new book about diagramming. She writes from her home studio in the suburban jungles of Florida's Space Coast where she lives with her husband and son.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

307 global ratings

5 star		67%
4 star		15%
3 star		8%
2 star		6%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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kirabug

This book gives you the tools to solve information problems

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 15, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book will help you do two things:

1. Understand how to break a big hairy problem into smaller steps so that you can approach solving it.
2. Understand some approaches to solving it.

It will give you examples of various activities, tools (i.e. worksheets) and things to understand about problems. It'll do this one page at a time, which is to say each of the 150ish pages covers exactly one topic, and covers it well enough that you'll know how to move forward to the next topic. It also gives references and resources to places that you can learn more, because let's face it, 150 topics is a few too many for anyone to cover in depth in one book. Many of the topics in this book are topics of their own.

But that's really the point of this book beyond all the others: it's the book to help you find the path through the mess you're dealing with, and help you identify what you need to know more about. It's the solution to the "I don't know what I don't know" problem, at the highest level.

It's immediately on my recommendation list for all new Information Architects, User Experience Designers, and a good number of others that are both inside the Information Technology field and outside of it. This book is well-written enough that I feel like I could hand it to someone in a totally different industry and say "Hey, here's where to start" or "Hey, if you've ever wondered what I do for a living..."

I'm glad it's a tool I can now use to make my own work better.

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Instructions not clear, mess more senseless than ever

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 23, 2021

Verified Purchase

When the book arrived, I plopped it on a small table already decked with clutter. Papers, cables, a half-eaten pop tart, you name it. The book stayed there for the next week as junk continued to pile up around it. Now, above this table is a window sill. Upon this sill sat a cup of water with green onion nubs growing out of it. (Protip, btw: don't throw away green onion nubs – they'll regrow if you put them in water.) One night, I clumsily knocked the cup over and straight onto the table, where the book took the brunt of the spill.

Moral of the story: when your digital experience stinks of rancid onion water, the information architecture is the least of your problems.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Keith Harvey

Making Information Architecture Make Sense!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 26, 2014

Verified Purchase

One of the challenges that User Experience and Information Architecture professionals face - is themselves. Often the incredible information they have to share is lost in complexity and academic obfuscation. The world needs what these folks have, but the meaning and message is lost...

Abby Covert and "How to Make Sense of Any Mess" bucks this trend and sets a shining example of how to teach the world about Information Architecture - by making it simple and approachable.

But don't confuse simple and approachable with being watered-down. Everything that Abby teaches in the book can be put into solid, practical use. And she leaves openings for anyone to dive deep and explore.

I personally learned a lot about Information Architecture from this book and was able to dump many of the misconceptions I had and misinformation too! I am recommending this as required reading for all of my teams and I think that you will feel the same after you read this book.

As a bonus, Abby has links to download incredibly useful worksheets and templates that directly help in your efforts to "Make Sense of Any Mess!"

Finally, I want to commend Abby for taking the time to tweak her Kindle edition to provide the best reading experience. Her attention to detail really shows. I've had too many Kindle versions that were just an afterthought by the publishers and authors, so it is refreshing!

This is indeed a book for everybody: Business, Technical, Creative... you name it!

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

T Stro

Great information on IA

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 3, 2022

Verified Purchase

I think this is a great beginner’s book on IA
I think if you are thinking about buying it, you should disregard all the negative comments that were made

Helpful

Molly McGarey

"How to easily get your point across for the rest of your life." could have been the title of this book.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 14, 2015

Verified Purchase

I loved that the chapters were so clear and concise with a different header on each page. I loved that the writing was funny ("used to be a Pizza Hut" and "hey nice ia said no one ever" :) I appreciate that she took the time to optimize the words here because I know that can take a ton of time and thinking. ("I wanted to write you a shorter letter but I didn't have time" Mark Twain). I bet she chose to leave out the things that would have made things murkier. Well she nailed it because as it is this book is strong, tight, and sharp as a tack. No murk here. It is concise so it doesn't waste your time but it still has the best and most complete set of strategies for making sense of things, and I believe it could help anyone structure their presentations to make it understandable and to get their point across. Highly recommended.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Scott Steele

It gets pretty messy

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 26, 2015

Verified Purchase

Causes of confusing information: 1. Too much information; 2. Not enough information; 3. Not the right information; 4. A combination of the previous causes.

Information is not data or content, it is a subjective conclusion based on the content (things) and the observation of the arrangement of that content (data), in a given context (situation).

Architecting information is the process of arranging the content with a specific intent.

You don't control the context, the stakeholder does.

Accordingly, one can only arrange content with the intent to communicate some information, but it is the stakeholder that actually creates the information.

Understand the stakeholder's context so you can create a controlled vocabulary (agreed upon definitions of terms), to improve the results of your information architecting efforts (the sent message is the received message).

Measure the distance between your goal and reality (difference between sent and received message) by establishing a baseline from which to gauge progress.

Prepare to adjust your efforts, and even your intent, accordingly

The book may be worth the digital price, but it's not worth the physical price.

Control the vocabulary by defining terms for the given context

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

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Nick Colley

Intentionally removing context from messes confused me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 4, 2017

Verified Purchase

Enjoyed the book, it has some interesting examples of how to group information - that kind of thing.

The book intentionally tries to be vague and all encompassing which for me was confusing at times, I think I'd have taken more from it if there was some solid context - even if that context wasn't directly the industry I normally work in.

Seems like it'd be a good book to pop into for reference in the future though.

Fred

Okay but a bit stupid

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

Vague. Almost pointless. Builds confidence. Reassuring. Vain

One person found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 28, 2016

Verified Purchase

Scratches the surface

One person found this helpful

Paula Soares

Nothing new or special

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on November 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

I was expecting some clever tips and insights based on the reviews and ambitious title, but it’s a collection of ordinary high level ideas. And I didn’t like the writing style either, not prose enough to untangle a point, not bullet point enough to make it more visual or memorable. The templates are so basic, you need to be I believe in middle school not to be acquainted with them. I am disappointed.

Cliente de Amazon

Good guide to improve your communication skills

Reviewed in Mexico 🇲🇽 on March 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

It is a very useful guide to create valuable content strategies for any communication activity. If you meetings then this a guide that will help you to set a common commmubication ground. Perhaps more examples would help the reader to map some ideas to concrete objects.

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