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How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody Paperback – November 4, 2014
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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 length174 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateNovember 4, 2014
- Dimensions5.25 x 0.4 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101500615994
- ISBN-13978-1500615994
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Editorial Reviews
From the Author
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
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)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

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.
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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.
Moral of the story: when your digital experience stinks of rancid onion water, the information architecture is the least of your problems.
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!
I think if you are thinking about buying it, you should disregard all the negative comments that were made
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
Top reviews from other countries

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.




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