Agenda

The complete program for Design for Meaning

World IA Day Columbus 2026 is on March 7, 2026. The tickets are available at Eventbrite. The event is free, but tickets are limited: don’t miss out!

9:30 am - 10:00 am Registration & Networking
10:00 am - 10:05 am Opening
10:05 am - 10:50 am Bob Royce - Embracing Complexity: How Information Architecture Can Help Your Organization Thrive in a Complex World. People often fear complexity and the uncertainty it brings. Science spent centuries developing ever more complicated means of probing the universe in hopes of mastering nature and claiming certainty as a prize. Then last century, science entered a paradigm shift which complemented the reductionist strategy of the Enlightenment with a new, systems-centered view of the world that replaced certainty with a new explanatory power about previously inscrutable phenomena such as weather, pathogen spread, and social networks. As we struggle to anchor our humanity in the midst of increasingly rapid change, this new science of complexity offers valuable insights for designing and building resilient systems that optimize for people over technology. The overall thesis of this talk is that organizations should embrace complexity as a positive feature of the system. Through a combination of real-world examples and conceptual framing, we will explore both the superpowers IAs bring to complex environments, and what information architects can learn from complexity science. The world isn’t getting simpler—and that’s good news for information architects. By embracing complexity rather than fighting it, we can help organizations achieve clarity, coherence, and enduring understanding in an ever-changing world.
11:00 am - 11:45 am Keith Instone - Research & Practice in Information Architecture - Revisiting 16-Year-Old Napkin Sketches. What is the relationship between Academic Research and Industry Practice in IA? That was a question Andrea Resmini and Keith asked at the 11th annual IA Summit (2010) in a “back of a napkin” collective-thinking exercise. Sixteen years later: where are we? Have we addressed all the gaps, or have they gotten wider? Is AI making things better or worse for IA? We will review the old napkins and discuss what they might mean for us in today’s world.
11:45 pm - 12:10 pm Caffeine & connections: a moment to recharge and mingle, digest ideas, connect with fellow IAs.
12:10 pm - 12:55 pm Elizabeth Mitchell - Designing and Building from the Core: Identifying What Matters Most When organizing information, it's important to begin with figuring out what key information matters most. What are the central pieces of information that need to be shared and conveyed? In website and application design and development, people can jump into visual design and development without first considering what matters and why it matters. Keeping things simple and identifying what is most important helps projects get off the ground faster. An effective sitemap can become the base for a menu and help identify the most important prototypes needed. Great information architecture can help a project team and stakeholders have a shared understanding of what matters most. On both new and existing projects, focusing on information architecture can save us time, energy, and money. Information architecture helps us share what's most important more effectively and efficiently. We can share what matters most and know that this core information is at the center of our work.
1:00 pm - 1:55 pm Lunch break: fuel up and connect. Catering provided for all attendees.
2:00 pm - 2:40 pm Alysson Franklin - Scaling IA with AI: An Emergent Methodology for Information Architecture Modernization Can we accelerate Information Architecture without sacrificing depth? This session shares an emergent methodology refined across multiple projects and validated for World IA Day using one of the largest government websites as an example: USDA.gov and its 44-subdomain ecosystem. What happens when you point AI at large datasets like 25,000 URLs and ask, "What patterns do you see?" The answer isn't magic and delivers practical tools into the hands of Information Architects to enhance our practice with accelerated analysis, faster iteration, and insights at a scale we've never considered before. This session introduces an emergent six-phase framework for AI-assisted information architecture, validated against government-scale websites. You'll learn when AI extends your capabilities, when it doesn't, and how to remain in control while thinking at scale.
2:50 pm - 3:50 pm Panel Discussion - Designing for Meaning in the Age of AI As AI systems increasingly shape how information is created, organized, and delivered, Information Architecture faces a new challenge: designing for human understanding while remaining extensible, interpretable, and usable by machines. This panel brings together all WIAD Columbus 2026 to discuss how we design for meaning when humans and AI are both users of our systems, exploring intent, structure, ethics, data, and experience in an AI-augmented world.
3:50 pm - 4:15 pm Closing and raffle

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