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 - 10:15 am Opening
10:20 am - 11:00 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.
11:10 am - 12:10 am Lightning talks - Four speakers - we are looking for professionals who want to share their experience.
12:20 pm - 1:00 pm Second Talk - To be announced!
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch time
2:10 pm - 3:30 pm Panel - 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.
3:30 pm - 4:00 pm Closing and raffle

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