We are delighted to host the Bristol edition of World IA Day 2021, centred around the theme 'Curiosity'.

How are you curious? What does curiosity mean to you? What does curiosity have to do with information architecture?

World Information Architecture Day is an annual conference that celebrates information strategy and structure for understandability and accessibility.

2021's event will be held virtually, over Zoom webinar.

If you sign up and cannot make the talks live, you will be emailed a recording of the sessions shortly after they end.

Talks

10:00 - 10:45 - Future of IA panel discussion: Chris Frost (Met Office), Hannah Tempest (Nomensa), Geoffroy Martinez (LivePerson) and Bushra Saba (Lloyds Banking Group) - moderated by Alberta Soranzo (Vodafone Group)

11:30 - 12:30 - Lightening Talks:

Will Wellesley-Davies (Nomensa) - The Push & Pull of Curiosity

People are naturally curious about patterns, known and unknown. How does the presentation of information within those patterns influence our experience? How does design influence our actions and our imaginations? What impact can that have on our trust in what follows, and ultimately what we do, think and feel? As digital experiences consume more and more of our lives, designers have a responsibility to look more closely at the role our subconscious and more importantly how it can influence our decision making.

Emily Trotter (Nomensa) - Expectations and Crossing Thresholds

When a person crosses a threshold what will they find on the other side, and how will it measure up to their expectations? Will they even notice the transition?

To design for an infinite digital space, we need to consider what makes one region distinguishable from another, what drives us to cross a threshold and how we feel as we make the transition.

Design patterns will change or transform as we move across one environment to another, so is it possible to find patterns in curiosity? And how can we use visual design to influence and support our emotions during the experience?

Peter Kay (Nomensa) - Shining a Light in the Dark

Could curiosity be a defining factor of life itself? Without the deeply set desire for all living things to explore how could have life on earth evolved into the complex ecosystem that we are lucky enough to call home?

With so much around us to investigate, how do we safely navigate towards pastures new without getting lost on the way and then how does this innate curiosity translate from our physical surroundings into the sense we make of the vast digital space?

Bern Irizarry (Sony) - Shapeshifting

This piece explores the call for IA to move beyond the realm of business. I ask of others and myself to take on the calling to look beyond the context of business and take the skills we have as information architects, creators and technologists to delve, explore, grapple with complexity, to change the structure, language and environments that change people's perceptions and impact lives.

12:30 - 13:30 - Lunch break

13:30 - 14:00 - Virtual networking on Discord

14:00 - 14:45 - Dan Klyn & Simon Norris: The Curious case of Curiosity

Dan Klyn brings his beloved Bristolians a sermonette on the taboos about curiosity encoded in folklore, and in the gospel story of the transfiguration, and how those stories might be re-told once we "let the cat out of the bag" and start telling the truth.

Dan and Simon will then stage a conversation about curiosity and its implication and application within Information Architecture and more broadly its role within design.