Reflections from IAC26 in Philadelphia
This April, I had the opportunity to attend and present a poster at the Information Architecture Conference (IAC26) in Philadelphia from April 14-18. The conference was held at the historic Arch Street Meeting House, which gave the entire event a character unlike most professional conferences I've attended. Between sessions, there were plenty of excellent coffee shops and great food nearby, which made exploring Philadelphia part of the experience. What stood out most to me, however, was the community.
A Conference Unlike Any Other
The atmosphere at IAC was incredibly friendly and welcoming. I have attended quite a few professional conferences, but this one felt different. I suspect some of that comes from the number of librarians and library professionals who attended (as I've found them to be some of the kindest individuals I've worked with in my career). As someone with an MLIS, it was wonderful to see so many folks with backgrounds in LIS.
There was a genuine sense of curiosity and generosity throughout the week. People were eager to share ideas, ask questions, and talk about their work. Conversations often moved easily between information architecture (IA), UX research, content strategy, librarianship, design, and organizational challenges.
That welcoming atmosphere extended beyond the sessions. I met so many interesting people throughout the week, including my new friend Nicole, and had just as much fun getting to know people socially as I did talking about IA. Karaoke night was a particular highlight and gave us a chance to have fun together outside of the conference. I also got to spend time with a former colleague and friend from ATPCO, Martin, and his wife Eileen. Martin and I had worked together entirely remotely, so finally getting to meet in person was especially meaningful.
Sharing Beyond the Sitemap
One of the primary reasons this conference was particularly meaningful was the opportunity to participate in poster night. I presented, "Beyond the Sitemap: Transforming 13 University Websites Through Research and Trust," based on a project I worked on at Indiana University. (Check out the full case study for this project)
The project involved bringing 13 university websites, with duplicated and outdated content, inconsistent structures, accessibility issues, and fragmented governance, into a more coherent information architecture. The research included stakeholder and user interviews, an audit of 3,569 pages, competitive analysis, journey mapping, and iterative validation of the proposed IA.
But while the sitemap was the most visible artifact, the importance of building trust was really the story I wanted to tell.
Creating a new IA meant making decisions about content, terminology, ownership, and governance across groups with different priorities and histories. Research helped us make those decisions, but trust made it possible for people to participate in them. Sharing findings openly, explaining why decisions were being made, creating feedback loops, and giving stakeholders meaningful opportunities to respond were as important to the outcome as the structure of the sitemap itself.
Poster night gave me an opportunity to not only talk about that process, but also to hear how other people interpreted the work. Some of the questions I received, particularly around how we audited 3,569 pages and what ultimately made the new sitemap successful, have made me think differently about how I tell this project's story. Rather than simply documenting everything we did, I want to focus more on what changed, why it mattered, and how we got there.
Ideas I'm Taking Home
The sessions gave me plenty to think about beyond my own project. One idea that particularly stuck with me from Jared Spool was "experience rot", or the gradual deterioration of an experience as organizations continue adding features and functionality without taking things away. It reframed something I've encountered frequently in UX work as not simply a design or technical-debt problem, but a strategy problem.
I was also interested in conversations about designing for real-state user journeys rather than idealized "golden paths". The conversations around the growing role AI can play in IA also introduced me to some new ideas on suggesting and applying metadata to identifying themes, grouping content, and enabling more natural-language approaches to search and retrieval.
Several sessions also sparked ideas that I want to bring into my teaching. Dan Brown's skyscraper use-case diagram, for example, could be an interesting tool to introduce to information architecture students. I also left with a potential future presentation topic: what would it look like to apply UX principles not just to products, but to the workflows and processes we use to create them?
And, as it often happens at a good conference, some ideas helped me recognize that work I’ve done in the past might itself be worth writing about. One session described an approach surprisingly similar to work I had done at USPTO and later tried to introduce at ATPCO. Hearing it discussed as a novel practice was a useful reminder that sometimes the work that feels ordinary to you is precisely the work worth sharing.
Leaving with More Questions, in a Good Way
Of course, IAC wasn't all sessions and diagrams. I sang at karaoke, talked with people from a wide range of disciplines, ate delicious food, and filled several pages with ideas, names, tools, questions, and future projects.
One line from an escape room themed session by Laura Nash may be my favorite quote from the entire conference:
"I'm a professional magpie. I take things from everywhere."
This quote feels like an appropriate description of what I took away from IAC26. IA draws from UX, librarianship, content strategy, technology, research, organizational design, and so many other disciplines. The conference reflected that same mix.
I came to Philadelphia excited to share a project about information architecture and trust. I left thinking about experience rot, metadata and AI, organizational workflows, teaching ideas, portfolio storytelling, and ideas for several potential future projects. More generally, I left with a much broader sense of the community surrounding this work.
For my first Information Architecture Conference, I couldn't have asked for a warmer welcome. I can't wait to go back in 2027.
