Digital products and services are new types of places that alter how people understand information. This presentation distills lessons in placemaking from one of the most succesful places ever created—Disneyland—to help you design more effective information environments.
When designing a digital product or service, you are engaging in a new type of placemaking: one that alters how people perceive and understand information. As with (building) architects, digital designers seek to create environments that are understandable and usable by human beings, and which can grow and adapt over time to meet their needs and those of their organizations. This presentation will help you create more effective digital products and services by distilling lessons in placemaking from one of the most successful physical environments ever designed: Disneyland (and the subsequent Magic Kingdom-style theme parks around the world). You will learn how to create conceptual frameworks that allow users to make sense of and find their way through your information environment, and how those frameworks can inform a clear structure for your user’s experiences.
Jorge Arango is an information architect with over 20 years of experience designing digital products. He’s a partner in Futuredraft, a digital product design agency based in Oakland, CA.
Jorge is a frequent speaker at global UX conferences. He is also a co-author of “Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond”, the fourth edition of O’Reilly’s celebrated “polar bear” book. He has served the global UX community as president and director of the Information Architecture Institute, thematic director of the first World IA Day, and as managing editor of Boxes and Arrows magazine.
As a designer, Jorge aims to produce information environments that help people understand and interact with their world more effectively. He is influenced by his background in architecture, which he is passionate about.
