Kent State University will join 37 other cities around the globe as a World IA Day site on Feb. 21, 2015. The User Experience Design program in the School of Library and Information Science will serve as host of the free local event, inviting students, alumni and other interested individuals to participate.
Presentation proposals are now being accepted. Please submit a completed proposal form no later than Oct. 15, 2014, by email to ctuckley@hotmail.com.
All presentations will be delivered in 45-minute sessions: 30-minute presentation, 15-minute Q&A.
Notification of acceptance for presentations will be made by Nov. 7, 2014. Once selected, presenters are responsible for their own expenses related to the conference, including but not limited to lodging, transportation and meals. (Breakfast pastries and lunch will be provided the day of the conference.)
The event celebrates IA, or information architecture, as a critical element in connecting people with the information they need to do their jobs or live their lives.
The theme of this year's event is "Architecting Happiness." According to the WIAD planners:
When information is clear and considerate of the context in which we need it, there is a certain peaceful joy that washes over us. We feel loved or cared for. We crave the feeling that someone carefully considered our needs and expectations.
Whether it is the details that the chef has provided about the seasonal items on her menu or the interface that allows you to see the real time progress of robots racing on the moon, information holds the power to make us happy, gleeful, joyful, giddy, intrigued, relieved, enthralled and many other potent cocktails of emotions.
Our world is increasingly made of information, yet so much of that information is not as clear or accessible as it could be to those it is intended for. Every organization out there seems to say that they want to make their users happy, but who is really delivering on those promises? Who is really architecting for happiness?
On February 21, 2015, we want to ask the world to help us uncover answers to questions we believe to be critical to the future of how we practice information architecture:
- How can information affect happiness?
- How can we best architect structures for information that promote happiness?
- What work are organizations doing to bridge the gaps we face as we transition from a primarily analog to a primarily digital way of life?
Details of the Kent State event will be posted as they become available.
World Information Architecture Day is a free one-day conference hosted annually by the Information Architecture Institute and held simultaneously in selected cities all over the world. Each year, a new theme is selected, new cities are added, and our community continues to grow as more people from all across the world join this truly global celebration of Information Architecture. The Information Architecture Institute is a non-profit organization empowering local communities to shape the global practice of information architecture by providing places to share and opportunities to learn.
The School of Library and Information Science at Kent State University offers a Master of Library and Information Science (M.L.I.S.) and Master of Science in Information Architecture and Knowledge Management (IAKM), with concentrations in health informatics, knowledge management and user experience design. In addition, the school participates in an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in the College of Communication and Information. With more than 700 students enrolled, SLIS has the largest graduate program at Kent State. Its M.L.I.S. is the only American Library Association-accredited master’s program in Ohio, and is recognized by U.S. News and World Report among the nation’s top 20 LIS programs, with a youth services program that is ranked 10th.