Information architecture affects people – there’s no doubt about that. And in any practice that affects people, a range of ethical issues come into play. Each and every decision we make can help or hurt many – our users, clients, peers and even our profession as a whole.This presentation will examine some of the ethical issues that we face as information architects, including:

• The myriad of effects of our design decisions on users
• Working with clients and peers
• The consequences of creating categories and classifying objects
• What inclusive design really means
• Personal beliefs and their role in projects
• How can we design for sustainability

I’m not a philosopher, so this presentation will be very much from a practitioner’s perspective. It may even be funny!

There is a creative step that occurs between research activities and a draft design. During this step we combine what we have learned during research with our professional experience to create a new design (such as an information architecture or a page layout). For newer designers, this step is a mystery – a magical process in which research goes in and a design emerges. In attempting to break it down to make the process more approachable, it sometimes appears that particular activities (for example a card sort) lead directly to design outputs (an information architecture). In practice, this is not the case – a wide range of activities provide input for each element of the design.In this presentation, I will show a number of completed site designs that I have been involved in during the past year. For each, I will ‘deconstruct’ each design – pull it apart to show how various inputs (such as research, activities, politics, guidelines, previous experiences) informed the design. The presentation will highlight that each design element is informed by more than one input; and that each input contributes to more than one part of the design. It will also show how important it is to undertake a range of research activities and not rely on just one or two inputs.