Dan Zollman

Information architecture, design, and strategy


Author: dzollman

  • Designing, building, architecting, growing

    Some early, rough thinking on how to use biological systems theories to reevaluate the ontology of ‘design’ toward a processual and relational paradigm.

  • Oblique Strategies + The Fifteen Fundamental Properties of Wholeness

    At World IA Day 2017 in Boston, Dan Klyn handed out these great little card decks representing Christopher Alexander’s Fifteen Fundamental Properties of Wholeness. Recommended use: Carry these cards around with you to help you notice the properties of wholeness wherever you go. Yesterday, looking through my box of Oblique Strategies made me wonder: Are the Oblique Strategies related…

  • On reading and taking time off

    “Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.”Nassim Nicholas Taleb, channeling Umberto Eco, in The Black Swan   I subscribe to this statement completely. Those piles of unread books remind me how much I don’t know. It’s good not to read! Yes, that’s what I tell myself. But in choosing not to read books,…

  • Discussion group on ethical design & technology

    Update as of June 2023: After several productive years with 300+ members, this online community has closed down—while other reputable organizations and discussion spaces have emerged with similar areas of focus, including the Design Justice Network, HmntyCntrd, and All Tech Is Human. We (me and a group of fellow IA Summit attendees) have started an…

  • Ethical Design, Part 2: Topics for discussion on ethics in design and technology

    In Part 1, I explained some of what I mean by “ethics” in design practice and why I think our communities of practice—communities of designers, technologists, and particularly my own communities, the UX and IA communities—need a more expansive, practical framework for applied ethics. You can skip that part if this makes sense to you…