Categories - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 47

Finally, how we frame our work changes its outcome. Jane touches on this in her critique of pub-
lic housing projects.
One of the unsuitable ideas behind projects is the very notion that they are projects, abstracted out of the
ordinary city and set apart. To think of salvaging or improving projects, as projects , is to repeat this root
mistake. The aim should be to get that project, that patch upon the city, rewoven back into the fabric -
and in the process of doing so, strengthen the surrounding fabric too. xlv
The same is true of our projects. Often they are better understood as programs or parts of sys-
tems. Historically, many of us in user experience have ignored content strategy. We neglect the
people, process, and tools of the content lifecycle and everyone suffers including our end-users.
When we ignore the ecosystem, our structures are certain to collapse.
Recently, I participated in an event that brought library directors together to talk about digital
strategy. Lee Rainie delivered a brilliant keynote in which he presented the results of a Pew Re-
search Center study aimed at learning how and why Americans value public libraries. He con-
cluded by noting the data indicates that “libraries have a mandate to intervene in community
life.” xlvi Later we were discussing “the vision for the library” and one participant advised the
public librarians to aspire towards “a vision for the community” instead. This re-framing
opened the door to an invigorating conversation about interventions and partnerships to ad-
dress literacy, poverty, crisis informatics, and more. To shift mindsets from insular to open is to
change the world for the better.
One shift that can help us all is to change our minds about planning. Like search, planning is a
literacy that's not taught in school, and yet it's a key to success in life and work. We plan events,
trips, families, sites, systems, companies, and cities. We do it all the time but make the same mis-
takes. First, we procrastinate. We fear complexity, so we start too late. Then, in a hurry, we split
ideas and execution into phases or roles. We draw lines in our minds that segregate. The binary
oppositions of think-do and plan-build are myths. Like yin and yang, these seemingly separate
forces are interrelated and entangled. You can't do one (well) without the other.