World IA day, the Toronto version, is back for 2021 with more speakers, mindfulness sessions, desk stretches, and a design jam to kick things off the day before. The jam was proposed to give people who haven’t worked with information architecture (IA) before a chance to design using IA, a foundational skill in organizing and presenting information.
World IA Day in Toronto, which is free and has always taken pride in being accessible, takes place this Saturday February 27th, with the Design Jam scheduled for Friday afternoon, February 26th. The full line-up of speakers and schedule can be found here.
“We’re trying to make it even bigger than last year since we’re not restricted by physical capacity settings. We also got a little more creative with the program this year,” said Sonia Zettle, one of the student organizers of the event, which takes place in cities around the world.
“All of our speakers are local, which we lucked out on. We are sharing the global keynote speaker, Cassini Nazir,” who is Program Director and Clinical Associate Professor at New College at the University of North Texas where he teaches classes in design thinking and interaction design.
Zettle, who will graduate this year with her Master of Information in Knowledge Management and Information Management, has been working with fellow student organizers, Savannah Li and Grace Chan, to put together Toronto’s IA Day since last September. A team of volunteers, mainly from the Faculty of Information and many of whom are UXD students, came onboard in October and have been doing “a really great job,” says Zettle.
This year’s IA Day sponsors include UofT’s School of Graduate Studies, the Master of Information Student Council (MISC) and Kernels Popcorn. The money usually spent on food is going to raffle prizes described by Zettle as “really cool.“
Find out more about IA Day in Toronto. All interested are welcome to attend as long as space remains.
