Patterns: Five Essential Lessons from Richard Saul Wurman

Full title: “Make Things Be Good: Five Essential Lessons from the Life and Work of Richard Saul Wurman”. Beginning in 1962 at the age of 26, Richard Saul Wurman has been extraordinarily prolific. He invented information architecture, convened innumerable conferences and meetings, re-invented the conference, the travel guide, the road atlas and the yellow pages, and wrote and published 83 books. Yet there are no books about him, and all of the books he wrote are out of print.

Dan Klyn, who teaches information architecture at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, spent five years researching Wurman’s work in search of information architecture practices, and came back with something he considers far more important. In this 20-minute talk, given exclusively for UX Week 2013, he presents five key teachings derived from the life and work of Wurman: five patterns from the master patternmaker, and five principles for making things be good, aimed at anybody who makes things.