For a long time, nobody had figured out Information Architecture

Host: The office was a dim ocean of screens, their light flickering against the glass walls like city fireflies. It was long past midnight, and the rain outside tapped a syncopated rhythm on the windowpanes. The air smelled of coffee, metal, and fatigue. Jack sat by a cluttered desk, his grey eyes fixed on a cluster of wireframes glowing faintly on the monitor. Jeeny leaned against the window, her reflection ghosting beside the storm.

Host: There was tension in the room, not of anger, but of two minds circling an idea that had no center. On the whiteboard behind them, someone had scrawled in black ink:
“For a long time, nobody had figured out Information Architecture, so we all just made stuff up.” — Jeffrey Zeldman.

Host: The quote had been there for days, perhaps weeks. But tonight, it had begun to bother them both.

Jack: (sighs) You know, Jeeny, that line—Zeldman’s—he wasn’t being poetic. He was being honest. We did make things up. We still do. That’s what all of this is — design, systems, architecture—it’s just organized guessing dressed up in terminology.

Jeeny: (smiles faintly) Maybe. But there’s a difference between guessing and creating. He didn’t mean it as a confession. He meant it as a celebration—that in the absence of rules, we made our own order.

Jack: (snorts) Order? No. We made a mess and then called it order. Look at this—(gestures at the screen)—five different menu hierarchies, six naming systems, twenty opinions. That’s not creation. That’s chaos with a logo.

Host: A lightning flash split the window. For a brief second, both their faces glowed white, their shadows trembling across the walls like restless ghosts.

Jeeny: But Jack, that’s how everything begins. The first builders of cities didn’t have blueprints. The first languages weren’t designed—they evolved. Even the stars in constellations—humans just drew lines between dots until the sky made sense. Isn’t that what Zeldman meant? That we invent meaning before we define structure?

Jack: (leans back, voice low) Maybe. But I don’t romanticize confusion. The early web was a jungle—no hierarchy, no accessibility, no clarity. We made “stuff up,” yes—but most of it was bad. And people paid the price. Users lost in mazes of links, content without context. That’s not creativity, Jeeny—that’s neglect.

Jeeny: (turns to face him) But you’re missing the soul of it. Without that chaos, there’d be no progress. Every act of innovation begins in uncertainty. Look at Da Vinci—half his sketches are madness, half are miracles. The point isn’t that we didn’t know what we were doing; the point is, we tried anyway.

Host: Her voice softened, but her eyes burned. The rain had thickened, streaking the glass like falling data streams.

Jack: (rubs his temples) You always make it sound so noble. But what if the myth of creativity is just an excuse for not knowing what we’re doing? Maybe all this talk about “making stuff up” is a mask—a way to make our ignorance sound profound.

Jeeny: (steps closer) And what’s wrong with ignorance, if it leads to discovery? The Wright brothers didn’t have aerodynamics. Tesla didn’t have the math for his dreams. They made stuff up too. The world changed because they dared to.

Jack: (leans forward) But they sought truth in what they made up. That’s the difference. They didn’t stop at imagination; they built until the air lifted their wings. What we do now? We pretend we’re architects, but we’re often just decorators of confusion.

Jeeny: Maybe that’s because you see “architecture” as control, not as connection. The web wasn’t meant to be a cathedral. It was meant to be a garden—wild, imperfect, living.

Host: A pause fell between them. Only the hum of the server fan filled the room, a low mechanical heartbeat in the dark.

Jack: (quietly) Gardens still need walls, Jeeny. Otherwise, the weeds take everything.

Jeeny: (softly) Maybe the weeds are what make it real.

Host: The room dimmed as the storm deepened. Outside, the city blurred into streaks of light, like a watercolor washed by rain. Jack stood and paced, his reflection sliding across the glass beside hers.

Jack: You know, I remember my first project. 2003. We were building a government site. Everyone had opinions—no structure, no framework, no hierarchy. We spent six months arguing what to call the “Home” button. Six months, Jeeny. Because nobody had “figured out” Information Architecture. We were all just making stuff up, like Zeldman said. But that “making up” cost people—citizens who couldn’t find medical forms, veterans who couldn’t access support. Chaos has consequences.

Jeeny: (nods slowly) I know. But I also know what came after. Because of that chaos, we began to ask why. That’s when Information Architecture was born—when we realized structure wasn’t about control, it was about care. We made sense of the web because we loved the people lost inside it.

Host: Jack’s jaw tightened, but his eyes softened. Her words struck something buried under his cynicism—a memory, perhaps, of his own first failures.

Jack: (after a silence) So you’re saying—our guessing wasn’t failure. It was… what, compassion?

Jeeny: Not compassion—instinct. Humanity’s instinct to shape the undefined. We made things up because we had to. Because information without architecture is just noise. And sometimes, the only way to find the signal is to invent it.

Host: The thunder rolled like a long drumbeat. Their voices now were lower, less like an argument, more like an excavation.

Jack: So where’s the line then, Jeeny? Between invention and delusion? Between art and chaos?

Jeeny: (smiles faintly) The line moves, Jack. Every generation draws it differently. In the Renaissance, people thought perspective was a trick. In our age, Information Architecture was the same. The trick just becomes truth when enough people believe it.

Jack: (chuckles) That’s terrifying. So truth is just consensus now?

Jeeny: Not consensus—coherence. The moment when our collective “made up stuff” starts to work, to feel right. When it aligns with how people think, move, search, connect. That’s when architecture emerges from imagination.

Host: A silence settled—heavy, almost sacred. The rain began to ease, each drop slower, deliberate, like punctuation at the end of a long sentence.

Jack: You know, maybe Zeldman wasn’t just talking about websites. Maybe he was talking about us—all of us. We build systems, stories, lives—without blueprints. We improvise our way through meaning.

Jeeny: (softly) Yes. Maybe that’s the point. That we’re all just architects of our own confusion, trying to make it livable.

Host: Jeeny’s voice trembled—not from doubt, but from the quiet weight of realization. Jack looked at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable, then slowly—he smiled.

Jack: So, Jeeny, are we making things up right now too?

Jeeny: (smiling back) Of course we are. But maybe that’s the only honest way to build something new.

Host: The storm outside broke into a mist, the city lights now clear through the glass. Jack walked to the window, standing beside her. Their reflections merged in the glass—two silhouettes against a world still under construction.

Host: Beyond the glass, the streets shimmered, wet and alive. The neon signs blinked like lines of code—half-random, half-divine. The world, too, was making itself up, one idea at a time.

Host: In the end, neither of them spoke again. There was no need. The truth was simple, and silent: every structure begins as a story someone dared to invent.

Host: And in that silence, amid the hum of machines and the faint drizzle beyond the glass, the quote on the board no longer felt like a confession. It felt like a blueprint.

Host: The camera panned slowly back, the two figures now small beneath the glowing monitors—two architects of uncertainty, finding beauty in the improvised order of the digital age.