Hats

Richard Saul Wurman’s essay on information organization, published in Design Quarterly 145 (1989). Wurman coined the term “information architecture” and founded the TED conference.

Central Metaphor

Hats = units of information Hat racks = organizational structures for information

“This issue of Design Quarterly is not about hats. It’s about hats as a metaphor for units of information.”

Core Framework

The Five Ultimate Hat Racks, the only five ways to organize any information:

1. Alphabet
2. Time
3. Location
4. Continuum (magnitude)
5. Category

“While it may seem that the methods are infinite, there are really only five general ways to organize information.”

Key Principles

Organization creates information: “The creative organization of information creates new information. The hats never change, but hanging them in different patterns or with different rules or on different hat racks can affect what we learn about them.”

Understanding is relational: “You can only understand something relative to something you already understand.”

Clarification vs. simplification: “Understanding is not about simplification and minimalization, it’s about organization and clarification.”

What vs. How: “There are essentially two kinds of people: how people and what people. Those who think about how they are going to accomplish something, and there are those who stop to think about what it is they want to accomplish in the first place.”

Visual Hat Racks

Wurman catalogs different forms:

• Maps (location-based)
• Charts (comparison-based)
• Time lines (temporal)
• Trees (hierarchical connections)
• Lists (sequential access)

Extracted Content

Molecules:

• 02-molecule—five-hat-racks
• 02-molecule—clarification-not-simplification

Atoms:

• 02-atom—organization-creates-information
• 02-atom—understanding-is-relational
• 02-atom—what-vs-how-people
• 01-atom—disease-of-familiarity
• 02-atom—maps-as-patterns

Connections to Garden

This framework underlies much of modern information architecture and connects to:

• Taxonomy design
• Knowledge graph structure decisions
• Interface organization
• The reference data work (choosing which “hat rack” to use)

The Five Hat Racks is essentially asking: what’s the primary organizing principle? This question applies to databases, navigation systems, documentation, dashboards, any information structure.

Related:, 02-molecule—taxonomy-design