Relationships
For a long time, I thought organizing information simply meant collecting it.
Then I discovered that it wasn’t that simple.
You can have thousands of perfectly accurate records and still struggle to find what really matters.
In the same way, a system rich in information isn’t necessarily a useful one.
This was probably the first idea that truly changed the way I design.
I discovered it during my second-level Master’s degree in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), while working at ENEA on a project focused on organizing tourism information for the Rome area.
The objective seemed straightforward: help people discover places worth visiting.
But the real challenge was something else.
How do you turn a large amount of information into something that helps people make better decisions?
Knowing where a place is wasn’t enough.
It also mattered whether it was worth the detour, whether it matched someone’s interests, how far it was from the route they were already following, and whether another place might offer a better experience.
That was when I realized that the real value wasn’t in the information itself, but in the relationships between pieces of information.
Geographic coordinates were only one possible connection.
User preferences, context, distance, acceptable detours, and the characteristics of each place were just as important.
For the first time, I stopped thinking of an information system as an archive.
I started seeing it as a network of relationships.
That experience still shapes the way I design today.
Whether I’m working on a catalogue, a website, a workflow, or an automation system, I don’t begin with the data.
I begin by asking how information connects, how people will search for it, who will maintain it, and how to prevent it from becoming isolated.
The tools have changed.
That way of looking at systems hasn’t.
Information becomes valuable when it starts connecting.