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Colin Furness

Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, University of Toronto Faculty of Information
Colin Furness

Colin became one of the early Information Architects of New York's so-called Silicon Alley in 1999, upon completing his master's degree at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information (the 'iSchool'), where he studied human-computer interaction and information systems design.  He used this training to introduce clickable wireframes into the design community there (which he hand-coded in HTML using Notepad!), earning him a feature article in the New York Times the following year.  Returning to Toronto following the 911 attacks, Colin maintained a private practice doing information architecture assessment and development in Toronto and New York for several years while completing his PhD in knowledge management and then a master's degree in epidemiology (for his new focus on software tools for community and hospital infection control). In 2011, Colin began teaching part-time at the iSchool, when he created Canada's first graduate course in information architecture.  More recently he created and taught a special topics course entitled "Designing for Knowledge Work", and he also created the initial course structure for the iSchool's new UXD program in 2016.  Colin became a full-time faculty member at the iSchool in 2017, with a cross-appointment to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.