Cross-channel information architecture for a world exposition

•The study reveals that, within a large information ecology, two aspects of cross-channel design are essential. Firstly, information coherence between in information artefacts and secondly the crossing experience when a user elects to leave on information artefact and move to another.•Resmini and Rosati's (2011) heuristics can be successfully and usefully applied to a large, complex information environment.•Political and multi-organisational decisions can thwart good design in complex information spaces.•Same channel information coherence is as important as cross-channel; information artefacts must consider the external dimension within and across channels.

This paper reports an investigation and assessment of the digital information, provided via multiple channels, for the 2015 World Exposition (Expo) in Milan. Using emerging theoretical constructs in cross-channel information architecture as a lens, the researchers examined aspects of the digital information ecology that supported the Exposition event. This study focused, firstly, on how well information and its structure maintain a coherence that is useful and meaningful to its target audience across various technologies and platforms. Secondly, it attended to the means and mechanisms for moving from one information artefact to another and it comments on the ease with which global audiences traversed the multiple channels that formed the information environment of Expo 2015.