From Architecture to a Spatial Way of Organising Information
How an architect’s approach to space became a visual system for ideas, notes and knowledge.
By Ken — architect and creator of Inclr
Origins
Inclr began with a question: what if digital information could be designed more like a place than a filing system?
I am Ken Chan—an architect, designer and the creator of Inclr. Architecture taught me to think about relationships, movement, hierarchy and atmosphere: how separate elements can become a place that people understand and want to inhabit.
As digital tools became a larger part of architectural work, I became curious about code. In 2015, I began teaching myself iOS development during lunch breaks and late at night. Coding quickly became another form of design: a way to turn an idea into something people could enter, explore and use.
The moment Inclr began
One day, while building a navigation menu for a design-news app, I made it circular. A circle is simple: a centre, a boundary and a relationship between the two. But it made me wonder what would happen if it held more than navigation.
What if a circle could become a living container for information—a project, a subject, a collection of thoughts or a part of someone’s life? That question became Inclr.
An inclr is a visual information cluster.
It gives notes, links, files, tasks, images and ideas a shared place. Instead of treating information as isolated items hidden in folders, it lets you organise it through position, connection, colour, structure and context.
Data + Form
We often treat data as if it is neutral: text in a document, a file in a folder, a result in a search list. But the way information appears affects how we approach it.
Architecture has always understood that form changes experience. Scale, sequence, proximity and context influence how we move through a building and how we remember it. Inclr applies that thinking to digital information.
Information needs more than storage.
It is not about making information decorative. It is about giving it enough form that relationships become easier to see, recall and navigate. A project can become a visual cluster. Related subjects can become a larger network. A change of view can reveal a different pattern in the same knowledge.
Most software is built around storage: documents, folders, databases and search. Those tools are useful, but they do not always preserve the wider context of an idea—what surrounds it, what it connects to, where it belongs or why it matters.
Inclr is designed as a visual knowledge workspace for that missing layer. It brings notes, research, projects, tasks and everyday information into connected spaces that can be explored as lists, mind maps, concept maps, grids, Kanban boards, world maps and 3D environments.
A more human digital environment
I do not believe our digital world has to feel like an endless stream of disconnected files, tabs and feeds. Information can be useful, expressive and personal. It can have structure without becoming rigid. It can support focus without flattening everything into a list.
That is the continuing idea behind Inclr: to create a more visual, spatial and human way to live with information. The goal is simple: help people spend less time reconstructing context, and more time thinking.