IA Summit 2005
Pre-Conference Session Descriptions
| Leadership Seminar Advanced IA: Topics for 2005 and Beyond |
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Thursday, 8:30 - 6:00 As the field of information architecture continues to broaden and flourish, IAs are called on to face an increasingly wide set of challenges. This seminar will connect leaders from a variety of disciplines to showcase directions for the field of Information Architecture, and provide a place for IA practitioners to share their own challenges and advances in the field with their peers. This seminar will focus on the topics vital to information architecture in 2005, including:
The 1½ day seminar at the start of the ASIS&T conference will enable participants to leave with a solid understanding of each topic. Session leaders will also provide practical, best practices approaches for participants to bring to their own projects. For those who couldn't attend The Future of IA Retreat in October 2004, this will be an opportunity to participate in a similar informal, highly interactive forum providing an invaluable way to learn from others in the field. For those who did attend The Future of IA Retreat, this seminar will bring new and different speakers and more in-depth topics to consider as you plan for your future in information architecture. There will be numerous opportunities to learn about what others are doing as well as chances to contribute your own experience. This seminar is intended for those already familiar with and experienced in IA. Attendance will be limited to 45 participants; early registration is suggested, as all previous seminars have sold out. For more information, please check the AIfIA website at http://www.aifia.org/news/ where updated session descriptions will be posted. Sessions and Topics: “Managing Up: The Business Strategy of Information Architecture” IA offers many strategic opportunities for businesses to leverage their information assets and promote efficiency, innovation, and new product development. Many IAs intuitively know their potential value to the enterprise, but lack the language and business savvy to manage up the hierarchy and influence organizational change. Christina and Scott will share how using the psychology of influence and the language of executives can help you get recognized by the decision makers in your company. “The Enterprise IA Roadmap” Many of todays information architects find themselves working in impossibly large, distributed, messy, and highly politicized organizations. Traditional "textbook" information architecture doesn't prepare us to survive and thrive in such environments. We need to reconsider the methods, designs, and skills that comprise our work, and branch into new areas, including planning governance and funding for IA initiatives, and learning how to play politics. Lou Rosenfeld will lead a discussion of enterprise IA (EIA) that covers:
Peter Van Dijck, Jorge Arango and Livia Labate These speakers will focus on internationalization and localization of information architectures, focusing on issues faced by practitioners on a daily basis. The speakers will begin the discussion on Global IA models within the of experience design. During this presentation, they will cover the state of the Global IA practice so far, exploring different approaches to problems with the attendees, initiating a discussion and eliciting feedback. Topics covered include: Issues for IA practitioners, strategic and business issues, the structure of locales, an early model for structuring relations between multilingual content, research findings on the structure of gateways, approaches to translating taxonomies, the untranslatability of categories, (how we do it anyway), and the future of global IA. “Homeland Security and Information Architecture” In recent months, the President, the 9/11 Commission and the Congress have addressed the alleged systemic failure of intelligence and have focused substantially on organizational solutions. In fact, this is a diversion from the real issues that include a fundamental misunderstanding of intelligence and, most significantly, a dysfunctional information space in which to conduct effective analysis of the terrorism threat. Lee Strickland will identify the problems in detail and discuss specific remediation efforts that could substantially improve our homeland security posture. He will advocate the importance of a tight integration between technology, the creation of an effective information architecture, and the academic discipline of analysis. He will conclude that reorganization, without addressing the root causes of failure, will be unavailing. “Practical Application of the Semantic Web” Paul Ford will show how he created the Harper's magazine website using a Semantic Web framework. This framework allows for simple content management, rich hypertext linking, and provides unique ways to re-use content. Paul will also demo some prototypes for the next version of the site, which uses a simple web services framework and more robust querying and storage. “Hands-On Scenario Planning: Looking to the Future to Shape Decisions Today” Scenario planning creates possible futures based on current trends. These scenarios guide strategic conversations and help make decisions in an uncertain world. For IAs, scenario planning increases our strategic insight and impact by helping us see the big picture and relate it to our day-to-day practice. This session will outline a step-by-step approach and provide hands-on experience with a scenario planning exercise.back to schedule |
| Paper, Scotch Tape, and Post-Its — a Recipe for Paper Prototyping |
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Thursday, 8:30 - 12:30 Paper prototypes are often an underutilized, or nonexistent tool in today's IA world. But with all the benefits of paper prototypes, why is that? This pre-conference workshop will take IA back-to-basics and take an old school approach to design. Leave your PowerBooks and Sony Viaos at the door. Paper prototypes are a fast, low cost alternative, which provide valuable feedback for interaction design decitions. We'll discuss the advantages/disadvantages of paper prototyping, what to expect from paper prototypes, and answer questions like: "What's the appropriate level of detail for a paper prototype?" back to schedule |
| Intermediate/Advanced Taxonomy and Metadata Design |
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Thursday, 8:30 - 12:30 As use of taxonomies and metadata are maturing on the web, people are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their understanding and use of these. This workshop is intended as a follow-on to the basic workshop, or as a workshop for those who have already built search vocabularies and navigation schemes and want to further hone their skills and knowledge. We will cover the following in this workshop:
This workshop will include a case study as a way to practically follow the entire process described above and give attendees practical examples to understand and follow. back to schedule |
| Visio: Hands-On |
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Thursday, 2:00 - 6:00 This half-day session will teach participants advanced Visio techniques to take their documentation beyond the basics. Visio has been described as the information architect’s nail gun, a good general purpose tool for creating a range of IA deliverables. Though hardly a standard, it is in widespread use. This session will address:
Target audience: Information architects of all levels who want to improve their Visio skills. Format: 1/2 day in two parts. In the first part, Dan will describe Visio techniques in detail. Sitting at a desk with a laptop and projector, Dan will proceed step-by-step through several small projects that demonstrate a number of techniques. This approach allows participants to see techniques in action, and to reinforce techniques based on some repetition. In the second part, Dan will assign a project and participants will work solo to develop a deliverable using the techniques. Dan will provide one-on-one assistance. We will also spend some time on techniques for presenting IA deliverables to clients. Users will be expected to bring their own laptop with Visio installed. Those without a computer are welcome to attend. back to schedule |
| Enabling Content Management Systems through Metadata and Controlled Vocabularies |
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Thursday, 2:00 - 6:00 Complementing the concepts presented in Amy Warner's "Intermediate/Advanced Taxonomy" session, this workshop focuses on both theoretical and practical aspects of using metadata and controlled vocabularies as part of a content management system.
The second part of the workshop moves step-by-step through a complete user-centered design methodology for creating a metadata schema and accompanying controlled vocabularies. Hands-on exercises will focus on content analysis, information-finding behavior, vocabulary development and card sorting. back to schedule |
| Oxygen Meetings: How to Get Diverse Teams to Solve Difficult Problems |
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Thursday, 2:00 - 6:00 Ideas, like fires, get bigger the more oxygen you add to them. This tutorial will show IA professionals how to use "oxygen meetings" to turn good ideas into great solutions by marshalling the diverse skills of others. Through entertaining lecture, group exercises, and peer critiques, participants will learn how to plan and lead their own oxygen meetings. They'll be trained by Dan Willis, an IA veteran and the author of "The Oxygen Manual." (The free PDF is available at http://www.dswillis.com/o2/o2manual.pdf). Tutorial topics will include:
The leader of an oxygen meeting isn't an objective facilitator, but rather an active participant in discussions. They are aggressive but polite, directed but flexible. Their job is to maximize the value of a team's collective talent. It's a tough job, and not everyone can do it well, but an IA that can pull it off will be exponentially more effective. They'll enjoy a whole new level of buy-in for their work and they'll be able to unclog the miscommunication that asphyxiates so many great solutions. back to schedule |
| The Secret Design Strategies for Highly Successful Web Sites |
Friday, 8:30 - 6:00 No one has watched as many people use as many web sites as the researchers at User Interface Engineering. Using our in-depth findings, we’ve discovered incredible secrets showing how the best sites continually create designs that get users to their desired content. In this in-depth program, Jared M. Spool will share the results of years of research examining how the best sites navigate users to their content. In just one day, you’ll see the secrets behind successful designs including Lands’ End, A.G. Edwards, Staples.com, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, CNN.com, and the BBC. You’ll come away with the practical insights that will change your perspectives on web design forever. You will learn about:
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| Creating Personas: How to Model the User in User-Centered Design |
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Friday, 8:30 - 12:30 Personas have captured the attention of information architects, designers, and usability specialists as a powerful aid to designing websites and software. This attention is well deserved: with their rich detail and approachable format, personas are an excellent tool for developing and sharing what you know about users -- and for guiding your decisions about design. This tutorial teaches a process framework for how to create personas. You will learn what makes personas different from other customer and market research; tips for gathering information through interviews with current and potential users; a process for analyzing data and identifying the relevant patterns; how to pull together the details and craft a final persona; and what to expect when introducing personas to a project team. You'll have the opportunity in this tutorial to gain some hands-on practice along the way. In the end, you should have the information you need to begin introducing personas as a useful new tool in your design process. back to schedule |
| Techniques for Building a Better Intranet |
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Friday, 8:30 - 12:30 Is your intranet struggling? Are you finding it hard to work out where to go next? Managing and growing a corporate intranet is not easy. This workshop will provide you with an invaluable opportunity to network with other people working on intranets, and to share your ideas and approaches. The workshop will cover a wide range of issues confronting all organisations, and will identify practical techniques for delivering an effective intranet. The workshop will be highly-interactive in format, and will involve a range of discussions, group work and activities. These will give you an opportunity to focus your thinking, and to explore new approaches. Many key intranet topics will be discussed, including how to strategically plan your intranet, how to structure your intranet, and what activities are required to keep it effective in the long-term. Topics that will be covered in the workshop include:
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| Content modelling for IAs: How to make the most of your content in your content management system |
Friday, 8:30 - 12:30 Once a content management system has been bought by an organisation, many IAs are in the unenviable position of trying to fit existing content into it; without a process or method on how to actually do it. This workshop will take information architects through the process of modelling content (both existing and new) to make the most of the features of the content management system. The BBC IA team of Margaret, Sandra and Karen have successfully created content models that allow the content to be re-used, shared and published across platforms. We will take IAs through our process; share our learnings and teach you via hands-on exercises to identify content genres, objects and collections; and how to create and manage them. This is an intensive hands-on course designed to provide an IA or content producer with methods and insight on how to model content for content management systems; using exercises, brainstorms and discussion. back to schedule |
| Introduction to IA |
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Friday, 2:00 to 6:00 This half day workshop provides a great introduction to information architecture. You will learn the fundamental principles of information architecture, as well as practical techniques that can be used on a wide range of projects. The workshop is interactive, practical and hands-on and you will have an opportunity to practice what you have learned through group activities and discussion. During the workshop, you will learn:
This workshop is targeted to people who are new to information architecture and would like to learn the fundamentals before further exploring the presentations at the IA Summit. back to schedule |
| Crafting Understanding-based Structures: Creating Usable Content |
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Friday, 2:00 - 6:00 User-focused process can guide us as we craft online communication products. But how do we combine the literature of the field in such a way that we can explain to our bosses and colleagues how our work support improvements in user and organizational performance? How can we synthesize our user-focus with complementary structures for crafting content that supports others? In this half-day fast-paced information-rich session, you’ll have the opportunity to look at product development through different lenses. Specifically, you will accomplish the following objectives:
Can we do this all in a half day without becoming brain dead? Sure. You’ll receive training materials and job aids to support you in the course. You’ll hear stories and have opportunities for interaction. Lots of learning. Lots of fun. Who said structure had to be dull? back to schedule |
| Leveraging Business Value: The ROI of User Experience |
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Friday, 2:00 - 6:00 Join Janice Fraser, co- author of Adaptive Path's recent research report Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience, as she shares her insights about how to make user experience design a tool for delivering business value - so that your Web team can get the resources and attention it deserves. Over the last few years, ROI has been sought as the “holy grail” of getting more headcount and credibility. By unraveling how to measure the value of Web design, ROI analysis contextualizes corporate decision-making and transforms user experience design into a real competitive advantage. There are numerous examples of how aligning product specifications with business objectives and user needs delivers a real competitive advantage, but - outside of retail e-commerce - that value is rarely measured and managed. Too often, the business value of the Web is narrowly viewed as the sum of two parts: increased online revenues, plus the cost reductions that technological efficiencies offer. Such thinking ignores the firm’s entire relationship with its customers, and constrains Web design priorities to specific, short-term outcomes. Oftentimes, outstanding web strategies languish because an organization makes no attempt to forecast the future value of user experience design. It's viewed as an expense to minimize rather than an investment that ought to deliver return. As a result, successful implementation is doomed by a lack of commitment and support. The impact of ROI extends well beyond its obvious benefits in making resource- allocation decisions. Janice will discuss how using ROI and other valuation methods helps evolve design competency within organizations. The valuation methods provide tools for developing and measuring a design strategy as a component of a larger business strategy: The ability to "value" user experience design makes it a visible and credible business lever on par with marketing, research and development, and channel strategy. As a result, your website can become a strategic lever for understanding the whole customer, influencing their online and offline behavior, and anticipating their future goals. ROI is a shift in organizational culture as much as it is a mathematical calculation. This half-day workshop provides frameworks and analysis that will help you to:
The field of user experience is at a turning point - organizations that are better able to capture the value of user experience will be the ones that invest in the most ground-breaking projects and minimize waste on short-term fixes and abandoned projects. back to schedule |
| ECM Technology Primer |
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Friday, 2:00 - 6:00 Enterprise Content Management ("ECM") means many things to many people. But no matter the definition, ECM typically encompasses an array of different technologies, including:
IA and CM practitioners are often conversant in one or a handful of these technologies, but as large and even mid-sized enterprises seek to combine them in more effective ways, professionals are under greater pressure to "cross-train" in other tools and disciplines. The purpose of this workshop is to level-set participants' knowledge of these individual technologies, by briefly describing for each category: the business purpose; how the tools actually work (i.e. what the products actually “do”, or are supposed to do); and what differentiates them from the other categories in the ECM family. The session will include sample screenshots of the representative products. The workshop will conclude with some thoughts and conversation about how and where the different pieces can fit together productively. back to schedule |
updated: 01/31/05