Main conference presentations
Here's the full list of presentations and panels:
Closing plenary
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Opening Keynote: The lost art of productively losing control
Saturday March 24 2007, 8:30 - 10:00AM
The term ‘Project Architect’ begs the existence of its contrary, ‘Project Manager.’ Acknowledging this pair legitimizes an artificial schism between creation and execution that is threatening the architectural profession’s survival. It also patronizes the design process, painting it as an unruly child that requires parental guidance. In my experience, the most powerful architectural concepts are dumbly practical, derived a posteriori. And the implementation of good ideas demands infinitely more creativity than their conceptualization. Divorcing creation from execution in architecture is as implausible as suggesting that intercourse is the creative act, while the nine months of gestation and hours of child birth are just execution.
The split of Architects into Project Architects and Project Managers is a direct consequence of the architectural profession’s cowardice. We are increasingly averse to assuming any responsibility that might attract liability. Unfortunately, where liability goes, so goes control. To escape our self-imposed marginalization, we branded our retreat as conquest, and ran headlong into the self-referential language of Post-Modernism. We hijacked authorship, diverting it from process (the synthesis of creation and execution) to creation alone. We banished Project Managers to the realm of expertise, then derided them for succumbing to power and wealth.
If architects can reprioritize authorship of processes over authorship of things, we can reassemble Project Architects and Project Managers back into Architects. We will regain liability, but re-harvest control. And we will be able to happily navigate from concept generation, through politics, value-engineering and procurement strategies, to punch lists and opening parties. We will harbor less self-pity, make more money and construct better architecture.
But doing so will unearth two new problems for which I am not sure our profession is prepared. First, the term ‘authorship’ is singular, whereas processes usually germinate from a nucleus of people all of whom could rightfully claim ownership. Authorship (as we know it) will die. We will have to invent a new method of crediting: “We did it.” Second, as curators of processes, we must be prepared for ideas to develop out of our control. When we invest in the making of genius sketches, we sleep in the comfort of knowing the realm of possibilities has been fully determined. If we put our faith in processes, we must enjoy the danger of things becoming. Following this line of argument, architects must paradoxically regain control precisely so that we can productively lose it again.Presentation files:
- Main presentation file (PPT, 15MB)
- Museum Plaza concept demonstration (SWF, 56KB)
- Seattle Public Library walkthrough (ZIP, 26.8MB)
- Museum Plaza walkthrough (ZIP, 32MB)
The web that wasn't
Saturday March 24 2007, 10:30 - 11:15AM
What if the Web had turned out differently? In the years leading up to Tim Berners-Lee’s world-changing invention, a number of other visionary information scientists were building alternative systems that often bore little resemblance to the Web as we know it today. The presentation will explore the pioneering early- and mid- twentieth century work of Paul Otlet, Vannevar Bush and Doug Engelbart, forebears of the 1960s and 1970s like Ted Nelson, Andries van Dam, and the Xerox PARC team, and more recent forays like Brown's Intermedia system.
In probing the heritage of these largely forgotten systems, we will also keep an eye out for promising ideas left sitting by the historical wayside.
The phenomenal success of the Web over the past decade has overshadowed most research into alternative networked information systems; for most information architects, the Web is all we have ever really known. But if the history of technology teaches us anything, it is that the best technology does not always win (see also: Mac vs. Windows; Betamax vs. VHS). Despite the Web’s current dominance, in many ways it remains, as hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson put it,“the simplest form of hypertext imaginable.” As most information architects understand all too well, today’s Web is hamstrung with fundamental flaws: statelessness, the lack of two-way linking, versioning, and the inherent limitations of the two-dimensional page metaphor. To compensate for these shortcomings, we rely on makeshift workarounds like AJAX, metadata repositories, comments and trackbacks, and a host of other gerry-rigged solutions. However much information architects may like to rail against the page metaphor (especially at IA conferences), the lowly page still lies at the heart of the current Web. But what if things had been different?
What would a better version of the Web look like? If we are willing to look just a few years back, we can find answers lying in plain sight. This presentation will invite participants to explore a world of discarded ideas about how electronic information retrieval systems could work, in search of useful concepts and metaphors that could guide our thinking about common information architecture problems. Ultimately, this presentation will look for clues to the future of information architecture by mining our not-so-distant past.
Using search analytics to diagnose what's ailing your IA
Saturday March 24 2007, 10:30 - 11:15AM
Any organization that has a searchable web site or intranet is sitting on top of hugely valuable and usually under-exploited data: logs that capture what users are searching for, how often each query was searched, and how many results each query retrieved. Search queries are gold: they are real data that show us exactly what users are searching for in their own words. Search analytics—a user research method based on analyzing a site’s search queries—offers many means for diagnosing problems with a site’s information architecture. It can help us:
- Understand problems with a search system’s interface design, query syntax, and retrieval algorithm
- Develop and improve metadata and navigation
- Identify and address content gaps and document titling problems
- Understand how geography and seasonality impact our users’ needs
- Improve the design of the other methods we use, and round out those often qualitative standby methods with real, quantitative data
Search analytics goes beyond diagnostics by helping expose new opportunities for improving and impacting an organization’s business strategy.
So far, information architects and other web professionals have been slow to include search analytics in their toolkit of user research methods. Reasons include ignorance of the method, difficulties in acquiring the raw data, and a dearth of good reporting tools. In this presentation, we seek to:
- Educate information architects about the value and application of local site search analytics
- Cover the basic nuts and bolts as to how to analyze the data
- Discuss search analytics-driven methods for improving an information architecture (such as Best Bets)
- Suggest strategies for addressing common barriers to search analytics.
We’re witnessing a rapid recognition of the value of search analytics among people from a variety of backgrounds, and we hope that our presentation helps crystallize the discussion within the IA community. Our handout will include our presentation slides and pointers to search analytics resources.
Everything old is new again: IA and RIA -- you know more than you think you do
Saturday March 24 2007, 10:30 - 11:15AM
For the last couple of years, there has been a lot of giddiness around the creation or Rich Internet Applications or RIAs. Their fluidity, animation and ability to present and manipulate large amounts of data makes them readily appealing to businesses that want to go beyond the linear processes that HTML web sites offer.
They are becoming more common and the demand from clients is increasing. If you are a practicing IA, there’s a good chance you’ll have the opportunity to get involved in RIA development in the near future.
What’s the buzz about? Well…
- It puts customer experience in the driver’s seat!
- It’s design-centric!
- Design is the code!
- It’s faster!
- It’s cool!
- It’s shiny!
- IA will go away! ( WHAT!?! )
IA isn’t going away but it is going to have to re-think a few precious notions. There’s a different vocabulary to learn, a different development dynamic to understand and a few new pit-falls to avoid.
This presentation will discuss both process and dynamics. We’ll look at how some things will stay the same and some things will be different. We’ll discuss some built-in advantages when it comes to planning and usability testing as well as a few tips on things to help you work with designers and business owners.
Attendees will also get a free Visio stencil with transition icons for key-frame models.
Data driven design: Using Web analytics to improve information architectures
Research paper by: Andrea Wiggins, University of Michigan, School of Information
Saturday March 24 2007, 11:30 - 12:15PM
Web analytics, the practice of web traffic analysis, typically provides intelligence for marketers and executives responsible for proving Return On Investment (ROI). While valuable for proving ROI, web analytics. greatest potential lies in improving the online user experience. The use of web analytics to evaluate the online user experience is fueled by an increasing awareness of web analytics in general; however, the sharing of analytics data across units in an organization is not yet the business norm. When analytics data is shared with the design team, a subtler and more sophisticated user experience design can emerge.Information architecture and ethical design
Saturday March 24 2007, 11:30 - 12:15PM
We live the experience economy. Long ago we met our basic needs: food, clothing, housing, transport and so on. What companies sell now is 'experiences', experiences carefully designed to evoke specific emotions. The modern meaning of the word brand is 'the emotional reaction a person has towards a company or product". Think of what Nike means to you, or Coca Cola, or BMW, or Apple or Microsoft. You have a feeling about each of those companies. And those companies are all working overtime on trying to get you to feel a certain way about them. They have designs on your emotions.
It's this emotional reaction that we are paying extra money for. Maybe it's the feeling of being good citizens and healthy by buying organic or fair trade goods, or maybe its the feeling of being successful and higher status by buying Prada. Either way, a very significant part of the value of the product to us is the feeling it gives us to buy / own / consume it.
But it's all going a bit wrong. The more exposure we get to marketing and branding designed to trigger our emotions, the more desensitized we get to these influences. So companies ratchet up the emotion further, trying to get the same level of reaction. How does your product cut through the noise? By being louder... but if you get too loud, then people go deaf. And they are. We are. We are becoming desensitised.
The aspirations we have are increasingly defined by the media, which is the primary channel companies have for pushing their brands. Create 'aspirational brands' that tell us how we should live our lives, then offer products that will 'help' us get there. Create a new need, then fulfil it. The aim is to make us discontent with our current lives and experiences, so we want to spend money on enhanced experiences, and feel better.
These patterns are being amplified and accelerated as more of our interaction becomes mediated by the net: shopping, socialising, entertainment, education, communication. Unbranded space is diminishing; increasingly our lives are becoming commercialised, quantified, data-mined and ad-revenue aligned.
Perhaps there is a better way?
This presentation will look at how as information architects we can approach our work in this cultural context. How we might take an informed, ethical stand. It will cover some of the prominent contemporary theories of ethical design, culture / media studies, and behavioural psychology, and look at their applicability to information architecture. It will explore areas such as brand authenticity, privacy, social networking, push versus pull marketing, and ubiquitous computing. And it will provide concrete examples and methods for how these can be used in practice. The aim is to bring abstract ethical theory down to the level of the concrete and applicable, and perhaps inspire some to add 'Help make the World a better place' to every list of requirements.
The Living Design Document and ION: Documenting RIAs
Saturday March 24 2007, 11:30 - 12:15PM
The complexity of documenting web sites/applications has grown in the last few years due to the general acceptance of using methods such as AJAX in the creation of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Since the proliferation of RIAs there has been a paradigm shift away from the page metaphor: inter-page interactions have become intra-page interactions.
Designing and documenting these interactions is difficult because we are now dealing with objects that interact with each other within a single page. Diagramming methods we have relied on, such as the Visual Vocabulary, tend to break in this new metaphor. Communicating the design to developers has increasingly become verbose and complex. With the added complexity of RIAs and the iterative nature of web application development, the final operative image of the application and the documentation quickly diverge.
This presentation will cover our attempt to address these issues and to create an Interface Object Notation (ION) for RIAs and devise the Living Design Document. ION is a pseudo code language intended to consistently describe the functionality of page objects within a RIA to programmers and clients alike. Simply put, ION is a new standard way to notate wireframes and page objects. The Living Design Document (LDD) is a documentation system that attempts to capture the operative image of an RIA throughout it’s entire life cycle.
Current standard practices such as wireframes, sitemaps, interaction flow diagrams (detailed with the Visual Vocabulary), and click-through prototypes are all leveraged in the LDD method. Our goal is to combine these tools and techniques to create continuous documentation in an agile fashion that is detailed at the intra-page interaction level or at the page object level.
We wish to share our experience in developing ION and LDD to others within our industry to help spur conversation and development of a design documentation standard for RIAs. Our work is applicable to desktop application development, widgets, and websites as well.
Examples will be provided.
The brave new world: Usability challenges of Web 2.0
Saturday March 24 2007, 1:45 - 2:30PM
Once again, everything is exciting. The advent of social networks, APIs, mashups, RSS, aggregators, and folksonomies promise a world where the information and services we've always wanted are delivered right to our browser.
However, delivering on the promise is easier said than done. Moving from a great concept to an exceptional user experience proves to be more of a challenge than many people thought. What works on a small scale is a very different story, when put into production.
As Spiderman's Uncle Ben pointed out, "With great power comes great responsibility." Just because we can do all these things doesn't mean we should do them. In the early 1980's, the cheap availability of laser printers and digital fonts produced a plethora of documents that more resembled ransom notes than professional publications. We could easily imagine designers going wild with the capabilities of this new technology and not using the restraint necessary to ensure they produce an optimal experience.
In this entertaining and informative presentation, Jared will show examples of the usability challenges we face as the web continues to change and evolve. He'll discuss the implications of "The Long Tail", the introduction of a mashup mentality in business environments, and how basic techniques, such as usability testing and field studies, change when social network is at the center of the design.
IA for rich interaction: Tools and techniques from the trenches
Saturday March 24 2007, 1:45 - 2:30PM
Presentation-layer technologies like Flash and AJAX are here to stay and have radically altered some of the most established interaction models on the web. The typical IA document of sitemaps & wireframes was based on prototyping and documenting a very linear interaction model. This presentation looks at some of the changes we’ve experienced working in rich interactions have brought about to the standard wireframe document, as well as the changing roles and relationships between IA, designers, developers and clients.
The core IA-related topic for this presentation is IA in practice, although it expands on core IA skills (in essence, expanding the wireframe toolkit).
This presentation will show case studies from rich-interaction projects created by Blast Radius for clients such as DirecTV, Nike and Electronic Arts. Examples of documentation will be shown, specifically relating to the conceptualization, design and execution of rich interaction applications, along with final work and/or prototypes.
Some potential case studies that may be used:
- The creation of statistical visualization interfaces for multi-player video games that allow users to compare real time and historical data online. The documentation for this project required the creation of storyboards and some interactive prototypes to design this application
- The development of new homepage type applications in flash that allow for richer display and promotion of site content, and the documentation methods used to develop and sell this concept
- The development of a Yahoo Maps mashup application
- Other documentation used on other non-linear flash-based applications like the sites for Nike Jordan (www.jumpman23.com) and the Nintendo DS (site now offline).
This presentation will be of interest to working IA’s who are struggling with adapting traditional documentation methods to newer applications that require capturing information related to state transitions, layers, and content variations due to personalization. In some cases these have necessitated documents that start to look more like movie shot lists, and in other cases we’ve found it more appropriate to embed more functional documentation and requirements within the wireframes. We will also explore some of the other more interactive approaches possible using advanced features of Visio, or using prototyping in Flash or HTML.
Time will also be allotted for audience reaction, discussion and participation. The sharing of others’ experiences with rich interaction projects will be encouraged.
2007 IA slam: The workshop with a winner
Lynn Boyden, Chris Chandler, Matthew Fetchko, Eric Reiss
Saturday March 24 2007, 2:45 - 5:45PM
The rules of engagement for the IA Slam call for the brief presentation of a consulting scenario by the Instigators (that's us), followed by the completely random division of participants (that's you) into teams. You then work furiously to develop a response to the problem in less than an hour, using only the classic tools of IA, and your wits. At the end of the breakout session, teams present their solutions to the Instigators and whoever else is in the room. The Slam requires that teams employ not only the core tenets of IA theory, but also those that inform the realpolitik of IA practice: managing team politics,identifying problems, project management, time management, expectation management, brainstorming and designing solutions, and presenting a solution.
Solutions are judged by how well they respond to the clients’ needs, stated and otherwise. Additional criteria, too arcane to elaborate in this forum, are also evaluated to arrive at a clear winner of the annual Information Architecture Slam medal. The judges' decisions are often arbitrary but always final.
Intelligent inter(RE)action: An argument for a data-driven approach to UI design
Garrick Schmitt, Marisa Gallagher
Saturday March 24 2007, 2:45 - 3:30PM
More than ten years ago, on August 9th 1995, the Netscape initial public stock offering (IPO) ushered in the rise of the commercial Web. It enabled a very lo-fi experience, where design work was focused on extending the printed page metaphor online. Since then, much of what we do and experience on the Internet as end-users has changed dramatically. Today we watch videos on YouTube, chat with friends through a host of IM services, connect with people on MySpace and post our photos to the world on Flickr. Most impressively, this is all rendered dynamically on top of one of the most impressive data-rich platforms ever imagined.
Much has been said and written about how designers are faced with a new set of interaction paradigms in a Web 2.0 world (emerging navigation, mash-ups, tag clouds, multi-channel systems, AJAX UIs, etc.). But what about data? How are we preparing to mine the data-rich platforms that underpin the experiences we create? As User Experience practitioners, how must we evolve?
In my presentation "Intelligent Inter(RE)action" I'll argue that a data-driven approach to design is the ideal model for today's web-based application design and development. It is a fast, agile approach that eschews over-reliance on qualitative field research in favor of leveraging existing data-rich platforms to inform design decisions. It forces us, as designers and strategists, to become much more analytic yet simultaneously rely on our own instincts to begin designing and prototyping much faster. This methodology redefines the notion of "participatory design", leaping out of the lab and into the world.
From "beta launches" to "click density analysis", I'll look at the tools and methods that industry leaders such as Google, Yahoo!, Salesforce.com and Avenue A | Razorfish use to deliver optimal design performance.
Specifically, I'll walk through several case studies to demonstrate how we use data to look for insights across all aspects of a user or customer experience, including advertising, search and email. We'll examine how data-mining can alter common misconceptions around customer segmentation. Looking forward, I'll discuss the need for the creation of an ongoing roadmap for site optimization; consider the essential data points involved in tracking the product lifecycle, and conclude with the tactics necessary for organizations to create better user experiences.
Best practices for form design
Saturday March 24 2007, 2:45 - 3:30PM
On the Web, forms bridge the gap between people, their information, and your product or service. From registration forms that welcome new customers to checkout forms that finalize e-commerce transactions, Web forms frequently broker crucial online interactions.
In this session, Luke will walk you through the considerations and best practices of Web form design culled from international usability testing, eye-tracking studies, and over ten years of designing Web applications. He’ll outline how the interaction and visual design of Web forms can make the difference between acquiring a customer and completing a transaction or not.
Attendees will learn about how different types of forms, input fields, input labels, validation, feedback, calls to action, and surrounding visual elements can support or impair different aspects of user behavior. You’ll never look at your Web forms the same way again.
How does CMS and portal software *really* work?
Saturday March 24 2007, 4:00 - 4:45PM
Content Management and Portal software has been around for more than a decade, but in our conversations with information architects, we find that the inner workings of the tools remain terra incognita to many information specialists. Meanwhile, surveys by IAI and others have found that IAs have experienced substantial (and quite justified) frustration with the limitations imposed by CMS and Portal tools in their enterprises.
This session will help level-set vocabulary and knowledge about how these tools really work. In a vendor-neutral tour and critique of the marketplace, 2 independent industry analysts will describe the different types of Web CMS and Portal tools and contrast key differences in approaches among different classes of products.
Participants will learn:
- How to describe the fundamental differences between Web CMS and Portal systems in business terms
- Common features of both types of platforms.
- Typical surprises IAs encounter about how the technology works on the "back end."
- Some best practices for how IAs can effectively impact CMS and Portal implementations
The session is geared in particular for the novice practitioner who may be about to participate in her first CMS or Portal implementation and wants to be empowered to become a vital member of the team.
The session will include many contrasting screenshots of different Web CMS and Portal tools, including open source packages.
The conversation gets interesting: Creating the adaptive interface
Saturday March 24 2007, 4:00 - 4:45PM
With the proliferation of rich Internet applications and interactions more closely aligned with how people think, we face some interesting challenges:
- Do we design for one common audience and common tasks, or tailor applications around specific audiences and their unique activities?
- How do we resolve the tension between creating simple applications that ‘do less’ and the demand for new features that some people really do need?
- As we move beyond usability to create desirable interfaces, how do we handle a subjective domain like emotions?
These types of challenges could all be addressed by creating a truly ‘adaptive' interface. More than removing unused menu options or collaborative filtering, this would include functionality that is revealed over time as well as interface elements that change based on usage. Imagine the web-based email client that begins offering three forms fields for attachments instead of the default one, because it 'noticed' that you frequently upload more than one file. Or the navigation menu that disappears because it is not relevant to the task at hand. Sound scary? Look at the world of game design, where inconsistency has never been an issue and where users learn new functions over time, as needed. In the same ways that ads are becoming more targeted around context and behavior, we can also create interfaces that respond, suggest, or change based on actual usage data.
While much of this is still speculative, we'll explore some concrete examples of how such ideas have already been used, and other instances where they could be used. We'll also take a brief look at what technologies might support these interactions, as well as some of the rules engines that might make this possible. And, to ground this in the past, we'll at some existing navigational theories and research that might support this argument for an interface that is truly conversational and context aware.
Core+Paths - A design framework for findability
Saturday March 24 2007, 5:00 - 5:45PM
We believe that our traditional sitemaps, flows and wireframes tend to ignore some of the most important aspects of findability, simplicity, prioritization and persuasion:- We create "empty structures", leaving content to be "filled in" by others
- We focus on front and section pages, whereas 50% of users enter from Google
- We forget about SEO, marketing and other key aspects of findability
- We miss out on opportunities to solve business goals through Calls to Action
- We end up making huge websites plagued by navigation and information overload
Enriching audiences and organizations with clear and useful content
Saturday March 24 2007, 5:00 - 5:45PM
Content doesn’t have to suck. User-focused process can guide us as we craft text for documents and for re-use. We can attend to how people process information and create focused content that supports people in accomplishing what they want to accomplish.
In this session you will learn a structure for combining the literature of the field in such a way that we can explain to our bosses and colleagues why structure at the sentence, paragraph, and pattern level matters to humans. We can show how our work supports improvements in user and organizational performance.
Specifically, you will accomplish the following objectives:
- Identify an easy-to-use structure for thinking about how people use information; relate specific content heuristics to this structure; and see how you can incorporate these strategies to help users GAIN.
- Explore a five-phased performance-focused structure for product development; use this lens of "GECKO" for chunking your work into a vocabulary of gathering, evaluating, chunking, knowing, and optimizing.
- Revisit structural patterns in text, and learn the "top five strategies" for improving clarity in content.
As a participant, you’ll hear stories and have opportunities for interaction. You'll laugh. You'll learn. Who said structure had to be dull?
WebPatterns: design patterns in web site architecture and User Interaction
Sunday March 25 2007, 9:00 - 9:45AM
In 1977, Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein published "A Pattern Language", which formalized their pattern based approach to architecture.
In a nutshell, a pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again ... and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.
The idea has been taken up in a number of computer related fields. In this context, Brad Appleton observed, "Fundamental to any science or engineering discipline is a common vocabulary for expressing its concepts, and a language for relating them together".
Using this as a benchmark, can web design and development today rightly be called a discipline? Or is it a practice in the process of becoming a discipline? Do we have a "common vocabulary for expressing [our] concepts, and a language for relating them together"?
While there are technologies like HTML and CSS (though we still struggle to even use the terms "tag", "attribute" and "element" correctly), what about higher order, more complex structures and strategies? What do we call the parts of a page we use over and over again? What names do we have for particular navigation strategies (such as hierarchical trees, linear progressions through sections, and so on)?
A survey I conducted in late 2005, as well as a more detailed, though much more narrowly focussed one by François Briatte, suggest that while it's clear that there are many structures we use over and over again, we lack that common vocabulary to talk about these structures, and to relate them to one another.
In this presentation I consider the results of my survey of the structural semantics of more than a thousand web sites "in the wild", and argue we lack a pattern language for the web.
I then outline a project for developing such a pattern language, and propose a structure of one such pattern language.
My grandmother the information architect: The IA of everyday life
Sunday March 25 2007, 9:00 - 9:45AM
The first edition of the Polar Bear book describes an information architect as a person who:
- clarifies the mission and the vision for the site, balancing the needs of its sponsoring organization and the needs of its audiences
- determines what content and functionality the site will contain
- specifies how users will find information in the site by defining its organization, navigation, labeling, and searching systems
- maps out how the site will accommodate change and growth over time.
My grandmother is a person who:
- clarifies the mission and the vision for her home, balancing the needs of my grandfather and the needs of anyone who might visit her home
- determines what stuff in her home stays and what stuff goes out to the trash
- specifies how people will find things in her home by defining its organization, navigation, labeling, and searching systems
- maps out how her home will accommodate change and growth over time, e.g., having guests for the holidays.
Eerie similarities, no?
My presentation examines the information architecture of everyday life, using my grandmother, the quintessential “domestic engineer”, as a case study and example. Through participant observation, I will examine her core IA skills (content inventories, wireframes, and card sorting), illustrate them with photos and artifacts of her work, and compare her work to “traditional IA” best practices.
While seemingly tongue-in-cheek, my presentation will be valuable to anyone who wants to crawl out from the weeds and examine how information architecture is used everyday by regular people. I will talk about how home organization, as a metaphor for web site organization, can be used to describe IA to those who might not understand its value in a larger context.
Mobile information architecture: designing experiences for the mobile web
Sunday March 25 2007, 9:00 - 9:45AM
The mobile interface is coming into its own. Smartphones and PocketPCs and Blackberries and Treos are sprouting everywhere. Mobile web access is becoming more affordable and mobile web browsers are coming out of their infancy.
But the mobile interface is still profoundly different from the desktop/laptop interface. It's not just a matter of size and space limitations. The context is different. The mobile web browser is seeking information (often), yes, but most likely this person is looking for the answers to questions and not for a long involved reading experience. Mobile users may prefer to send text messages when possible and when they do visit the mobile web they may expect to have a similar experience.
Mobile applications are also establishing some expectations among users. Menu choices are often presented as vertical lists, usually with numberical accesskeys to provide shortcuts from the device's keypad. Working with these emerging standards makes sense when possible.
When designing a website that must function optimally on the "traditional" web and the mobile web a number of decision junctions must be navigated. Do you build one site and have it present itself differently in the two contexts, or do you design two separate parallel sites? If the former, do you try to manage the presentation differences entirely with CSS and the DOM, or do you use browser-sniffing to serve up different content as well? Will the same content suffice for both experiences or must it be modified for one or the other? What do you do with sidebars and how do you make the design degrade gracefully to support the jumble of form factors, mobile operating systems, and browsers that support different subsets of the prevailing standards. (Does any of this sound familiar?)
Also, what about .mobi?
This session will present a single case study: a combined web/mobile site for a company that manufactures 80% of the devices running the Windows Mobile operating system in the US today.I will discuss how we addressed the inflection points listed above, among others, and show the IA design documents we developed and delivered as well as the visual comps and prototype sites. I'll also discuss the usability testing we did on both the website and mobile version of the site.
Rich mapping and soft systems: new tools for creating conceptual models
Sunday March 25 2007, 10:15 - 11:00AM
This session will introduce Rich Mapping and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to information architects. SSM is a holistic problem solving framework that can be used to design and model interactions between organizations, people, environments, products and services.
This session will focus on commonly used tools of SSM--including rich mapping, the CATWOE framework and action research — and how they can help information architects develop complex, context-dependent architectures.
The session leaders will talk about the opportunities that SSM can open up for information architects, including the using rich diagramming to model how client organizational systems impact the design process. Examples will be given from successful experiences in other fields, as well as exploratory work done by the session leaders in recent projects and engagements.
The expected outcome for session attendees will be an understanding of the key tenets of Soft Systems Methodology, how these concepts can be applied “off the shelf” to information architecture problems, and how soft systems thinking could be used to drive the development of new IA tools and practices. The Core IA related issues that will be addressed by this session will be strategic information architecture, enterprise IA, service design and the understanding of emergent information environments.
Communicating design: an astonishingly close look at what makes IA documentation work
Sunday March 25 2007, 10:15 - 11:00AM
Every document created by information architects contains many layers of information. Too few layers of information, and the ideas within lose context and meaning. Too many layers, and the important ideas become obscured. Choosing the right ideas to include can make or break a document--and the project. In this session, the author talks about several different IA documents, the kinds of information they contain, and strategies for selecting the right information for the right situations.
How the advertising industry thinks
Sunday March 25 2007, 10:15 - 11:00AM
Our world is changing. Advertising agencies blew the web opportunity the first time around, but they’re not going to let this happen again. They’re smart. They understand communication. They can run persuasive rings around BJ Fogg. And they’ve been doing user research since before Jakob Nielsen was born.
Ad agencies generally stayed out of the blast range when the dot.bomb went off. And they’ve since waited patiently. Happily, most ad folks still haven’t got a clue as to what IAs do. But when they finally do “get it,” we are either going to learn to get along with them or find ourselves relegated to an unenviable group of semi-human subcontractors -- a status otherwise reserved for printers, layouters, and the gopher who delivers lunch each day.
The last couple of years, IAs have learned to appreciate business thinkers like Philip Kottler, Don Peppers, and Peter Drucker. Now it’s time to get acquainted with Claude Hopkins, John Caples, Rosser Reeves, Bill Bernbach, and David Ogilvy.
This presentation will take a closer look at what ad agencies consider “good” advertising, how they interpret “concept,” and why our notion of “proof of concept” is completely nonsensical in the world of advertising. We’ll examine some successful campaigns and some award-winning campaigns -- these are not necessarily the same thing -- and find out why these are admired by so-called “creatives” at ad agencies. We’ll explore why advertising creatives despise web types in general and usability folks in particular. We’ll discover why stuff that “works” on screen doesn’t work in print ads -- and vice versa. And we’ll dispel some of the popular myths about advertising, such as “all advertising is good advertising.”
Real information architecture – new mighty deeds
Margaret Hanley, Lisa Chan, Tom Coates and Matt Biddulph
Sunday March 25 2007, 11:15 - 12:15PM
"Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich, and largely tax free.
Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days men were real men, women were real women, small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri and Information Architects were real Information Architects. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before - and thus was the Empire forged." Richard Dalton in homage to the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Today real information architects’ mighty deeds are moving from macro-organisation of one web site for one organisation, to the micro-organisation of information creating a web of data.
“A web of data sources, services for exploring and manipulating data and ways that users can connect them together”
It allows many sites and applications to build upon not one but many organisations’ intellectual property and therefore making the whole experience of the Internet much richer.
In this panel, we would like to explore this idea of a web of data further and it’s implications for information architects creating the next generation of web sites.
In particular we are bring together
- Mags Hanley who will moderate the panel and provide an interactive introduction to the subject (think human lego)
- Tom Coates talking about the components of the web of data; the specifics of building a site or service with data reuse taking the wider ecosystem into account, what that ecosystem is likely to be like and why on earth IAs want to engage with it in the first place
- Matt Biddulph on how this web of data is being used in APIs, and RDF and how they relates to traditional IA deliverables; and what this means to IAs working with developers
- Lisa Chan who will talk about her recommendations for IAs interested in developing their skills in this areas
The aim of the panel is to open the eyes of the IA community to how we can set the data free; how this will affect our clients and organisations, and the skills we develop ourselves.
Where does IA fit in the design process?
Moderator: Peter Boersma. Panellists: Larisa Warnke, Peter Merholz, Livia Labate, Leisa Reichelt and Josh Seiden
Sunday March 25 2007, 11:15 - 12:15PM
This panel will discuss the place of Information Architecture (IA) activities and deliverables in the design process of interactive systems. Several well-known IAs with experience in researching and designing their own methods, adapting existing software development methodologies, or resorting to outside consultants to implement a method will all be present.
We will discuss (amongst each other and with the audience) issues such as:
- What are the typical IA deliverables and activities? (briefly!)
- When should IAs be part of a design team?
- How do IAs work together with other design team members?
- How do you communicate your design process to new employees and clients?
- How do you measure improvements in your design process?
The audience will see examples of IA-aware design processes, learn what approach to process design worked in which situations, and hear what the results were for both IAs and their environment. After attending the session, audience members should understand the benefits of developing, adapting or foregoing a design process that includes IA activities and deliverables.
IA in Second Life
Moderator: Stacy Merrill Surla; Panelists: Lori Bell, Andrew Hinton, Beth Kanter, Peter Allison, Josh Knauer
Sunday March 25 2007, 11:15 - 12:15PM
Second Life (SL) is a highly popular shared online virtual environment. It provides a host of social software tools and connections to APIs that allow real work to get done. E-business is becoming v-business as retailers, educational organizations, corporations, libraries, and non-profits jump from Web 2.0 to Web 3-D.
All the challenges IAs face in creating complex information spaces are present in virtual 3-D worlds. Retailers are using SL as a channel for marketing services and goods. Businesses are taking advantage of group-forming and communications tools to hold real meetings in virtual spaces. Libraries are offering collections, programs, and services that go where the users are. Non-profit organizations are finding SL an inexpensive place to hold events and develop membership. And universities are practicing distance learning in 3 dimensions.
The goal of this panel is to engage participants in exploring two questions: What roles can IAs play in shaping, building, and using these new environments? And what recommendations should we be making on integrating Web 3-D into the work of our businesses, schools, associations, and libraries?
The session will present an overview of Second Life, focusing on how SL is being used in large online library, education, and non-profit projects. The discussion will touch on what works, what's hard, what has failed, and what's next. Attendees will be able to see SL in action, since several of the panelists will be joining from within Second Life. Furthermore, in the days before, during, and after the session, attendees will be able to get hands-on tours of SL, pick up "How Would YOU Solve This" handouts, and see selected in-world case studies by visiting the "IA in Second Life" table in the Flex-track area of the conference.
FaceTag: integrating bottom-up and top-down classification in a social tagging system
Research paper by: Emanuele Quintarelli, Reed Business Information
Andrea Resmini, University of Bologna, CIRSFID, Department of Law and Computer Sciences
Luca Rosati, University for Foreigners, Perugia, Informatics for Humanistic ScienceSunday March 25 2007, 1:45 - 2:30PM
FaceTag is a working prototype of a semantic collaborative tagging tool conceived for bookmarking Information Architecture resources. It aims to show how the widespread homogeneous and flat keywords' space created by users while tagging can be effectively mixed with a richer faceted classification scheme to improve the "information scent" and "berrypicking" capabilities of the system. The additional semantic structure is aggregated both implicitly observing user behaviour and explicitly introducing a compelling user experience that facilitates the end-user creation of relationships between tags.Maximum value IA: create a larger impact on the business
Sunday March 25 2007, 1:45 - 2:30AM
The world over, information architects are so busy with day-to-day projects and business as usual, they can't find time to work on bigger issues, the mythical Big IA.
This prevents IA from offering input that impacts the entire organization. And, it prevents practitioners from earning the experience they need to move from tactical projects to Enterprise Information Architecture.
Fortunately, Big IA isn't a type of work: it’s a way you work.
We can adjust our tools and techniques to become more relevant and offer more value to our organizations. By changing how we approach specific tasks, we can transform lessons from small projects into frameworks that guide entire systems.
Eight strategies for maximum value IA
From my work with global IT companies, Universities, political campaigns, interactive agencies, and financial institutions, I’ve collected eight experiences that show how common design deliverables (like wireframes, controlled vocabularies, mental models, rich interfaces, personas, and flows) can be used to influence – and change – the broader organization. For each example, I’ve tried to isolate a specific strategy (and give it a memorable name):
- Tools, not rules:
Give people something useful they can use in other situations. - Mountains from molehills:
Change perspective to make things more important. - Plant seeds:
Let ideas blossom over time. - Birds with stones:
With everything you do, always work towards multiple goals. - Every bitch is valid:
In every complaint, there’s a kernel of truth (and often much more) you need to address. - No is only part of Now:
No only starts the conversation. See where the conversation takes you. - Find great minds:
Think like them. Or, find out why you don’t. - Play new games:
Change the rules and change the goals to change the outcomes. - Ice the cake:
Always add one more layer.
For each strategy, the example shows how you can communicate the big picture while still working on the little details. These strategies bridge the gap between knowing design methods and using them for maximum value.
Who should attend?
Though the examples and strategies are useful for practitioners of any skill level in any discipline, newer and intermediate information architects will learn the most.
New IAs will learn how to extract maximum value from individual projects, while intermediate IAs will learn how to influence change across the entire organization. Those interested in Enterprise Information Architecture or User Experience management will find the presentation and resource materials especially useful.
Search engine optimization and IA: the beginnings of a beautiful friendship
Sunday March 25 2007, 1:45 - 2:30PM
How often did you use a search engine today? 1x? More than 1? Did you use the search engine to make your travel arrangements to this conference, look up additional information on speakers, find the answer to a specific question, find information on a certain topic, or locate restaurants nearby? Machine mediated search is now the dominant form of information seeking. The emergence to intrusion of search engines complicates as much as complements our relationship with the Web. There is so much more than we can imagine going on behind the simple box and it is changing fast. Taking Paul Saffo’s advice not to “walk backwards towards the future”, I will take a look at what is going on behind the scenes of today's search technology, what is in the pipeline for tomorrow's search technology and how information architects can work with this technology to create optimal online wayfinding systems. In this presentation we will examine:
- Search Today: Wayfinding today is achieved less by traditional left/global navigation and more by technology-mediated “aboutness” and determination of relevance to what the searcher wants. Here we will examine recent search technology changes that use external metadata, site structure, and page structure to determine content context and relevance.
- Personalized search: How our users are creating their own solutions using niche search, personal search engines, social bookmarking, and more.
- Search Tomorrow: Next generation search applications are using refinements such as: Hilltop algorithm that determines "content authorities", Orion algorithm that suggests query refinements for more relevant results, site structure [url depth and click distance from Authority pages], query analysis, semantic indexing, mechanical distinction of narrative text and more.
- SEO Challenges and Opportunities for Information Architects: Here is where specific illustrations of search optimization through IA will be presented: what is search friendly site structure [the HITS Algorithm and Authority scores], how to enhance relevance through association [outlinks and inlinks with a point of view], relational content ["birds of a feather" or where to send them once they arrive and why], the importance of taxonomy, and more.
Teresa of Avila could have been speaking of search engines when she said that there are more tears wept over answered prayers. Search engines help us find what we want while lacking the ability to understand the context of our needs. Information architecture is crucial to resolving this dilemma by communicating the site message in an organic as well as structured way that is visible to the primary technology users employ to find information online.
Finding Innovation in the five hundred pound gorilla
Sunday March 25 2007, 2:45 - 3:30PM
Taking one step forward at a time gets you nowhere unless you know where you are going.
The daily grind of the designer and information architect can become very focused and repetitive. Project after project, client after client, iteration after iteration, we work through the motions of wireframes, card sorts, hierarchies and task flows ad nauseum. How do we break away from this cycle and step away far enough that we can truly explore, innovate and define strategy? In this Yahoo! case study, we discuss the process navigated to free up an entire design team away from the regular product cycle to work on a “vision project” for a three week duration with the full support from senior management, product management and engineering.
We will discuss the steps we took, both at the micro project level as well as setting expectations with upper management to make such a project come to fruition. We will explore the motivation behind such an endeavour and the challenges we faced.
A large focus of the presentation will be on the process of the project itself
- what worked well and what lessons we learned for future efforts of a similar nature. We’ll be discussing the importance of creating this project to define the strategy of the product, as opposed to simply iterating without direction. Through a series of trial and error, we also will be able to discuss how the more visual storytelling outputs were far more engaging and well received than other approaches we tried.
- In addition we will discuss how this project influenced and was integrated into the subsequent project planning, design and development lifecycle. Finally, we will discuss some other initiatives we’re aware of that attempt to address what we call "innovation stagnation" both within the company and without.
Tuning up site search
Sunday March 25 2007, 2:45 - 3:30PM
Users expect that typing a word or two into a single box will always give them exactly what they are looking for. Search is supposed to “just work.” Unfortunately, enterprise site search for portals, intranets, e-commerce, and e-service sites often fails to deliver the results that users expect. If your search system isn’t delivering on these high expectations, an important question to ask is what (if anything) has been done to configure and optimize your site search tool. Given the fact that many organizations have already made a big investment in purchasing a search engine, it makes sense to explore ways to tune up your search engine before sending it to the digital scrap heap.
If you are new to the area of site search and facing the challenge of how to rescue your site’s users from a frustrating search experience, this introductory presentation will provide you with effective strategies, starting points and examples. It will also include opportunities for incorporating user testing and search analytics into the process of improving search. The strategies covered will range from low-hanging fruit (taking better advantage of existing features) to more robust solutions. The ideas we’ll discuss include the following:
- (Re) Configure your site search engine
- Improve the search user interface
- Make your content more findable
Customize to take search to the next level
Architectures of participation: what Communities of Practice can mean for IA
Sunday March 25 2007, 2:45 - 3:30PM
“Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.” – Cory Doctorow
How can Information Architecture address the increasing demand for collaborative work, meaningful conversation and social connection? We’ll explore how “Community of Practice” is more than just a 90s knowledge-management buzz-phrase. It’s an important model for understanding group behavior – and one that’s becoming crucial to designing in the age of Wikipedia, MySpace and YouTube.
Understanding communities of practice as a phenomenon can lend a great deal of clarity to designing frameworks for participation: creating the right conditions for particular kinds of collective effort.
We’ll gain an essential understanding of “communities of practice,” looking at “IA” as a handy example. We’ll then examine how the concept helps us design for a variety of collaborative environments – from intranets and medical forums to multiplayer games.
@toread and Cool: tagging for time, task and emotion
Research paper by: Margaret Kipp, University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Information and Media Studies
Sunday March 25 2007, 4:00 - 4:45PM
This paper examines the use of non subject related tags in three social bookmarking tools (Del.icio.us, Connotea and Citeulike). Previous studies of Del.icio.us and Citeulike determined that many common tags are not directly subject related but are in fact affective tags dwelling on a user's emotional response to a document or are time and task related tags related to a users current projects or activities. A set of non subject tags from the previous studies was used to collect posts with non subject tags from the three listed social bookmarking tools. These tags have been analysed to examine their role in the tagging process.A Delphi approach to card sorting
Sunday March 25 2007, 4:00 - 4:45PM
Card sorting is a common IA activity which aids in information design. It can be a valuable tool in discovering important information patterns and testing the suitability of category organization labels. Although a widely used method, it has disadvantages which potentially effect how difficult results are to obtain as well as how reliable.
The Delphi method is an interactive forecasting technique which incorporates the philosophical argument methods of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in order to reach an unbiased consensus from a group of experts or users. It has been successfully applied to interviewing techniques, and has the potential to be applied to card sort methods. Some benefits of this adaptation could be the need for fewer participants or more reliable results.
This presentation will introduce the Delphi method and how it can be applied to card sorting, as well as discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages. It is suitable for practitioners of all levels, however familiarity with card sorting and testing methods is recommended.
Enterprise IA methodologies: starting two steps earlier
Sunday March 25 2007, 4:00 - 4:45PM
Information architects working with enterprises are confronted by unique challenges, relating to organisational culture, business processes, and internal politics. There are also some key differences in how the discipline of IA is applied, relating to frequent uncertainties around the exact nature of the business problems being solved.
In a typical project, the problem is known, and the challenge is to work out the best way to design the solution. User-centered design methodologies then provide a rich toolbox for delivering an effective solution.
Within the enterprise space, it is often the case that even the problem to be solved is not well understood. For example, information architects may be approached with ill-defined ‘problems’ such as to improve the effectiveness of the intranet, to help call center staff to access required information, or to increase the uptake of the document management system.
In all these cases, the first task for the information architect is to better understand the problem. In practice, this means that enterprise IAs often start two steps earlier, focusing first on understanding the scope and nature of the problem, and then defining a strategy and approach.
Backcasting: or how I learned to stop predicting and help my clients
Sunday March 25 2007, 5:00 - 5:45PM
This session will provide attendees with an overview and understanding the backcasting methodology, and how they can use it in their own information architecture practice.
A mashup of scenario development and social learning, backcasting is a strategy framework that allows practitioners to successfully conceptualize, scope and structure multiple future states. It also provides a framework for successfully negotiating obstacles and threats to achieving those states. Originally used in the environmental planning field, backcasting has been hacked and refined for use in web strategy discovery activities.
Two key additions to the original backcasting methodology have been incorporated to help make backcasting a practical tool for information architects. The first addition has been the incorporation of a facilitation framework to make backcasting a very interactive exercise, undertaken jointly by the design team, clients and project stakeholders. The second addition has been the use of a participatory diagramming strategy based on rich mapping and affinity clustering that makes the backcasting process visible and more accessible to the participants.
The inclusion of these elements has made backcasting a practical tool for accomplishing a range of discovery initiatives in a single, engaging session. The method allows a team of clients and stakeholders to clearly understand the relationship between a range of strategies, how to measure the success of these strategies, and how to keep in alignment with one or more strategies over the lifetime of a project or engagement.
The expected outcome for session attendees will be an understanding of how the backcasting methodology works, and how it can be used by information architects and other design team members as a tool to facilitate project discovery, web strategy definition and measurement, and social learning about the needs and culture of the client organization.
Peer (or team) design reviews -- how to give 'em and take 'em
Dorelle Rabinowitz, Lucas Pettinati
Sunday March 25 2007, 5:00 - 5:45PM
How does your team review work-in-progress? Do you informally collaborate with other information architects or is there a formal process in place? How do you decide that work is ready to show to the "outside" -- the business folks, clients or other stakeholders -- and feel confident that the work delivers what was promised?
In the case of our team, we are extremely comfortable with the work being produced because of twice-weekly internal design reviews. The entire team (interaction designers, visual designers, design researchers and even engineers) attends and participates. These recurring meetings function as iterative design sessions, as work-in-progress is reviewed at all stages of development -- from ideas to sketches to finished mocks and specs. We offer positive criticism and encouragement, brainstorm alternative solutions, and discuss strategies for review with other functional teams in supportive but truthful environment.
These reviews are an effective methodology to not only increase innovation, but also improve team morale, while building communication and listening skills. Informal or structured, they allow designers to gather design feedback, provide managers with knowledge of project progress, and distribute knowledge within a team. In turn, this process yields better designs and designers who can clearly articulate design rationales to cross-functional teams and get their buy-in. This presentation will describe:
- When to hold a session (and how often)
- Who should attend (and who shouldn't)
- Who runs the session (and what they need to do)
- How to set up a session and manage participants expectations (When to show, what to show, creating a helpful, non-judgmental environment)
- Presenter's and participant's different responsibilities (the difference between positive feedback and personal opinion)
- Benefits of the methodology
- Real Life Examples
- Adapting the methodology for your situation
Prediction markets: an introduction
Sunday March 25 2007, 5:00 - 5:45PM
Prediction markets, simply stated, are a place where a person can buy or sell a contract based on a event (e.g. a “Hillary will be President in ’08” contract), much like they would buy and sell a stock, and the price of that contract reflects a prediction, or probability, for that event occurring. They are new, a bit unusual, and sometimes awkwardly (but accurately) classified as a collaboration technology.
This presentation will introduce prediction markets, explain why they work, why they are interesting, who uses them, and why they present compelling information architecture challenges. In addition, the presentation will feature examples of prediction markets, and discuss the landscape of the prediction market industry.
Designing accessible navigation
Monday March 26 2007, 8:30 - 9:15AM
To come...Eye tracking and the relationship between visual design and visceral reactions in credibility judgments
Research paper by: David Robins, Kent State University, Information Architecture & Knowledge Management
Jason Holmes, Kent State University, School of Library and Information Science
Heather Bryan, Kent State University, Information Architecture & Knowledge ManagementMonday March 26 2007, 8:30 - 9:15AM
Web sites often provide the first impression of an organization. For many organizations, web sites are crucial to ensure a sale or to ensure sales or to procure services within. When a person opens a web site, the first impression is probably made in a very few seconds, and the user will either stay or move on to the next site on the basis of many factors. One of the factors that may influence users to stay or go is the visual design of a page. Another reason to stay or go may involve a user's judgment about the site's credibility. This study explores the possible link between page visual design and a user's judgment of the site's credibility. Our findings indicate that when the same content is presented using different levels of aesthetic treatment, the content with a higher aesthetic treatment was judged as having higher credibility. We call this the amelioration effect of visual design on content credibility. Our study suggests that this effect is operational within the first few seconds in which a user views a web page. Given the same content, a higher aesthetic treatment will increase perceived credibility. Eye tracking data show strong tendencies to base judgments on content and design in the top left quadrant of pages.Annals of experience: hacking it alone or the importance of being earnest or being mercenary
Monday March 26 2007, 8:30 - 9:15AM
This presentation will be a personal sharing of the past 3 years of running an information architecture and user experience service offering in SA, where no one has a clue what information architecture or user experience design is.
It will cover:
Leaving the developed world for the developing
- 2003: Coming home (from London to Johannesburg)
- The pressure and encouragement to design wrong
- The damning conversation that set me free
- Surprise 1 (where others learnt we didn't)
- Surprise 2 (Where did all my heroes go)
- Surprise 3 (You're the hero! Now I know I know nothing)
The phoenix (advice on burn out)
- The importance of caring for the subject matter you are IA'ing for
- Arts and culture projects
- The privilege of getting paid to work for the non-profit sector
Positioning IA in a market where no-one knows what IA is
- Some good advice over coffee (the 'T' factor)
- The burden of education: the trouble in getting your foot in the door. The other side of ignorance is trust
- Choosing your client? the Ad agency, the web design company or the client?!
- The importance of being multi-lingual (IA as an intersection)
- How user experience design has helped (the argument in your pocket)
Productising
- Process as product
- I am not a consultant, I am a designer.
- The importance of information visualisation and language
Unexpected successes
- gaining client trust, ownership and unexpected responsibility
Managing growth and demand
- how can you sell your work if it didn't turn out the way it was meant to
- Remaining true to your core competence vs. the need for control (and thus extended services)
- Entrepreneurship and opportunism: launching a content company
Dealing with the void: The loneliness of the lone wolf
- All dressed up but no place to go: local community silence
- gratitude to the international community
- Future hope (UXnet and IA Institute local networking initiatives)
The richness of IA (future opportunities)
- Publishing, public sector, research, education, product development, content, manifest
What the developed world just doesn't get
- The brain drain
- The opportunity and the feeling
Interaction design style
Monday March 26 2007, 9:30 - 10:15AM
At the 2003 IA Summit keynote address, Stewart Brand seemed to dismiss "style" as a fast-moving and ephemeral approach to designing systems. Similarly, many information architects and user experience designers draw a sharp distinction between style and substance, ultimately viewing style as inappropriate as a basis for IA/UXD solutions.
Certainly style is often associated with trends and fashions, where change occurs solely for the sake of change itself, with not a care for what actually works.
But I will argue that, in fact, style is (and always has been) a powerful design tool that not only helps us communicate efficiently to users, clients, and other designers, but also acts as a rich resource for innovation and solutions to new and old problems. Style is a self-correcting system; it is a pattern language; it bridges branding and functionality; it is, in fact, the bridge between best practices and innovation.
Historically style has always been a key influence on great design. This talk will discuss how style awareness is a core aspect of "design thinking", the emerging concept of how the design process is becoming more and more integral to the development of business models and product strategies. It will provide a historical overview of how style has affected the practice of design in other fields, from writing to architecture to computer science, and it will show how interaction design, too, can benefit from a consciousness of emerging trends in interaction design style. In fact, drawing on fresh new movements and trends in interaction design style is how many of us already work, whether we realize it or not.
Online product development in the financial services industry; can it be done?
Monday March 26 2007, 9:30 - 10:15AM
I was assigned to work on a web store project for a large financial services company. My job was to investigate the suitability of traditional off line products to be sold online. In the discovery phase of this project I learned that Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs) currently account for 90% of all existing product sales. As a result this company’s products are designed purposely to accommodate the IFA. Each product’s commission structure and its perceived benefits are assembled in such a way that ensure IFAs collect a larger commission and are able to entice customers with more features and benefits than comparable competitor products. Products are continually morphing into seemingly more attractive versions of themselves. The problem is after a series of these reinventions, financial services products have become so convoluted and complex they cannot be sold without an IFA’s or at least a customer service agent’s guidance and advice.
Did the solution lie in stripping these products down to their core elements and rebuilding them in such a way that they are easy to comprehend by any online user with average intelligence? Or was the answer to equip online users to have a more informed interaction with their IFA by educating them about the mechanics and complexities of the existing product set? As a starting point I designed an interactive application called the "Asset Protector". Focusing specifically on Healthcare and Insurance, this tool guides an online consumer down a simple path towards a tailored protection plan that will ensure future financial security. In order for this tool to be successfully applied online, Life, Protection and Healthcare products had to be stripped down and rebuilt in such a way that they could be first and foremost easily understood and then sold as individual components of a complete protection package. By applying this thinking to two different areas of the group, Healthcare and Insurance, we began to see product relationships springing up across the group as a whole.
By enhancing and optimizing existing products and stripping out irrelevant features we were able to isolate and draw on emotional triggers and allow users to find products that were relevant to them without 3rd party assistance. The "Asset Protector" allows users to come to their own conclusions about the usefulness of product features and benefits and can discard elements that will not add direct value to their financial wellbeing or growth. This case study will illustrate my journey from trying to understand the peculiar way in which financial services products are currently sold, to stripping products down and rebuilding them using a series of isolated product features to form simple clean propositions that could be sold online, and leveraging all the unseen opportunities that arose along the way.
When a public administration met its citizens: changing perspective, creating new tools
Cristina Lavazza and Andrea Fiacchi
Monday March 26 2007, 9:30 - 10:15AM
This paper is about the ways to improve findability in a web site of a public administration. Sviluppo Italia is an agency aimed at developing the country thanks to a wide range of economic tools/products. It is difficult to find the contents of our portal for two reasons:
- we talk to different targets
- we manage a wide variety of topics
During the years the information has rapidly grown up, much faster than the solutions adopted to cope with the problem of information retrieval and usability. We were working on the navigation tree and labels of the most difficult sections in order to re-organize the hierarchical tree.
We’re currently adopting the solutions used by e-commerce sites offering products or services. Nevertheless adopting a pure commercial logic is not correct to our purpose because the inner characteristics of our content are not clear and objective. Besides we need to offer clear and reliable information about our agency according to governative politics.
In the paper we will shortly tell you about the data collection step, will investigate the topic of the new communication logics and finally will say something about the application of these classification systems in a traditional CMS.
The contents tell you the way
Our site contains a wide number of very heterogeneous contents.We started our job interviewing all the operation areas of our company to know what they have to tell to their audience. In the meantime we analyzed the information requests received by our CRM to understand:
- what our clients want
- where our site doesn’t match their needs.
Crossing all the data collected we argued that the structure wasn’t working anymore and we had to dare a substantial change of route: create a customer oriented portal with many access point and navigation paths (multidimension).
PUSH and PULL approach: that’s all folks!
We set up 6 points of view to surf the site. Three of them (who am I? – where am I? – What do I need?) are facets that permit to the users to follow their own way in searching the site: this is the PULL action where a user doesn’t follow a path designed by the information architect but create a personal navigation path to reach a specific content. The other points of view (who’s talking? - what do we offer you? – what’s hot?) are traditional hierarchical tags that open navigation paths thought by the IA according to a typical PUSH action (the company decides what subjects need to be pushed according to its agenda). Besides that in home page we reserve a “the users make the site up” area, a real folksonomy that brings in home the ten most wanted items.
How we customized our CMS and lived happily
Three years ago our company signed a contract with a little Italian software house that created the CMS we’re working on, a traditional tool supporting a traditional information architecture. We decided to work together to personalize and modify this software so that it could support the facet logic.The final result is a traditional CMS with some added innovative tools to search and surf the site. With these new tools we can implement:
- a multidimensional navigation based on facets, tags and folksonomy
- a “guided research function” based on alternative/additional criteria compared to the facets
- the “search function” that – as the e commerce sites - give you back the searched item and some clues to deepen the research.
This last function is based on a dedicated thesaurus made up by the users themselves: the more a term is searched the easier its entry in the controlled terms list (thesaurus).
Communal computing and shared spaces of usage: a study of Internet Cafes in developing contexts
Research paper by: Jason Hobbs, jh-01, Johannesburg, South Africa
Monday March 26 2007, 10:45 - 11:30AM
We are investigating Internet and Web usage in Internet Cafes in Johannesburg. The key hypothesis is that, unlike in developed contexts where the perceived use of Internet cafes is by travelers and those 'passing through', Internet cafes in developing contexts are the primary means of Internet connection for many people. They may travel some distance to use these cafes on a regular basis. Research in Africa has shown that Internet cafes are often used by locals for business purposes or as a secondary venue for connecting when connections go down in private business locations.
The users we are investigating do not have access to information on a private desktop or 'in the next room' when at a cafe. A better understanding of these users, their needs and context influences how we design for them. If we are to take Internet cafes and the needs of their users to heart, then there must be a new approach to impacting the user experience in a 'community computing' or 'beyond the desktop' environment.
We will present the findings of our research into the relationship between these cafes and their users, how Internet cafes are being used and how they assist people in performing daily life and business functions. In addition, we will present recommendations for designing Web-based services based on an audit of websites juxtaposed to the insights we gain through our research.
The key question is: "Are we designing appropriately for users in these spaces?"
Project touchstones: how to bridge competing viewpoints and build vision, consensus, and innovation
Monday March 26 2007, 10:45 - 11:30AM
Even the best design or architecture methods and tools can't save a project that falls to political infighting, divided priorities, and unclear direction. Competing viewpoints and separate camps cause rifts in projects as energy is devoted to advancing agendas instead of driving business value. The reality is that for IAs and our toolbox of methods to make an effective impact on clients or our own organizations there needs to be business buy-in, common vision, and a shared understanding of project direction and outcomes.
Creating touchstones is an approach to improve project success by bridging competing viewpoints and building a shared vision with clear direction and consensus. Project touchstones are artifacts and exercises whose primary purpose is not to define or document a solution, but to create a channel for communication between different parties. With artifacts that act as common references, teams can surface tacit needs, assumptions and unarticulated expectations. This lets stakeholders work on clearly defining the problem, instead of working to define a solution fragmented by miscommunication. Working with these common references, IAs can map the elements of the project valued by competing interests. Understanding and mapping value then offers avenues for divided stakeholders to unite around a shared vision that satisfies their core needs. This composite of diverse perspectives provides more opportunities for innovation as solutions emerge at boundaries, intersections, and overlaps.
This session will explore principles for creating effective project touchstones with a mix of grounding theory based in framing and boundary objects, pragmatic real-world examples, and how-to guidance. By focusing on creating touchstones early in a project, IAs can build buy-in, avoid wasted effort, increase their influence with their teams, and make a more meaningful difference with their work.
Information architecture meets industrial design: Working collaboratively across disciplines
Monday March 26 2007, 10:45 - 11:30AM
As more products come to market with embedded intelligence, the opportunities for information architects to create rich and usable interaction experiences are growing exponentially. But as anyone who has ever struggled with a new cellphone or digital camera knows, these new intelligent tools also introduce usability problems well beyond the traditional web and software purview of IA. In order to have a positive impact on information design and usability in these new realms, IA will have to collaborate with ID: industrial design.
In this presentation, I’ll address the pleasures and difficulties of this collaboration through a case study of the IPC IQ-MAX, a successful frog design project led collaboratively by information architects and industrial designers. The IQ-MAX, a specialized communications device used on financial trading floors known as a “turret,” is designed to fit into a trader’s high-tech, fast-paced and cramped work environment. The IQ-MAX employs color, shapes, and iconography to provide complex status and use signals on its multiple digital screens, so a trader can keep an eye on his communication environment without losing track of his trades. A whole range of cues, behaviours, and control grouping patterns travel across the divide between the digital and the physical realms, making the product easy to learn and use. Where the previous generation turret relied on specialized training, the IQ-MAX has been used successfully by traders within minutes of their being introduced to it.
Our collaboration across the physical and the digital design is a crucial element of the product’s usability. But learning how to work in a cross-disciplinary fashion takes time and effort. This case study shares our experience and process – both the best-practices frog design as an interdisciplinary firm brought to the project and what we learned from doing it - to help information architecture as a discipline come to terms with this new challenge and start to develop best practices around it. I’ll discuss the way in which physical devices go from concept to final product, and where that process and digital design come into conflict. But I’ll also outline the opportunities this collaboration opens up for both teams, and what I’m still learning about industrial design from my colleagues.
The case study will end by drawing out suggested best practices for collaborative IA/ID work. By understanding each other’s methods, work processes, and constraints, we can work more effectively together, and make the case as a professional community for bringing IA into the intelligent device design process from the very beginning.
The Grand Challenges in Information Architecture Research
Don Turnbull, Karl Fast, Grant Campbell
Monday March 26 2007, 11:45 - 12:45PM
The Grand Challenges in Information Architecture are listed to provide a framework researchers and practitioners to achieve scientific breakthroughs in understanding, designing and building information architectures (of any kind).
These Grand Challenges, when solved, can lead to increased access to information throughout the world and help support the information economy be it from education to commerce.
These challenges aim to engage creative minds from across scientific and artistic disciplines -- including those who have not traditionally taken part in information architecture-related research -- to work on critical problems that when solved, advance the state of the art and provide a foundation for future work.
Lessons from failure: Or how IAs learn to stop worrying and love the bombs
Christian Crumlish, Peter Jones, Lorelei Brown and Joe Lamantia
Monday March 26 2007, 11:45 - 12:45PM
It's not unusual at conferences to present triumphant case studies about projects that succeeded spectacularly well and the reasons why they did: meaning the stern but judicious stewardship of the brilliant, kindly, insightful, charming presenters whose work deserves the claim sure to be heaped upon it in the days to come.
This will be a different kind of panel. We are going to talk about failure, and not just failure in the abstract but specific situations, specific projects, in which we have personally failed. Furthermore, we are going to refrain from blaming the stakeholders and clients for these disasters. We are going to own our catastrophes and we are going to talk about what we learned from them and why we are doing better information architecture today because of these painful, harsh lessons.
But it won’t be a pity party. We see the humor in our own failures and we expect to get the audience laughing early and often. If we can’t laugh at ourselves then what good are we?
We expect a lively panel with a great deal of audience involvement. We hope that by breaking the ice and airing our own dirty laundry, we will encourage the rest of the people in the room to come up to the microphone and tell hilarious and sad stories of projects that went south.
Each panelist will address a different level of failure: the project level, the organizational level, the institutional level, the global level and each has different insights into why projects fail, to what extent failure can and cannot be prevented, and how failure is an inevitable by-product of creativity and experimentation.
Start-up case studies: how five of us started our own businesses
Victor Lombardi, Frank Ramirez, Lou Rosenfeld, Gene Smith and Christina Wodtke
Monday March 26 2007, 11:45 - 12:30PM
Five entreprenuers – Lane Becker, Frank Ramirez, Lou Rosenfeld, Gene Smith and Christina Wodtke – will each present a case study describing their experience starting a business informed by their information architecture background. A case study format common to all presenters is used to illustrate the story behind each business and highlight similarities and differences in each person’s experience.
The information architecture community has shown an increasing interest in the interplay of business issues and IA. As reflected in the press, businesses are increasing aware of the role design and IA can play in operations and strategy. Because of the ease in starting an Internet business and the abundance of inexpensive tools, many IA practitioners are combining their design and business experience by starting up businesses. Through this series of presentations we hope to shed light on the real-life experiences and lessons of business owners from our community.
A question and answer session will follow the presentations.
Presentation files:
- Victor Lombardi (PPT, 339KB)
- Frank Ramirez (PDF, 1.8MB)
- Louis Rosenfeld (PPT, 375KB)
- Gene Smith (PPT, 281KB)
- Christina Wodtke (PPT, 919KB)
Utilizing ritual in the design of information spaces for the cognitively impaired
Research paper by: Dr. D. Grant Campbell, University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Information and Media Studies
Monday March 26 2007, 2:00 - 2:45PM
This paper examines the potential relevance of ritual in the design of information resources for users suffering from cognitive impairments, particularly Alzheimer's Disease. Using examples that show how patients with cognitive disabilities respond to metaphors, symbols and religious rituals, the analysis suggests that ritual, with its emphasis on repetition and process, its use of symbols that appeal to multiple senses, its themes of plenitude and abundance, and its dialogic relationship between believer and deity, provides clues to the ways in which information systems could be designed to facilitate comprehension and access by those suffering from dementia.
Admin interfaces: the unsexy side of information architecture
Monday March 26 2007, 2:00 - 2:45PM
Many times as IAs we spend a lot of time designing the end-user interface for a web site; creating wireframes, site maps and user journeys that describe the way people outside a company will interact, purchase or communicate with the organisation.
On my last two projects as well as creating the interfaces for end-users, I created Admin interfaces – interfaces used by internal staff or business users to upload and manage the content on the web site or application.
Unfortunately Admin interfaces are considered the "unsexy" side of IA and ID. Many companies do not see their value until the user is unable to make a change; and then they become necessary evil. They are often under-funded and the last piece of work to be specified.
For a technical information architect like me, it is the ultimate place where you draw together the presentation layer, the database and e-commerce engine to firstly ensure that a user can see and buy products on the site, and secondly continue to maintain the system.
The aim of the case study is to demystify Admin interfaces and provide others who have to create them with lessons out of a relatively successful implementation of an Admin interface. I will talk through the development of the Admin interface for the O2 Shop site and the lessons I learnt in developing that interface.
In particular focusing on:
- the business requirements gathering process
- how the Admin interface integrated with presentation and technical aspects of the site
- timing in the development of the site or "how I created my first XML to carry us through til launch"
- the Admin interface as an change management tool – what NOT to do
- user input and understanding of the tool
To wrap up the discussion I will talk about how I have applied this experience to my next Admin interface and provide the audience with a set of points to consider when developing for an internal audience.
How to manage a user experience team (without losing your mind)
Monday March 26 2007, 2:00 - 2:45PM
Chances are, if you’ve been working as a user experience architect (or information architect) for many years, you didn’t go to "information architecture school"” Maybe you studied anthropology or graphic design or journalism or library science. You fell into the work, and to your surprise and delight, you found that you liked it. Through trial and error, you actually got good at it. Likewise, many of us who rose in the ranks to become managers didn’t go to management school. Someone saw we were capable, they offered us the job, and we were off to the races. It was hard enough to master all the different skills involved in being a good user experience architect. Most of us are generalists. We need to know enough about technology to work with engineers. We need to know enough about visual design to work with designers. Every time we start a new project, we need to learn about our client’s business and their business problems, until we can recite them in our sleep. We need to be part designer, part psychologist, part researcher, part corporate therapist. We need to be able to write cogently, sketch our ideas so that even the most distracted marketing executives can understand them, and give killer presentations.
But managing a user experience team takes these skills to a whole new level.
- How do you find people who have potential to be as good at this work as (or even better than) you are?
- How do you inspire them to do their best work, and keep getting better?
- How do you handle a team member who is not performing?
- What if, (heaven forbid), you have to fire someone?
- How do you keep yourself inspired, when your job is to make the rest of your team look good?
These were some of the questions I had when I was hired as the director of a user experience group three years ago for an award-winning design agency in San Francisco. In those three years, I built the team from zero to an all-star group of a dozen full-time employees and long-term freelancers. Along the way, I learned a lot about creativity, human nature, and communication. Now I’m ready to share this hard-won knowledge with others in the field.
Whether you manage a UX team, or you’re just thinking about it, this presentation will give you practical advice grounded in real-world experience. It will incorporate interviews with other managers of UX teams from consulting agencies as well as in-house groups. If you’re thinking about becoming a manager, it may help you decide if the job is for you. And for experienced managers, you may confirm what you have learned on your own, and pick up some new ideas as well.
5-minute madness
Various
Monday March 26 2007, 4:00 - 5:00PM
The 5-minute madness is a fabulous IA Summit fixture. It has an open microphone and anyone can talk for no more than 5 minutes. In previous years we've had songs, passion, arguments and tears. A great end to the conference...
