Dan Brown
Abstract
Information architects need better tools for dealing with complex design problems like faceted browsing, template-driven displays, and content management systems. Site maps show a web site’s underlying structure, but render every page literally. Such views of the site are hopelessly obsolete before they reach the printer. They do not account for modern approaches to designing navigation systems. Database- and CMS-driven sites, for example, offer greater flexibility in storing and displaying content. Our deliverables must be able to keep up.
Concept models offer an alternative that better approximate the underlying structures of today’s web sites. By documenting a site’s foundation at a greater level of abstraction, concept models provide designers better insight into the user experience.
Workshop Details
A staple in the information architect’s tool chest, the site map, approaches obsolescence faster and faster every day. The site map–a literal representation of every page on a web site–no longer adequately captures the structures behind today’s web sites. Information architects need a new tool.
Concept models can be that tool. While similar to the site map, it avoids confining information architects to a specific framework for representing structures. It provides flexibility for accommodating a range of concepts and objects–not just web pages. It can represent a variety of relationships and easily incorporate contextual information. Modern web sites no longer are a collection of static HTML pages. Instead, they rely on templates, portlets, and complex interactivity. A user’s experience of such sites are hardly linear or hierarchical. Information architect’s need a visualization tool to capture the range of abstractions that form the foundation of modern sites.
This workshop will help participants adopt concept modeling into their own processes. Besides introducing the deliverable and providing advice on how to create them, the workshop will help participants understand where and when concept models are appropriate to use. We will discuss the range of problems concept models can address and how to translate a model from an abstract representation of a site’s structure to concrete wireframes.
After providing an overview, the workshop will gradually walk participants through the process of creating a concept model. Working from a sample site, participants will start at the beginning, gathering concepts, compiling an initial model, reviewing with “stakeholders” (played by the facilitator and other participants), revising the model, adding a final visual polish, and turning the model into a screen design.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this workshop, participants will know:
- When concept models are an appropriate tool.
- How to create concept models to use in the gathering requirements.
- How to create concept models to use in the design process.
- How to design effective visualizations for concept models.
AGENDA, FORMAT & EXERCISES
The workshop will be organized into six sections, following the typical process for creating a model. Bookended by some introductory and wrap-up material, the six sections will each focus on an exercise that lets participants create and evolve a concept model.
CORE IA ISSUES
Documentation; Designing and communicating abstract structures
TARGET AUDIENCE
Senior User Experience Professionals
Speaker Details
Dan Brown is founder and principal at EightShapes, LLC, a user experience consulting firm based in Washington, DC that has engaged with clients in telecommunications, media, education, health, high-tech, and other sectors. Dan has been practicing information architecture and user experience design since 1995.
Prior to founding EightShapes, Dan consulted with organizations ranging from the US Postal Service, the World Bank, and the Federal Communications Commission to USAirways, FirstUSA, and Fannie Mae. From 2002-2004, Dan was a Federal employee, leading the content management program for the Transportation Security Administration. His portfolio includes work on public-facing web sites, intranets and extranets, and addresses most aspects of the user experience, from information architecture and content strategy to interaction and interface design.
Drawing on his expertise in communicating complex ideas and abstractions through high-quality visual documentation, Dan wrote a book on user experience deliverables -Communicating Design (New Riders, 2006). Amazon reviews call it “authoritative”, “practical, personal, comprehensive” and “a cool nerdbook”.
Dan has participated in nearly every IA Summit since its inception in 2000. His participation included moderating a panel on enterprise information architecture, leading a workshop on Microsoft Visio, presenting a poster on wireframing, and sitting on a panel on Web 2.0. He’s written more than a dozen articles for Boxes and Arrows, an online journal dedicated to information architecture, on topics ranging from PowerPoint to the information architecture of home audio devices. He’s also written for UX Matters, the CHI Bulletin, and Interactive Television Today.