IA Summit 2004

More Summit Photos

My collection of summit photos is up.

Finding Narrative Everywhere

First off, on behalf of Marisa, Jonathan and myself I want to thank everyone for showing up at the unholy hour of 8 am on Sunday morning to hear our talk on the use of narrative in interaction design. Also big thanks to those in the audience who gave us feedback and leads to pursue in taking this idea further. For example, I was pleased to see how narrative is being used to assist the in the design process for Yves Behar and fuseproject , the product design firm. Three quotes from the fuseproject website illustrate this:

Approach:
Our design philosophy is rooted in the idea that intelligent and consistent stories can be developed for our clients and their products. We believe in creating memorable experiences from these stories by integrating every touch point of the brand.

Product:
Innovation is signified by a marriage of seemingly disparate elements to product extraordinary stories. Design is a vehicle to lead people to new experiences – from a conceptual position, down to its tactile connection. Our product design explores new way for people to interact at work, at home, and at play.

Environment:
To construct an environment is to build a place where stories live. Our designs embody a narrative dimension to voice a brand’s story, whether it’s for a commercial or public space.

For those of you in the SF Bay area and interested in this kind of thing, the SFMOMA is mounting an exhibition of the works of Behar and fuseproject. It opens on Saturday, March 27, 2004.

VideoBlogging the IA Summit

Hi all,

We now have several of the videos up on the web. The links need some more testing, especially for different browsers.

Most everything from the Content Management for Information Architecture is posted. See http://www.cmsreview.com/IA/audiovideo.html.

And most of the Posters have little snippets at http://www.cmsreview.com/IA/Posters/.

You will need the Real Player to view them, and the fearless usability testers among you might like to try an experiment.

I want you to open a Powerpoint presentation (currently only Ann Rockley and Joseph Busch have them) and then click on the video.

Can you manually synchronize the Powerpoint with the video by advancing slides when you see (or hear) them changing in the video?

Do you think mere mortals could do this? If so, it's a lot less post-production work than preparing an integrated single file with presentation and video (e.g., SMIL-based).

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Bob Doyle
Editor, CMS Review.

Session observations posted

I now have write-ups most of the sessions I attended on my blog, for what it is worth.

Impressions and photos

I’ve been an IA since ‘98 and I’d been looking forward to attending the IA summit for years but the distance kept me from doing so. This year I was finally there, and must say it was a great experience. The things presented were very good, but more than all what impressed me was the true feeling of community and warmth.

My quote of the weekend would be the one I heard more often: “It’s great to put a face to the name” but I can tell that what I got were way more than just faces. Nothing compares to be able to talk to someone while seeing her eyes, expression, accent, gestures, clothes... It really didn’t matter what we would talk about, just chatting about where to get illegal cheese was a kick. I was really impressed by how reachable the folks that I admire so much ended out to be, and how exciting it was to meet so many people who are less loud but just as wise. The 15 minute breaks were just as valuable as the sessions.

Thanks again to Dick, Mags and the rest of the organizers, and I’d like to extend the appreciation to some who did not get mentioned last Sunday night: Mike Lee and Bob Doyle for meticulously recording the event in images and video, I am aware that albeit being a fun thing to do, it takes a lot of time and concentration and makes you miss some of the relevant stuff. Thank you for that.

Enough chatter, here are my photos!

Slammin'

Congratulations to Team Pink (top: Elisa Miller, Chris Farnum, Nancy Kaplan, Joy Ray; bottom: Regan Buker, Jared Folkmann) for winning the 2004 Information Architecture Slam medal.

Thanks to all who slammed with us. The pleasure was ours! --Lynn, Chris, Matthew, Eric

Summit Pix

Not sure if this the best place to post this, but I got my IA Summit Pix up. This year, I brought the camera, so not so many incriminating ones of me. The IA Gang Sign mantle has been passed to Kate...

Laughing at Ourselves

Dan Saffer lists on his blog the rhetorical style of Clifton Evans as one of his personal memories of the summit. I have to say I agree. I laughed out loud again tonight as I replayed my video of the inspired ending of Clifton's 5-Minute-Madness speech.

Here's a small QuickTime clip which begins with Clifton saying he's from Vancouver, Canada. Enjoy...

My Notes

I've posted a fairly long entry (for me anyway) on my blog about some of the sessions I attended last weekend.

Also wanted to thank everyone involved for making my first Summit informative and fun. I had a blast!

Fun with Faceted Browsing

Thanks for all of the comments at the conference on my "Fun with faceted browsing" presentation. My UI-focused view fit in very nicely with other presentations in that track. You would have thought it was all planned, but we all worked separately and there was no master plan to sync up as well as we did. But it was amazing to see my work referenced and so quickly assimilated into the other presentations. I think that is a sign that something is up with this faceted browsing thing.

Here is the link to the web page about my presentation - http://user-experience.org/uefiles/facetedbrowse/

I just updated the page (on March 3rd): adding a PDF of my slides (2 per page, not 6, so that you can read them).

June 22 update - Only 4 months after the conference, I "finished" the page.......

Pretty in Pink

A local resident doing his part to Keep Austin Weird.

6th & Congress bus stop, downtown Austin, Friday afternoon

J-Flow: Presentation now available

Jacco and I would like to thank the attendees of our J-Flow session (J-Flow - Interactive Design Tool: From Sitemap to Prototype) for the enthousiastic feedback on our presentation. It was heartwarming and much better than we expected!

We hope to tell "y'all" about a way to distribute the elements of the toolset (templates, objects, macros and export wizard) soon. Of course we'll also upload our slides and the sample J-Flow that we demonstrated to the official website.

For now, the presentation is available on Jacco's IA Summit page.

Thanks to all attendees of our session, in particular Tal Herman, Jeff Lash, Korina Stark (for the contact at Visio), our fellow Dutchman Mark Geljon, Chris Chandler and the people who told Donna M. and Mags that it was jaw-dropping!

Sweet Song

Once again, the 5-Minute-Madness was a wonderful forum for any attendee to speak their mind. One of the most memorable moments was when the IA from RSA Security broke into song [2 second, 140k QuickTime clip].

Dan Willis's book-winning quote

Said by Dan Willis, upon winning a pile of books, and a bag to put them in, and not actually putting the books in the bag: "I'm a user, and I'll do it any way I damn well want to!"

Informal dinner Sunday at Threadgills

If you're not flying out tonight, come for an informal dinner at the Austin landmark Threadgills. Gather at the 4th floor message board area around 7, or just show up there at around 7:30. They're on the other side of the river at 301 Riverside W. and it looks like a reasonable distance to walk, or the free 'Dillo bus probably gets pretty close. Casual home cookin.

Post conference breakfast

If you are still in Austin on Monday morning, join us for a post conference Mexican breakfast.

At Las Manitas, 8am onwards (on Cogress, between 2nd & 3rd). No RSVP necessary.

WiFi blogging

Waiting for the Design Methods panel to start, and I can see at least 5 others in this area of the room reading or writing to blogs (including this one)...

IA + info design

just came out of this talk about the intersection of IA and info design...very nicely done: well communicated ideas with clear, relevant examples from the non-digital world of paper based test reporting (mcgraw-hill CTB, i believe). i've always thought of paper-based artifacts as embodying problems of interaction and design and experience, way before the internet and digital media. the one example about folded test reports for parents features issues IA and designers face all the time: progressive information disclosure, hierarchy of data, "navigation" from primary to secondary levels of content, and detailed list of action items. wonderful stuff!

Notes from Jared Spool's Sunday talk

Some various notes from Jared Spool -- an entertaining and informative talk (email Jared for a copy of the slides)... I've tried to condense my notes to cover just the highlights...

Dinner @ Manuel's

As a determined introvert flying "solo" at the conference, I have made an extra effort to join groups, introduce myself to people, mingle and not be a wallflower this year.

I lucked out Saturday night, ending up with this crowd of misfits at Manuels, where the food was really yummy but the conversation was even better. Thanks!