February 29, 2004
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...
- Research in progress, not done yet, just presenting what they're in the midst of working on and hopefully wil have more soon
- "FAQ stands for stuff we don't know how to organize"
- FAQs are often "things we think you might ask"
- Current knowledge -- what users currently know, and target knowledge -- what users need to know to accomplish their goal. Interested in the space/gap between the two, designs have to fill the knowledge gap.
- Tool knowledge: what users know about how to user your app
examples: mouse tutorial, filling out a form, printing a PDF, the mechanics of online filing (Expert vs novice -- almost always talks about "tool" knowledge)
- Domain knowledge: examples (for online tax program): tax-specific terminiology (dependents and exemptions), what qualifies as a deduction, how do you share expenses with a divorsed spouse?
- Imagine a graph with domain knowlege on y axis, tool knowledge on x axis, both go from novice to expert.
- bottom left: little tool knowledge, little domain knowledge
- bottom right: lots of tool knowledge, little domain knowledge
- top left: little tool knowledge, lots of domain knowledge
- top right: lots of tool knowledge, lots of domain knowledge
- plot where you think your users are... especially if you have personas, you can plot them on this chart... you might see that there are clusters of users
- Research: Monitoring online discussion groups -- started with groups for chronic illness -- parkinsons, autism, etc. 3000 messages
- When someone can't find what they're looking for on a site, where do they go? In the world of chronic illness, they go to online discussion boards and post a message, hope someone can help them.
- Are there patterns in the questions that are being asked? Yes... we were able to identify 14 buckets... (I didn't get all 14, so if someone who did can post in the comments...)
- After we were done with chronic illness, we turned to tech support boards -- and we found all 14 types of information. Same question -- take out a medical word, put in a geek word, and you're there.
- Did the same things with places where people talk about investments -- same 14 questions
- What we're hoping to come out of this is a framework for the different types of content you need to make sure that people can find what they need on your site
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!
Brett Lider's poster - Site Traffic Report Map
A lot of people wanted to know where they could get ahold of my poster since I only had a limited number of copies to give away. Thanks very much to everyone for your support and feedback, and for taking the time to get up and personal with it.
As for printing it, good luck! Seriously, I recommend doing it at a local printshop (Kinkos is even more expensive), but printing it in sections might also work. Feel free to contact me to continue the discussion or if you want to find out how to do this for your own site -- blider (at) sbigroup.com.
4 Myths about Taxonomies and Dublin Core
I attended Joseph Busch's excellent talk on taxonomies during the last presentation session of the day (had to miss the IA slam, that sounded like a lot of fun as well). One of his key points was that content producers are going to have to create metadata, because it is not possible to hire enough librarians to do it all. Information architects can provide simple rules to the content creators for categorizing information. This led to a great dialogue about how to incentivize content producers so that they create metadata.
Here is a URL for his presentation (in PowerPoint): http://www.asis.org/Chapters/asispvc/feb_10_2004/ASISTPVC021004.ppt
Please share your thoughts!
What's Great and What's Next
What happens in the summit's interstices are as important as its organized sessions and events. A (rather large) bunch of the IAs from the DC area met this evening for dinner and beyond. Among a hundred other topics some of us talked a bit about what next year's summit might hold. Keynote possibilities: David Byrne (a recent article in... what publication? about his berserk work in PowerPoint); Scott McCloud (whose name just keeps coming up); and - help me out guys, who else did we talk about?
Another thought. Show of hands at the keynote reveals the surprising and wonderful fact that maybe 60% of this year's participants are attending their first summit. What does this mean, particularly for crafting next year's program?
Looking at People
The first 2 days here have given me a renewed sense that, in a funny way, the most important people aren't here: the people FOR WHOM we're designing sites. Listening to George Olsen's excellent presentation on personas, it struck me that IA is following a perilous path, similar to that travelled by librarians at the turn of the 20th century. And that is the path of trying to understand the "typical user" of our systems.
The peril does not lie in the task, but in the way one approaches it. Charles Cutter, back at the end of the 19th century, argued that controlled vocabularies should fit "the public's habitual way of looking at things." People can argue with that idea: what about outliers? What about marginalized groups? etc. But when we let our hair down and permit ourselves some self-honesty, we all aim to do the best we can for the greatest number of people, and identifying a persona, or a "typical user" is a necessary task.
The peril comes in the way you establish that typical user. In the early days of controlled vocabularies, we tended to assume that we somehow "could guess" who these users were, what they wanted, what they liked, what they disliked. Our ideals (admirable ones) were linked to poorly-executed constructions of these users. It so often seems like "common sense": but the last 2 days have been full of accounts that surprise us: log files that reveal things we never expected, accounts and research and tests that showed us just how off base our common sense might be.
IA, it seems to me, is very properly reiterating the need for research into what users want, need, like, dislike, etc. The practitioners and the researchers may not always agree on the desirable level and detail of that research. Nonetheless, there seems to be a sound and effective realization that without listening to the users SOMEHOW, our constructions of the "typical people" will not serve our real people.
IA Slam
Thanks to all who organized this work: Lynn Boyden, Chris Chandler, Matthew Fetchko, and Eric Reiss.
It was a blast, a great way to spend an afternoon, and highly applicable to "real-life". I agree with Dick Hill - this needs to be offered every year. It was a great way to get thinking about the subject and meet some new colleagues.
For those who did not participate, it was a practical design session in which we divided into groups and designed a high-level "pitch" to a group of "executives" on a product that our group designed to meet their requirements. Not scary, just a lot of fun.
February 28, 2004
navigational methods talk:vanguard group
brilliant presentation! clear, concise, comprehensible--totally followed the principle of "no-duh" deliverable (an earlier talk today). the presenters provided a wonderful language for breaking apart the tough navigational problems we encounter on a daily basis. ** particularly if you're working at an enterprise web-apps provider (like oracle :-) ** added bonus: the slides were perhaps the most visually beautiful i've seen today...definitely an example i'll reference in my talk tomorrow...
Notes from "Value-Centered Design"
Some good ideas in Jess McMullin's talk on Value-Centered Design. Here's some of the main things I made note of:
- Focus shouldn't be just on "the user." The user is important, but shouldn't be the only consideration.
- Currently, the UX community focuses on practice, on deliverables, on methods...
- Consultative sales process -- listen & understand the business issues first, then propose solutions... focus on the quick win
- U.S.E.R -- Understand, Solve, Evaluate, Refine
- Map user goals to product functionality -- let them tell you what they think the goals are, then find out how they came to those ideas/conclusions, and work with them to understand goals better. Some functionality will not map to a goal, some goals will not map to functionality
- If this site/product was a piece of software and you had to design a box for the product, what would you put on the box? If you asked users to design the box, would it be different?
- Manage the portfolio of experiences -- take care of the things that provide benefit for the company like managing a portfolio (of stocks or assets)
- If you only remember three things...
- Skeptics are not the enemy -- if you do a good job, they can become the champions. Be user centered in our evangalism, so use language they understand to convert them.
- You can only build business buy-in by buying in to business -- understand the skeptic's world
- Value-centered design helps to find that balance, the middle ground between business and users
- If you're selling to customers, send UX people on sales calls so that they understand the business of the customer/user
- Talk about the benefit of what you do
- Have people make small agreements to little things early on so that they'll later make big agreements to bigger things
A good talk -- I was a bit dissapointed that this was scheduled at the same time as Victor Lombardi's navigation presentation, but this was very worthwhile and hopefully someone who saw Victor's will post notes here ;-)
Victor on a navigation design method
Victor synthesized a heap of naviation research [some here and have a look elsewhere on his blog] into a method for incorporating navigation research into an overall design method. It's an SRO crowd in the room.
He made several references to the excellent book The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience.
xia/xp talk
curious to hear what others thought about this, but certainly a controversial topic (as indicated by the number and kinds of questions raised). my biggest concern, as an interaction designer at a major global e-biz firm is twofold: the cultural/organizational conditions conducive to XIA approaches and the role of design in what seemed to be a code-driven process. what happens to the "gestalt" of the user experience, as one person asked, when there is such accelerated development and chunking of pieces of that experience (for the sake of efficiency, etc.)? rather utopian vision espoused...any other real-world questions/concerns from others?
Notes from the Open Video
Taking a look at open-video.org as A Case Study of Redesigning a Digital Video Digital Library. It's in the LIS-oriented track, but it's really a good blend of the library science things as well as the UCD and interaction design things... talking about how identifying the high-level tasks and how users bounce between the stages.
Slide 22 (hopefully these will be available online) has some good examples of how different personas and high-level tasks map to the specific stages identified. "Not an exhaustive list ... typical paths to understand how users use the site." Then they extrapolate some specific criteria at each stage that are important.
The presentation isn't over, but I can see how this would be a very good intro case study that could be used to explain the value of UCD and IA in (re)designing a site. We're glossing over some of the details here, but for those used to requirements-straight-to-code, with some more detail this would be a great introduction to UCD and IA.
Links from the eXtreme Information Architecture presentations
XIA@UT: An Extreme Makeover [of the UT General Libraries web site]
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~xia2003/summit/index.html
The student team's primary reference book on eXtreme Programming: eXtreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change by Kent Beck
Professor Don Turnbull's web page
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~donturn/
Don's PowerPoint on XIA, 324k
Don mentions this funny saying:
"An extroverted programmer looks at your shoes when he's talking."
laurel talk
just came out of the laurel talk...after some initial technical glitches, became a rather inspiring and thought-provoking talk, showcasing sample student works to demonstrate her key theme of "trans": transpersonal, transformative, transmodal, etc. despite being an early morning talk, it has woken me up and gotten me excited about new possibilities for IA/design/art connections! :)
Pre-conference Pix and Bits
Nice. The Hilton is offering WiFi in all of its suites and meeting rooms. Ten bucks a day and I'm on. Sign up at the front desk.
Bob Doyle of CMS Review is here in the front row of the main meeting room preparing to videotape the keynote and some of the sessions to post later to the site. What a nice resource to look forward to, and for those who couldn't make it.
Here are some random photos from last night:
Reception at the Hilton
MJ, Baby Iris, and Lou Rosenfeld with Javier Velasco
Dinner at Ironworks Barbeque
Adaptive Path Party at Club DeVille
A few photos on my moblog...
The new Frost Bank Building
Info at Skyscrapers.org...
The keynote speech is starting in a few minutes.
February 27, 2004
TrackBack auto-discovery
Just a quick note: TrackBack auto-discovery has been turned off (hopefully temporarily). If you want to ping someone, you'll have to do it manually.
February 26, 2004
Saturday, Feb 28th Dinner at Manuel's
There's an informal dinner meet-and-greet at Manuel's (mexican cafe) over on 310 Congress. We're meeting in the hotel lobby of the convention center at
7:05 pm and our reservation is at 7:15pm.
RSVP to Todd Warfel (607) 339-9640 (email twarfel@messagefirst.com).
Last count was 42 people - should be a great crowd.
Place: Manuel's 310 Congress
Time: 7:05pm hotel lobby, 7:15pm at the restaurant
Date: Saturday, Feb 28th
February 24, 2004
DC IAs, Have Dinner!
The IAs from the DC metro area plan to meet to have dinner together on Saturday evening, perhaps around 7:30 pm. No location has been decided yet, but I (Stacy Surla) will be coordinating. Call me at the Hilton to join in.
Some of are also planning to join the Interaction Design folks for a Mexican dessert afterwards. Or at least a tequilla?
Trackback available
For those who are blogging the summit elsewhere, you can use our trackback URL to have your blog linked to us: http://www.iasummit.org/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/1
Happy blogging!
Extend the experience - blog the summit - test
The IA Summit blog extends the IA Summit experience to those who can't attend, and captures the excitement of the event.
We encourgage workshop summaries, session summaries, ideas that the conference has sparked, interesting things that happen, social events and related things.
Everyone attending the summit has their own username - it will be included in the conference pack. If you would like to start blogging before the summit (perhaps to organise or announce a dinner or social event), contact donna@maadmob.net for your username and password (it may take a day or so for me to get back to you though, if I'm travelling).
Extend the experience - blog the summit
The IA Summit blog extends the IA Summit experience to those who can't attend, and captures the excitement of the event.
We encourgage workshop summaries, session summaries, ideas that the conference has sparked, interesting things that happen, social events and related things.
Everyone attending the summit has their own username - it will be included in the conference pack. If you would like to start blogging before the summit (perhaps to organise or announce a dinner or social event), contact donna@maadmob.net for your username and password (it may take a day or so for me to get back to you though, if I'm travelling).