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I attended the ASIS&T IA Summit in Vancouver from March 24th - 27th. The Summit is a playground for IA's of all stripes, from metadata specialists to management consultants. It was a lot of fun, and many interesting ideas were discussed in the three parallel sessions and in the hallways. Here are some of the thoughts that stuck with me...
THE CHANGING NATURE OF AUTHORITY.David Weinberger's keynote asked "What's up with knowledge?" He took a (humorous) sledgehammer to the foundations of information and library science, including the infamous DIKW (data - information - knowledge - wisdom) model. In his view, DIKW gets causality backwards--one needs knowledge and wisdom to get useful information, not the other way around. At the same time, he argued, traditional sources (the New York Times serving as poster boy) favor authority over transparency, whereas the new open, collaboratively-created sources (Wikipedia, standing in for a host of "social media" sites like Digg, del.icio.us, and the blogosphere as a whole) favor transparency. In particular, Wikipedia represents "publicly negotiated knowledge" as opposed to the private (elite) construction of knowledge by mass media instiutions and traditional publishers.
There is a dramatic change building: the ability of institutions to impose authority through carefully-constructed representations is dissipating, soon to disappear entirely. Peter Morville noted in the Q&A that large corporate and government sites often seek to express authority through IA. But next-generation IA is radically decentralized, incorporating many points of view expressed through blogs, del.icio.us tags, and so forth, thereby pushing authority to the edge of the network. As a result, IA's need to expand their scope to consider the broad, socio-cultural impact of their design work.
As Weinberger noted, Dewey thought he was doing God's work through classification, representing one true view of the world. The current landscape of IA, on the other hand, is distinctly postmodern, recognizing many socially-structured views. Despite many efforts to make IA into a postivist, quantified science, it appears the future may be resoutely interpretivist--understanding how the organization and representation of information intertwines with culture.
At the end of the conference, a "5-minute madness" session allowed anyone to speak their mind. One speaker noted the need to explore how and why information forms have evolved over time. Perhaps such work will helps us understand how information forms (from books to Web 2.0) transmit and influence culture and authority.
IA AND RESEARCH.The idea of turning IA into science isn't dead, of course. The Summit featured a whole double-length panel on the topic of IA and research. Don Turnbull identified four areas that could be considered central to IA research: classification, information-seeking behavior, metadata and semantics, and design methods. He proposed creating an open-access Journal of Information Architecture. Keith Instone argued for generating research questions from practice and creating partnerships between IA's and researchers. Peter Morville and Nancy Kaplan argue for "going beyond findability" to address all aspects of information interaction.
It is this last point that resonated for me. Research that informs IA practice is being conducted all the time, it just goes by many different names: information behavior, search strategies, hypertext, credibility and persuasion, personal information management, information literacy, and of course the all-encompassing "HCI." In my view, IA practice should seek to integrate (and mediate among) different methods (information science, usability, design research, human factors, HCI, management, marketing, etc.). IA research should integrate (and mediate) different disciplines (information science, HCI, communications, business, behavioral and social science).
A great example of this challenge was suggested by Donna Maurer's presentation on Lakoff for IA's. Lakoff distinguishes between the classical view of categories ("abstract containers with strict borders") and the modern psychological view based on prototypes and family resemblance (a robin is a better example of a bird than a penguin), as developed by Rosch and revised by Medin and others. Cognitive science research is rigorous. Some of the results are fascinating. But how can it be applied to the design problem--making complex, large-scale information spaces accessible and useful--that IA's grapple with? For example, what are the implications of naive categorization theory for information-seeking behavior and personal information management? How would this connection inform IA practice? I believe integrating and applying social and behavioral science results to IA problems could reinvigorate both IA practice and social science research.
--Abe

I gave a talk at the recent IA Summit in Vancouver entitled "Facets are fundamental: rethinking information architecture frameworks." My talk notes and slides are now available for anyone interested. Update: A review of my talk has been posted at Boxes and Arrows. -Abe

"Do you really want to know what I think?" We assured her we did and were met with an outpouring of frustration related to the new design. While she immediately agreed it was better for consumers, she complained that the bottle was designed in a way that made her job significantly harder, even claiming it took her twice the time to fulfill prescriptions. More specficially, she complained about the inset area in which the label needed to be applied. If not applied just right, it was impossible to insert the info card. That led her to then complain about the card itself. She noted that it took significant time to make as they needed to be folded "just right" and could be easily ruined. By her reaction, it seemed clear that no one had ever asked her what she thought about this tool which she used more than any other.
An interesting counterpoint to all the fuss over Target's pill bottle design argues that a key user group--pharmacists--were overlooked.

--Abe

Date: Tuesday, March 28th 2006

Time: 6:00 PM

Address: Johnny Carino’s in Southpoint

Ready for the first UX Cocktail Hour sponsored by the TriUPA? It's here! Same great people gabbing about UX issues over dinner and drinks!

Hope to see you there; please RSVP if you can make it.

Entrepreneurs Only Workshop: How to Build a Product People Will Buy
Have lunch with Barry Beith of HumanCentric Technologies and Shimon Shmueli of Touch360, the founders of two design firms that are based in the Research Triangle. They'll share their perspectives on building products that sell and how entrepreneurs with a limited budget can utilize good design techniques without spending a fortune.

We met Wednesday, 2/22 at 6pm in the offices of Motricity. Rick Cecil, interim vice-president of the Triangle UPA chapter convened the meeting and introduced the elections.

Four officers ran unopposed and were elected without dissent:

• Rick Cecil (Motricity): President
  Responsibilities: overall direction; project management; events.
• Abe Crystal (SILS): Vice President
  Responsibilities: Website and blog.
• Janey Barnes (user-view): Treasurer
  Responsibilities: membership and financial management; incorporation.
• Gershom Rogers (Cisco/SILS): Secretary
  Responsibilities: mentoring program.

Our fearless leader, and newly installed president, Rick, then provided an overview of the chapter's goals and initiatives.

The chapter will focus on building and supporting the local community of practitioners in these disciplines:

• Usability Testing
• User Research
• Interaction Design
• Information Architecture

Specific initiatives will include:

• Events planning. The core activity of the chapter is holding great events to bring people in the community together, and disseminate information and practices related to user experience work. Events may include:

• Bimonthly presentations/workshops/tours (see: previous events)
• Monthly cocktail hours
• Annual World Usability Day activities
• Birds of a feather (focus on a particular discipline)
• Lunch meetings
• "Site/Project of the Month" -- come in for "free advice," as WRAL/CBC New Media bravely did

• Connecting people.

• Recruiting more members and volunteers, and recognizing volunteers for their hard work.
• Making 1:1 connections between professional peers.
• Setting up mentoring relationships between professionals and students.

• Informing the community. Building a great Website and blog to keep our members up-to-date, and reach out to new members.
• Public relations. Getting the word out on user experience and its importance.
• Cross-organization collaboration. Working with related organizations across the Triangle, e.g., CED.

We welcome your feedback and participation as we continue to build the chapter and our community. Please comment on this post, or get in touch with any of the officers, with your questions and comments.

undefinedAbe

The TriUPA Planning Committee meeting is coming up next week on 2/22 @ 6PM @ Motricity.

If you attended the meeting last Tuesday, you'll remember that I announced we would have online elections. Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to hold online elections. For various reasons, we need to incorporate the local chapter and can't collect dues until we have completed that process. However, we are going to proceed with elections on 2/22 so that we can capitalize on the momentum we've generated in the past couple of weeks.

If you're interested in running or know someone who would be a good candidate, please let me know. The deadline for nominations is 2/21. (Available offices are President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary.) In addition to having the election, we're going to discuss our initiatives for the remainder of 2006, including

• Event planning and organization
• World Usability Day Planning Committee
• Web site and blog
• Volunteer Recruitment (Regional Ambassador program)
• Cross-organization collaboration

If you are interested in helping out on any of these initiatives, come on out to the meeting next Tuesday or email me. We appreciate all the help we can get!

Hope to see you there!

--Rick

The most recent Triangle UX meetup (and last before we become Triangle UPA) was held Tuesday, February 7th, at McKinney in Durham.

Rick Cecil (interim VP, Triangle UPA chapter) gave an overview of the new UPA chapter, which is focused on further expanding the community of user experience professionals in the Triangle. Elections for the first slate of officers will be held at a planning meeting on Wednesday, 2/22. After the chapter is incorporated and a bank account established, anyone interested will be able to join online (dues are $15/year for professionals; free for students).

Adam Blumenthal (Interactive Strategist at McKinney) introduced McKinney's approach, advertising work, and interest in building an interactive group that will build full-scale Websites for large clients, as well as banner ads, minisites, etc. As an advertising firm with a strong focus on strategy, McKinney brings an interesting perspective to Web design. The big question for me was: To what extent does McKinney plan to include user research and user-centered design in its Web work? Adam emphasized McKinney's process of "connection planning," which builds an understanding of how customers connect to a brand. This is important (and goes beyond UX work in some ways), but still left me thinking "what about the poor user?" Having suffered through many gorgeous but unusable Flash-based sites developed by big agencies for big brands, I'm not eager to see more of the same. I hope McKinney takes the righteous path: hire people with UX expertise, and incorporate user-centered processes into their design work. The fact that they opened the doors of their (spectacularly designed) offices to a UX group is certainly an encouraging start.

Providing an excellent example of how user-centered design is important in practice, John Clark (Director of Technology, CBC New Media) discussed the ongoing redesign of WRAL.com. WRAL.com is a sprawling local news-and-beyond site developed by the local CBS affiliate station. It is highly successful compared to other TV station sites, both locally and nationally. It competes with both newspaper sites (locally, the News & Observer) and emerging community sites like Craiglist.

John described WRAL's design challenges and emphasized that CBS seeks to "focus on users" and create a brand-new design ("we started with a whiteboard we wiped clean") based on a "complete usability exercise". The site must serve multiple audiences: users, advertisers, and internal staff. However, John noted that CBC has "never done good research on usability and information architecture." They are working with an independent research firm to remedy this, but still face the challenge of creating "consolidation" between user requirements and business requirements.

John's talkundefinedand the example of a site many in the audience had usedundefinedprovoked a lively discussion. Suggestions for John included:

• Incorporating multiple forms of research, including user research (interviews, surveys, observation, etc.), content research (content audits, analysis of competing sites, etc.), and log research (Website statistics, internal searches, referring searches, email and customer service logs).
• Using multiple forms of evaluation (e.g., both 1-on-1 usability tests and focus groups).
• Considering how to incorporate community and citizen journalism into the site. Questioners suggested Adrian Holovaty's work on newspaper websites, including Lawrence.com, as an example of innovative local news and community on the Web.

Overall, WRAL.com represents both a challenging information architecture problem (a large, diverse, regularly-updated site) and an opportunity to build local community and find other innovative ways to connect to people through the Web.

-- Abe Crystal

Date: Wednesday, Jan 18, 2006
Time: 6:00 PM
Address: Johnny Carino's in Southpoint - Map it

We're back! Hope everyone had a nice break. :) Ready to get back into the swing of things?

Note this is on a Wednesday instead of our usual 3rd Tuesday. Hope you can make it!

What would a public library look like if it was designed by information architects?
The Carnegie Libraries in Pittsburgh decided to find out. They hired Maya Design, a user-centered design consultancy, to help them renovate their library buildings. The results of this unusual collaboration were discussed at a recent workshop entitled User Interfaces for Physical Spaces. I attended the workshop and came away with a new appreciation of how user-centered design practices can inform physical environmentsundefinedas well as the culture and practices of institutions.
David Bishop of Maya introduced the project by explaining Maya's design process, which can be roughly characterized as a standard UCD process with special emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration (between engineering, human sciences, and visual design). Maya argues for "taming complexity instead of eliminating it," which I thought was a nice way of approaching a design problem like a libraryundefinedone wants to make it accessible, not dumb it down.
David also emphasized the value of information architecture as "one of the unchanging things" in a large-scale design. IA has a longer shelf-life than a particular, say, screen design or process flow, because it represents core concepts and terminology of a domain or institution that may exist for many years. In addition, the IA can be extended to new products and services in different environments. In fact, one of the striking aspects of this project was how IA componentsundefinedincluding organization and labelsundefinedwere shared between the libraries physical and electronic spaces (e.g. physical reference desk vs. Web site).
For me, the way Maya explored and developed the IA was what set this project apart. It's not such a breakthrough to realize that "Reference" and "Circulation" are library-centric, jargon terms that should be replaced. As explained by Aradhana Goel, Maya's IA work went much deeper than this. They developed an elegant model of how users progress through a library interaction:
Users go through Organizers to get Materials/Activities in order to Use/Participate.
Building on this model, they identified three classes of "organizers": Space, Categorizations, and People. And they observed that the "bridges" between these organizers were often problem areas. An example: how does one get from an item in the online catalog (Categorization) to the actual item somewhere in the building (Space)? By mapping use scenarios, and looking for "breakpoints," Maya was able to identify further systemic issues, such as disorientation, lack of state, and use of jargon, that could be addressed through better design.
In the afternoon, we visited two of the newly renovated libraries: the Squirrel Hill branch, and the Main Library. I was deeply impressed by both libraries, though I personally preferred the Squirrel Hill space (props to Arthur Lubetz Associates), which was open, striking, and colorful, with many playful touches (such as nifty hanging books).
As Peter Merholz notes, the Main library is housed in a beautiful historic building. And much of the renovated main floor looks grand. But it doesn't feel as "accessible" as the Squirrel Hill branch, and the elegant signage (props to Landesberg Design) was far less colorful and prominent.
The aesthetics of the renovated libraries are not the key issue, though. This project was fundamentally about improving the library experience in a way that can make libraries a bigger and more useful part of people's lives. I think it was a great success in this regard, and the rethought IA and task analysis will provide a foundation for library design for a long time.
Just as many Web sites and other information systems could be improved by incorporating concepts and practices from libraries (authority and subject control, research assistance, support for browsing, etc.), so too libraries could benefit by incorporating different perspectives (user researchers, interaction designers, information architects, customer service). Perhaps it's time for the "guild mentality" that unfortunately characterizes many professions (the requirement that librarians hold an ALA-accredited masters' degree being just one obvious example) to undergo some reconsideration. For all its problems, the idea of a "user experience" discipline that encompasses all of these different perspectives seems the most viable alternative. Emphasizing user experience work provides a framework within which professionals, with many types of expertise and training, can work together to improve products and services for customers. The experience of the Carnegie Libraries shows that this vision can be realized, with transformative results.
undefinedAbe Crystal