ia/ - Process & techniques

IA Discuss group on Flickr

Wed, 22 Jun 2005 13:59:57 -0700

The Information Architecture group started by EmWi on Flickr never took off, but snowcrash has started the IA Discuss group to share screenshots of UI widgets, deliverables and such. It's an idea similar to Christina's Widgetopia, but on Flickr. Jess wanted to something like this a few years ago on this site, but we never go to it. Flickr seems the easiest place to do it. Not sure why no one has bothered to make use of the Information Architecture Flickr group like this before.

First Things First: IA and CSS

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 05:12:57 -0700

Christina Wodtke and Nate Koechley delivered an excellent presentation at the Web Visions conference that discusses how to improve the processes of IA and web site development by using the semantic meaning produced in IA deliverables provide CSS references that can be used by site developers.

How Everyday Things are Made

Wed, 18 Feb 2004 12:05:27 -0800

First we had Don Norman's The Psychology of Everyday Things(aka Design of Everyday Things) and now we have Stanford Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing How Everyday Things are Made. I wasn't going to contribute this item but I started thinking about how someone would view the UE/IA practice and try to create a video describing how a website/web application is developed. For instance, how do we describe to our parents what we do for a living. At least people in the various industries profiled in this educational site would have something to show & tell about their work to the common person. Do we have an equivalent?

So are we really a sum of all our deliverables? How do we capture our dialogues and conversations which really contains the value of our work? I believe there are various projects out there that is trying to solve this problem by literally capturing the brainstorming sessions into digital format. If there is something out there that is a packaged description of what we do, I would love to see people post links to those types of projects.

PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 04:45:34 -0700

Nielsen's latest alertbox summarizes:
"Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it.
Don't use it for online presentation."

Nice to see he's still got plenty of venom left to spew. I can't wait to see his next edition which promises alternatives to the format.

Read the full entry here: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html

The Power of Process, The Perils of Process

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 14:04:14 -0700

The Power of Process, The Perils of Process - In my experience, I have found that creating and documenting process has been a good exercise to help institutionalize ways of working, to help educate new team members as well as to unveil the mysteries of what we do for executives, product folks, and development teams.

Erin Malone points out that process is better thought of as a framework for thinking than a set of commandments...

Open Prototyping project

Fri, 09 May 2003 08:43:22 -0700

From the MIT Media Lab, Carson Reynolds has started a blog where he shows ongoing prototypes from his work. Using DENIM as one main tool, the site aims to improve UIs for open source products. (thanks PeterV)

Beyond cardsorting: Free-listing to explore user categorization

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 14:22:58 -0800

Rashmi describes a great technique in her latest at B&A: Beyond cardsorting: Free-listing methods to explore user categorizations - As a precursor to cardsorting or as an independent method, free-listing is a technique that can help you determine the scope of a content domain while providing some insight into how the domain is structured.

Mike K's book also coming April 2003

Sat, 25 Jan 2003 04:45:15 -0800

Looks like Morgan Kaufman picked up Mike Kuniavsky's book on user research (which was looking for a publisher), and that Observing the User Experience: A Practioner's Guide for User Research will arrive in April! Congratulations Mike :)

Is Customer Always Right?

Fri, 17 Jan 2003 08:50:59 -0800

Just stumbled on this Fast Company article "Desire: Connecting With What Customer Want." Some of it sounds very familiar from one of Lou's presentation at least year's summit and little bit of Maslow's Hierarchy of Need. From a marketing standpoint it makes sense, but user researchers out there should still take a look because it could possibly be just as valid for your line of work as well. The article is based on a book by Melinda Davis _Culture of Desire_ (2002).

BBC home page design process

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 12:22:37 -0800

Sweet. Matt Jones has published a document detailing the design process undergone by BBCi to redesign the BBC home page.

Can you purchase wisdom?

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 05:22:08 -0800

Peterme's recounting of an experience with a customer who believed that they could extract wisdom from a software package and vendor is really interesting.

Part of the reason they bought this software was for the "wisdom" the software was meant to have embedded within. That there was a "wisdom" in how the software presents work processes, and that the company ought to learn from that wisdom and adjust their work accordingly, taking advantage of this "wisdom."

Eat Me, Drink Me, Push Me

Wed, 11 Dec 2002 10:48:24 -0800

In Digital Web, Christina Wodtke excerpts chapter 8 of Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web. This is the chapter discussing how to take your content and tasks and define them in terms of the interface. Nice examples of how tasks might be translated into UIs.

P.S. That floor plan is the second floor of my house! I diagrammed it in OmniGraffle.

Bottoms Up: Designing complex, adaptive systems

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 12:16:18 -0800

In the December 2002 issue of New Architect, Peter Morville discusses how you can use bottom-up IA methods while still keeping a view of the bigger picture. In the article, Peter discusses the dangers of severing the ties to larger business or project goals when fragmenting system components in order to manage growth. He suggests how to use bottom-up methodologies to support top-down ideas.

Consolidated Assessment

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 13:04:13 -0700

Seth Gordon combines scenario design, card sorting, and participatory design into one user-centered lovefest in his article for Boxes and Arrows.

User-Centered Design

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 03:51:00 -0700

This month Digital Web Magazine will focus on the theme of User-Centered Design. Kicking things off this week is an interview with Peter Merholz and Nathan Shedroff on User-Centered Design.