If you live in the DC area, there’s a good local event you might want to check out tomorrow:

Wondering where to get your coffee, bagel, and IA conversation tomorrow? Join us in Bethesda at 10:00 am for a resume panel discussion and workshop. Bring your resume for one-on-one feedback from panelists and experts. Refreshments will be available. A $5 donation will be appreciated.

On a related note, I’d encourage you to check out a great resume tool created by a former classmate of mine.

Sponsored by the User Experience Network, DC-IA, and UPA-DC.

WHEN: Saturday, April 21, 2007 10 am to 12 pm

WHERE: Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, MD 20814 (Bethesda Metro Station or Bethesda Center parking garage)

REGISTRATION: http://www.upa-dc-metro.org/registration/event/eventreg1.php

QUESTIONS: events@upa-dc-metro.org

A closing plenary from Rashmi Sinha.

Rashmi is the creator of SlideShare.

[Runtime: 49 slides | Please make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed on your computer to watch this slideshow. To download it, please visit: http://www.adobe.com/ ]

Tags: [Rashmi Sinha, SlideShare, User Experience, PowerPoint, Slideshow, Partial Recall, IASummit2007]

It’s been over a month since the IA Summit, and I’m only now getting a chance to write about the experience. I took notes from many of the sessions I attended, but I’ll try to link to available videos or slides when possible.

An opening keynote: Joshua Prince-Ramus.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn how much commonality there is between “brick and mortar” architecture and information architecture. Joshua outlined issues surrounding limitations of space, resources and differing business goals and provided a glimpse into how his firm pushes for the best solution given these constraints. He had presented a similar talk to TED in February 2006, so seems best to just show you his related talk.

[Runtime: 20:09 | Please make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed on your computer to watch this video. To download it, please visit: http://www.adobe.com/ ]

Tags: [Joshua Prince-Ramus, architect, architecture, Seattle Public Library, TED, IA Summit, IA Summit 2007, Partial Recall, information architecture]

I’ll be attending this year’s IA Summit in Las Vegas from March 24-26. If any readers are attending, please let me know so we can meet face to face…and if you do not know what I look like, feel free to catch some personal photos here.

And if anyone has ideas of what to do in Vegas, let me know. My wife and I will be seeing a Cirque du Soleil show, but no other plans are in place yet.

Tags: [information architecture, IA Summit 2007, Cirque du Soleil, Partial Recall]

A new storyboard template was released by Martin Hardee last week. This templates focuses on phone conversations. Click the image below to access the file.

Conversation Mary/Pravin/Galina

Tags: [Martin Hardee, Sun Microsystems, design, comics, design comics, storyboard, HCI, usability, task analysis, information architecture, Partial Recall]

In a recent post I prematurely touted a template that could be used to storyboard user experiences using a computer-based product. Martin Hardee had provided slides depicting a specific scenario. However, I am pleased to pass along news that Martin has graciously offered 3 templates that user experience professionals might use for communicating design to a variety if audiences.

Below are the 3 templates that you can use. Please be sure to give Sun Microsystems credit for the use of the template (hat tip to Martin Hardee). I have taken the liberty of converting the Open Office file format to the MS PowerPoint file format.

Mary 1.0

Pravin 1.0

Galina 1.0

Tags: [Martin Hardee, Sun Microsystems, design, comics, design comics, storyboard, HCI, usability, task analysis, information architecture, Partial Recall]

Other than Calvin and Hobbes, I’m not much of a comic guy. There’s been a number of contributors in the web design arena who have advocated using comics to communicate a user’s experience interacting with an information system (web or client). Typically, I think of the folks over at OK/Cancel, but I know others, such as Dan Brown, are influenced by Scott McCloud.

Today I came across a post by Martin Hardee of the Sun Design Team. His team has been using comics to convey user experiences with the sun.com site. Interestingly, he has provided a template that is freely available to use, provided you have access to Sun’s Office suite (OpenOffice is freely available). Unfortunately, I am unable to install OpenOffice on my work machine, so I’ll have to look at the template when I get home.

As I mentioned to Martin, since I’m an information architect without the gift of artistic design, I am eager to use any existing templates. I’m a visual learner by nature, so having the ability to succinctly depict user experience issues to technical teams or end users alike in a visual (versus text) format is something I hope to do more of in the future. I truly hope that the template will provide some good images like that seen below. Thanks to Martin and Sun for graciously allowing me to copy content from his blog and repost it here.

Design Comic Template Example

Tags: [Sun Microsystems, Martin Hardee, web design, storyboard, comic, Partial Recall, task analysis, Scott McCloud, Brownorama]

Well, it’s now available and I’m very excited! Think of the possibilities. For teachers. For sharing knowledge in an organization. For sharing knowledge with the world. Sign up now and get started.

Related Posts

Post a Slideshow on Your Site – Part II

Post a Slideshow on Your Site – Part I

Tags: [PowerPoint, slides, Slideshare, social software, knowledge management, Partial Recall]

…or, you could simply use SlideShare, once the kind folks open up the beta to everyone. Below is an example using the venerable Lou Rosenfeld’s recently posted “Enterprise Information Architecture” slides.

Tags: [PowerPoint, slides, Slideshare, Lou Rosenfeld, Information Architecture, Enterprise Information Architecture]

I know, I know. I’m late to the game. I was not able to attend Adaptive Path’s UX week in DC last month. Fortunately, there’s a wiki containing great sessions notes.

Tags: [wiki, Adaptive Path, ux, user experience, conference, usability, information architecture, interaction design]

The Library of Congress has posted its webcast of Peter Morville’s July 20th talk on Ambient Findability. You can view the 45 minute webcast here.

Tags: [Ambient Findability, Peter Morville, findability, usability, information architecture, Library of Congress, video, webcast]

On Thursday July 20 (11:30 – 12:30), Peter Morville will speak at the Library of Congress about his book, “Ambient Findability,” a history of how people search for information, and how they now find their way through a world of information overload.

Although I am slammed at work, I’m hoping to attend.

Tags: [Library of Congress, Peter Morville, Ambient Findability, Washington, DC, Partial Recall]

Some great usability ROI resources that I’ll try to keep adding to:

• Usability News: The Return on Investment (ROI) for Personas
• Usability First: Usability ROI: Case Studies
• Rashmi Sinha: ROI of Usability: A Collection of Links
• Dey Alexander Consulting: Return on investment
• WebWord: A Business Case for Usability

I forgot that I also discussed this issue a while back here. Can anyone add to the list?

Tags: [usability, ROI, return on investment, Partial Recall, user experience]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the voting mechanism in Digg, Netscape beta and others that allows users to rate content as helpful or worthwhile. Think of Amazon’s “Was this rating helpful?” mechanism but with the power to literally elevate content to higher visibility.

I think there are some wonderful uses for this type of social voting for the enterprise, and Kevin and others might consider teaming with CMS providers to include this functionality into corporate intranets and KM solutions. Here’s one idea:

In traditional organizations, innovation and idea generation is a top-down exercise. That is, business leaders drive the services and products based on their own analysis of market needs. In addition, corporate policy is determined by the leaders of the organization.

On the other hand, some organizations allow for the bottom-up vetting of ideas. Why not use a voting mechanism like that employed by Digg to allows employees to participate in a “suggestion box” approach – suggestions to better the company – both in terms of corporate policy/culture and the products and services they offer to the customer? Fellow employees can then rate these ideas and the best ideas are vetted to the top. These suggestions then get on the radar of corporate leaders.

Implementing this functionality on corporate intranets seems like a no-brainer to me. Unfortunately, in my experience, only the large organizations really focus on harnessing the potential of their intranets. The new social technologies of blogs, wikis, feeds and the like have a slow mainstream adoption process, but the need for sharing knowledge in the enterprise is great and these tools are inexpensive solutions for building an innovative knowledge-sharing organization.

Update

After doing a little digging (horrible pun), it seems as though the folks at Digg will be releasing a Digg API around the time of the version 3.0 release next Monday:

“We also plan on launching an API after the next major release of digg (v3). The API will provide users with access to digg DB data in which you can build your own digg tools/research projects around.”

Tags: [Digg, Netscape beta, Web 2.0, suggestion box, knowledge management, intranet, organization, corporation, social software, enterprise, Partial Recall]

Seems there’s a buzz about AOL’s venture into user-recommended-and-rated-news. I am not writing this post to berate AOL for moving into a space carved out by Digg. Frankly, I do not think Digg owns the IP to this social news framework. Others like those at Newsvine have produced similar offerings.

Instead, I think AOL’s offering instead targets the Googles and Yahoos of the world, trying to pit this functionality into their broader portal offering.

Most importantly, I want to give props to Alex for his fantastic work on the product. He and his team have a lot to be proud of.

Tags: [Digg, AOL, Netscape, news, Newsvine, portal, Alex Rudloff]

Don Norman discusses the nomenclature used to describe the people designers design for. Peter Merholz also comments on Don’s article.

Frankly, I think this was a throw-away article by Dr. Norman. Certainly I believe that the words we use to characterize a group can then reflect our motivations and feelings, but I believe he’s missing the point. This seems a little bit like political correctness run amok, or perhaps it’s touchy-feely user centered design 2.0 (UCD 2.0).

Now, don’t get me wrong. When I used to practice psychotherapy with clients, I knew that the words I chose to use could be very powerful. I even wondered whether or not I should refer to my clients as clients or patients. “Client” implied a paying customer whereas “patient” implied someone who was sick and needing healing. Were my clients offended? No. Did my characterization affect the work I did? No. Of course at the end of the day they were persons, but how do I characterize who they are otherwise? If I went home and spoke to my wife, would I tell her I was seeing a person or a client? You see how ridiculous this can become?

We use words to characterize the type of person we are referring to, and in business, it is important to distinguish between person types. If I am facilitating a business meeting or creating requirements documentation, isn’t it important that I identify the different stakeholder types – essentially indicating the types of people who have an interest in the product I am working on?

Yes, consumers, clients, customers, users, patients and the like are all people. That’s a given. However, don’t we already have personas to give design more of the “people” element? Frankly, if you’re so out of touch with the people you design for, then perhaps I can facilitate a therapy group so you can connect with your users.

Tags: [HCI, usability, peterme, Peter Merholz, Don Norman, Partial Recall, political correctness, persona]

I am looking to set up a wiki for my group at work. The idea is to share information regarding conferences, research, or anything else we’d like to share. We decided a wiki would be the best tool, but after a preliminary review of free products hosted by the wiki provider, there were not too many I’d consider intuitive. The two I’ve focused on are Jot and PBWiki. The big plus with Jot is that is uses a WYSIWYG editor and it has a number of template plugins available.

Can you make any recommendations for a free hosted Wiki with WYSIWYG editing features?

UPDATE: June 10, 2006

I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought of it since I already use WordPress for this site…I’ve been thinking of moving away from using a wiki and instead using a blog tool like WordPress. WordPress hosts blogs at wordpress.com so I can set up a blog that includes wiki-like functionality using editable pages. There’s also a WYSIWYG editor for those who would rather not dabble in XHTML.

In addition, WordPress offers much more for workgroup collaboration. For instance, it lets you feed XML into the sidebar, so colleagues can easily share articles bookmarked and saved in Del.icio.us.

The biggest issue is intellectual property issues along with security. Pages and posts can be password protected, but it would be much easier if only registered users of the site could read posts and pages. Unfortunately, it does not seem that WordPress offers this out-of-the-box functionality. I can only assume they will add this to their enterprise offferings.

Tags: [wiki, Jot, JotSpot, PBWiki, Partial Recall]

Note:

Due to the large amount of content, I will be updating this a bit more to fill in the blanks of the later sessions of the day. Check back for more info.

Welcome

Jenny Preece opened the symposium discusssing the College of Information Science and its collaboration with the HCIL. Dr. Preece indicated that the team is very interested in social, collaborative technologies and processes.

Benjamin Bederson continued the welcome, discussing the interdisciplinary nature of the group (psychology, information science, computer science). Web 2.0, he indicated, is succeeding because there us a greater focus on issues of usability, democracy, and user-centric design.

Link to Poster Session Images

International Children’s Digital Library

• reaches 1 million users
• Now has 1000 books freely available
• www.childrenslibrary.org

Keynote: Ben Shneiderman

Creativity Support Tools: A Grand Challenge for HCI

• Software must support the creative process
• A new research direction is emerging
• Dramatically improved creativity support tools are possible
• Multi-dimensional in-depth long-term case-studies (MILCs)
• Guidelines for design are emerging

(more…)

The University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab is hosting a symposium on June 1 and 2.

Day 1 is the actual symposium, with a keynote given by Ben Shneiderman. In addition, Jenny Preece is one of two people giving the welcome. Jenny is the Dean of the College of Information Studies, where I graduated from. She is also an expert on online communities, a topic I am very much interested in. Day 2 will showcase some tutorials and workshops. I will be attending the Humans and the Semantic Web workshop. For those attending the workshop, we needed to submit a position paper. My paper is entitled, “Ontologies and Folksonomies: Can They Coexist?”

I will try to blog the event if I have time (and a connection to the Internet).

Tags: [UMCP, HCI, Partial Recall, ontology, folksonomy, semantic web, Jenny Preece, Ben Shneiderman]

On Saturday May 20, the local chapter of DC information architects got together to recap topics that were addressed and discussed at the 2006 IA Summit. This was a long time coming for me. I’ve been meaning to attend these local meetings, but life has, of course, gotten in the way.

Livia Labate has provided a wealth of useful material, including MP3 recordings of the local DC event, as well as links to material that was presented at the Summit.

Anyway, the following is a brief summary of my notes. Certainly these notes do not codify the entirety of the redux – just my own brain dump based on notes taken at the event. The topics to be addressed are listed below (those in bold are the ones we had time to discuss):

Overview

1. Summit Overview#
2. Tagging#
3. Wireframes#
4. New Technology#
5. Content Management
6. Business and IA
7. Theory#
8. International

Summit Overview

Dan Brown facilitated the DC-IA redux, and one of the things he discussed centered around the format of the Summit. He mentioned that in the past, there was a greater selection of things to attend and a greater variety of topics. On the other hand, he mentioned that there were better opportunities to connect with people outside of sessions this past year. He asked for input on how to create a culture that would both maximize connections outside of sessions and make good use in-session time.

Tagging

James Melzer addressed the topic of tagging, focusing primarily on using the bookmark tool del.icio.us.

Some discussion revolved around making a distinction between a group versus a crowd. A group, James indicated, is intentional, known, and planned. In contrast, a crowd is unknown and not planned. Del.icio.us embraces both, and James noted that sometimes crowds become groups in Del.icio.us because is sometimes ends up being the same people who are the forefront of tagging, and their aggregate work sets trends for other users.

Tagging::Kinds of Tags

• Description (Singular)
• Categorization (plural)
• Opinion
• Action (temporary, personal)
• Relation (for userid)
• Insider Reference (e.g., “enterprise_ia”)

Wireframes

Nathan Curtis discussed wireframes. Apparently, Nathan worked at K12 for a few months just before I arrived. I’ve heard very good things about him – in particular, how he shared some of his wireframing techniques with current K12 IAs.

Wireframes::Techniques

Nathan explained that there was a discussion of using different wireframing techniques/tools, including:

• paper prototyping
• Adobe Flash (interaction)
• iRise
• MS Visual Studio
• XHTML
• MS Visio

Wireframes::Challenges

Nathan mentioned that IAs need to struggle with representing interactions over time. With the advent of RIAs such as Flash and Ajax, IAs need to be able to communicate how information is to be presented, but how user behaviors will affect the feedback and visual representation of a web application. Nathan mentioned Bill Scott at Yahoo! and how he uses interaction storyboards, complete with interaction matrices to document all behavior changes for a given interaction type.

One technique Nathan mentioned was to segment the “modules” that comprise a wireframe. In other words, reusable widgets can be saved as components to be used over and over again. In addition, Nathan commented on Kevin Cheng’s use of comics to communicate HCI usability issues with stakeholders.

New Technology

Nathan briefly discussed how new technologies are affecting the profession. For instance, Laszlo and Adobe Flex make it easier to move from a rapid prototype to a working solution. The web metaphor is moving away from “pages” to “mashups,” so IAs need to be able to embrace change and add new skill sets to accomodate for this change.

The group also discussed game design and the use of incentives as a way to interact with the user.

Theory

Olga Howard took some more time to cover the distinction of “crowd” versus “group.” With regard to tagging in Del.icio.us, the group discussed how there may be a flurry of different tags used to classify objects, but over time, the number of tags flattens to an accepted assortment.

Next, the discussion turned to Morville’s championing of “findability.” The basic questions to ask include:

• Is it useful?
• Is it desirable?
• Is it valuable?
• Is it credible?

Conclusion

Since I have not been able to attend the IA Summit yet, I found this redux to be pretty informative. In addition to getting useful information, I enjoyed spending time with other like-minded individuals who have a passion for creating usable intuitive products.

Tags: [dc-ia, dcia, Livia Labate, Partial Recall, brownorama, James Melzer, information architecture, iasummit, wireframes]