This year your peers and industry experts will speak about how topics such as social networking, gaming, patterns, tagging, taxonomies, and a wide range of IA tools and techniques can help as users ‘experience information’.

– April 10-14, 2008 (Miami, Florida USA)” – (About the Summit)

I went to last year’s summit and found it very informative. You might consider checking it out – it’s in Miami!

(hat tip: InfoDesign)

Tags: [iasummit2008, information architecture, Partial Recall, user experience, usability, interaction design]

• Information Architecture (IA) Summit
  March 22-26, 2007, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference
  May 2007, San Jose, California, USA
• Society for Technical Communication (STC) Annual Conference
  May 13-16, 2007, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Usability Professionals Association (UPA) Annual Conference
  June 11-15, 2007, Austin, Texas, USA
• University of Maryland HCIL Open House

Here are some of the notes I had prepared:

What I Learned at the IA Summit – 2007

Resources:

• IA Summit Conference Program (with links)
• Session Slides
• Photos
• nForm User Experience Trading Cards

Opening Keynote: Joshua Prince-Ramus

http://www.iasummit.org/proceedings/2007/prince_ramus_joshua

Joshua is best known as the architect of the Seattle Central Library. In his keynote, 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:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/49

Closing Plenary: Rashmi Sinha

http://www.iasummit.org/proceedings/2007/sinha_rashmi

Rashmi is the creator of SlideShare. She discussed how her team bucked traditional usability methods to rapidly deploy a social web site product in beta mode. Her slides can be accessed from SlideShare:

http://www.slideshare.net/rashmi/ia-summit-closing-plenery/

Creating the Adaptive Interface: Stephen Anderson

http://www.iasummit.org/proceedings/2007/the_conversation_gets_interest

Stephen offered an inspiring presentation by arguing that the desirability of an application can be related to the adaptability of the interface. “More than removing unused menu options or collaborative filtering, this would include functionality that is revealed over time as well as interface elements that change based on usage.” His slides can be accessed from SlideShare:

http://www.slideshare.net/stephenpa/the-conversation-gets-interesting-creating-the-adaptive-interface/

Best Practices for Form Design: Luke Wroblewski

http://www.iasummit.org/proceedings/2007/best_practices_for_form_design

Luke takes the seemingly insignificant “form” and argues that clearly presented information, interaction, and feedback can make all the difference when a user needs to communicate with a company (i.e., commerce, access, engagement). His slides can be accessed from SlideShare:

http://www.slideshare.net/psykoreactor/best-practices-for-form-design/

Rich mapping and soft systems: new tools for creating conceptual models: Gene Smith and Matthew Milan

http://www.iasummit.org/proceedings/2007/rich_mapping_and_soft_systems

Gene and Matthew explain that Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is a holistic problem solving framework that can be used to design and model interactions between organizations, people, environments, products and services. Identifying the CATWOE (Customers, Actors, Transformative Process, Worldview, Owners, Environmental Constraints) helps to add context to any project by articulating the “root definitions” of the problem. Their slides can be accessed from SlideShare:

http://www.slideshare.net/gsmith/systems-thinking-rich-mapping-and-conceptual-models/

Tags: [usability, iasummit2007, CATWOE, Gene Smith, SlideShare, Rashmi Sinha, Joshua Prince-Ramis, UPA, user experience, Stephen Anderson, Partial Recall]

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]

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’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]

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]

Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA) refers to the process of making information easy to access throughout a discrete entity – in this case, an organization. According to Wikipedia, Information Architecture is, in part, defined simply as “the practice of structuring information (knowledge or data).” Note that this simplified definition makes no reference to the Web or information systems of any kind, a la Richard Saul Wurman.

This post attempts to rethink EIA and argues that information architecture need not be constrained to designing structures and managing content as it relates to the Web or for any electronic system for that matter. Instead, I argue that an enterprise information architect might also be called, as Thomas Davenport coins it, an “Information Ecologist.” In addition to the commonly defined responsibilities of the iA (little ‘i’), the EIA or IE adds the following skillsets/responsibilies to his or her repertoire:

• Information Audit/Mapping
• Business Process Engineering

The end result is that not all information finds its way into a web-based system. Some information may be best kept in other formats. However, an IE‘s responsibility is to structure information so that it is valued as a resource on par with human capital, physical capital, and the like. Although information systems are best suited for information management and information findability, the IE must map all information in order to have a comprehensive inventory.

Background

I’ve been at my new job for close to three weeks now and during the first week I was inserted into a project. Without getting into specifics, K12 develops both digital (online) and “hardcopy” products for specific educational market segments. Their current CMS is the backbone of their production efforts.

I am enjoying taking this on as my first project, in part because it forces me to understand the business of K12 and its workflows. I’ve been able to interview different stakeholders and users, thereby forcing myself out of seclusion and getting to know my colleagues. In the process, however, I’ve been faced with the dilemma: What exactly is a CMS and what is the hand-off between system processes and people processes?

Defining a CMS Means Analyzing an Organization’s Information Assets

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the Information Architecture (IA) Summit (As an aside, I hope to attend next year – although it’s hard to be participatory now that I’m a relatively new parent), and subsequently, two of the many sessions that interested me: in this case, the session on Enterprise Information Architecture, along with Dan Brown’s [slides], really got me thinking about the definition of who and what information architecture is.

Before I elaborate on EIA, let me make a bridge to the discussion by first remarking on the potential responsibility of an IA to participate in the process of gathering requirements, designing interfaces, and participating in the implementation of a CMS solution for a given organization. As Dan indicates in his slides, today’s organization is predominantly comprised of knowledge workers, yet CMS solutions tend to subscribe to the formula of “business as factory” with cookie-cutter workflows. Instead, businesses are living entities, defined by the fact that there are some skeletal business processes, but these processes are often dynamic and fluid in nature. That is, they change and are flexible – need to be flexible – as the makeup, growth, and focus of the business and its parts changes.

Many of the people I spoke with simply assumed that any new solution would replace the same business function of the current CMS – in this case, an asset repository, product staging area, and informal workflow system. However, as I spoke with different stakeholders, new needs readily emerged. We discussed needs for digital asset management (DAM), business process management (BPM) workflow, and document management. So, as I analyzed K12′s information assets, I learned that “content management” can mean many things to many people.

Little IA, Big IA

Which brings me back to the issue of rethinking EIA. Discussions abound which attempt to define where the boundaries of IA end and where [insert job function here] begins. For example, Louis Rosenfeld and Jess McMullin created the following diagram to make sense of the boundaries:

The problem I have with this diagram is that the end game is the design of a (web based) information system. I think an IA‘s vision must be greater than an information system, particularly if we take Dan’s metaphor and look at the organization as a dynamic living entity – in essense, the defining “information” system. It’s almost like distinguishing between the CIO of a company and the IA. Are the two so dissimilar? Should they be? Could this be where little iA ends and big IA begins?

Becoming Information Ecologists

The parallels between an enterprise information architect and an information ecologist are quite striking. According to Davenport & Prusak (1997, p. 29), the basic responsibilities of an information ecologist include:

1. Integrating Diverse Types of Information;
2. Recognizing Evolutionary Change;
3. Emphasizing Observation and Description; and
4. Focusing on People and Information Behavior.

Perhaps the progression of an IA‘s scope of responsibilities might look something like this:

Conclusion

So, where does this discussion leave us? Traditional information architecture concerns itself with the structure and design of information for a specific web entity or information system. Over the years, the work of an IA has moved from dealing with the information presentation (locate, find, use, etc.) of static structures (form) to interactive behaviors (function). Lou Rosenfeld fantasized about what it would take for IAs to move into more executive and strategic positions within an organization, and I hope this post reshapes our thinking. As we move into and think about EIA, let’s structure and design the information of the enterprise using the perspective of an information ecologist.

Tags: [Louis Rosenfeld, bloug, James Melzer, Brownorama, greenonions, information architecture, eia, enterprise information architecture, Thomas Davenport, Information Ecology, IA Summit, ia, ux, cio]

References:

1. Brown, D. (March, 2006). New Approaches to Managing Content (IA Summit 2006 Workshop) [Slides - 4.3MB PDF].
2. Burk, Jr., C.F. & Horton, F.W. (1991). Infomap: A Complete Guide to Discovering Corporate Information Sources. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
3. Davenport, T.H. & Prusak, L. (1997). Information Ecology : Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment. New York: Oxford University.
4. Melzer, J. (2005). Enterprise Information Architecture in Context. jamesmelzer.com.
5. Rosenfeld, L. (2005). Updated Enterprise IA Roadmap. louisrosenfeld.com.

Year One included the tagline “The Web Is a Platform” to which Battelle remarks,

“That felt spot on, because the idea of the web as a place you could build on the work of others was a pretty new idea.”

Year Two included the tagline “Revving the Web” to which Battelle remarks,

“…because it was all about the services and businesses and opportunities that arose from the Web – all of which taken together made the web more robust and more exciting.”

For November’s conference, Battelle suggests the tagline “Disruption” by indicating,

“…the year the Web – in all its forms – really flexes its muscle and begins to seriously turn the soil of the global economy in deep and permanent ways. Think of the disruptions in the media and entertainment industries – probably the deepest disruptions so far. But we’re only in the first inning or so of the disruptions in the mobile and communications space (how excited do YOU think AT&T is about Google offering free Wifi, for example? Or eBay buying Skype?). And the disruptions of search and clickstreams on commerce is only now beginning, and the same is true for the massive IT industry (Microsoft Live, anyone?). And the disruption on our cultural life – in government, for example (can you say warrantless wiretaps meets the Database of Intentions?) – is only beginning to dawn on all of us.”

I’m not sure I follow Battelle’s logic here. “Disruption” is just another name for change, and the technology industry, which affects other industries like media and communications, only survives through innovation. I do understand that some industries are grounded in consistency rather than innovation, but for every example of IT companies becoming more immersed in other industries (i.e., Google offering WiFi, eBay buys Skype, Yahoo streaming television content), there are examples of these industries embracing IT (i.e., Verizon offering integrated internet, television, telephony,etc. services) . I’ve even seen telephone companies now offer VoIP so that they are offering more than one service.

Certainly Web 2.0 may be disruptive to some companies from some industries, but what about the consumers? Are they disrupted by the new technologies and philosophies that have emerged as a result of the Web 2.0 dialogue? I do not think so. Web 2.0 cannot be just about how it affects industry and commerce but how it affects the end user, and part of what makes Web 2.0 the current buzz is because as the web becomes more social, so too it becomes more universal and needs to become more usable. Usability is much more critical when we focus not on the needs of a target audience, but on the universal web population.

Last September, Tim O’Reilly fleshed out his definition of what Web 2.0 really is. The focus covered both the economic implications and the social components that seem to define this concept. I’ve tried to respond to John by suggesting that the next conference include a tagline inspired by one of my following contributions:

• “Web 2.0 – Egocentrically Altruistic”
• “Web 2.0 – Egocentrically Altruistic Web for the World”
• “Web 2.0 – Findable, Usable, Portable and Universal”

Egocentrism and Altruism

You see, I am noticing that Web 2.0 encapsulates both egocentric needs and altruistic ones. Thomas Vander Wal discusses Web 2.0 and concludes his post by referring to a recurring theme he has been evangelizing:

“In this past year I frame the need for it as a change from the “I go get web” to the “Come to me web”

Thomas points to some of the egocentric components of Web 2.0. The internet is becoming more portable and personal – customizable portals, RSS feeds, rich interfaces and the like draw people because they can make their Internet experience their own. This is the lure from companies who are offering free services to customers – offer a rich personalized experience to draw people to sites driven by advertizing revenue.

But Web 2.0 is also defined by its altruistic qualities. The other side of the coin that is offering free personalized services for intended revenue is that the software and web developers tend to embrace the credo of making the world better – that means some are offering services for free out of an altruistic spirit (okay, so some hope to make it big and get bought out by Yahoo or some other IT conglomerate). We are currently seeing an explosion in collaborative and social web services. The altruism that partially defines the Web 2.0 generation is that the web collective seeks to help and connect with each other.

One of the outcroppings of Web 2.0 has been that of organizing information for easy retrieval – concepts including information architecture, findability, oncology, taxonomy, and folksonomy have become en vogue. Folksonomy, in particular, has intrigued me because it encapsulates both the egocentrism and altruism components that appear to define Web 2.o. Thomas Vander Wal explains that “in short a folksonomy is a set of uncontrolled tags provided by individuals for their own retrieval purposes of that object and these tags are shared publicly.” Therefore, although Thomas appears to focus on the egocentric components of folksonomy, I would argue that there is both an egocentric component (tagging for myself) as well as an altruistic one (I’ll share my tags for others and see). This is Web 2.0 in a nutshell. Yes, from an economic perspective, the outcropping of technologies and services is for revenue, but Web 2.0 is much more – it is a movement, a philosophy…

So, will O’Reilly and Battelle embrace my tagline for the Web 2.0 conference? I doubt it – it’s not flashy and it isn’t aimed at the bottom line: the almighty dollar. However, at the end of the day, I think true Web 2.0 is more than a technology, a company, a concept, or a service. Web 2.0 is simply providing an intuitive rich user experience that can be both egocentric and altruistic.

Tags: [Web 2.0, Web2.0, VanderWal, Thomas VanderWal, Vander Wal, Tim O'Reilly, John Battelle, longtail, folksonomy, taxonomy, findability, tagging, AJAX]

Well, I may have found a search tool that makes up for some of the limitations of my last post regarding Rollyo. It seems Chris Pirillo of G4TechTV’s Call for Help fame created gada.be, a search tool that allows for unique easy-to-remember urls along with capabilities for RSS search feeds. I look forward to the development of this tool. If I had two nickles to rub together, I’d even consider investing.

Tags: [search, Chris Pirillo, G4, TechTV, rss, gada.be, meta, find]

Thomas talked about a variety of topics, but some of the things that struck me revolved around his discussion of folksonomy. Thomas says that he does not like the definition included in Wikipedia because the site allows users to constantly add or remove content to define the concept. He provided us with the following descriptors:

Folksonomy:

• Actual vocabulary used for objects in a community and across communities;
• Network-based selfish bookmarking;
• Free-tagging;
• Socially shared; and
• Externally structuring content

There were a few concepts that clicked in place and resonated with me. First, something clicked when Thomas explained that folksonomy is the “anti-Google.” Essentially, Thomas argued that search tools build algorithms to help you “find what you want.” However, the concept of folksonomies, manifested in collaborative bookmarking tools (such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, etc.), help you “find what you don’t know you want.” He explained that while a majority of people might want results that are in the mainstream, folksonomies let users find information that might be in the long-tail:

Secondly, I really got hung up on the idea that folksonomies involved “selfish bookmarking.” For instance, when my wife bookmarks an article about Apple’s iPod, she might only use the term “ipod” to tag her bookmark, because she only cares about classifying her article so she can find it later. On the other hand, even though I know I can later find the article by searching for “iPod,” I might try to use multiple tags to help others locate my article. I might additionally use the terms “Apple,” “mp3,” “music,” and so on. However, Thomas cuts through this by explaining that if you choose to assist others this way, then this is really your selfish method of bookmarking.

Thomas’ concept really involves no moral, ethical, or “responsibility of the user” argument when it comes to practicing folksonomies. However, as I’ve argued before, for some reason I am stuck on the responsibility of the social tagger. My ideal would be that taggers use multiple tags to describe the content that they choose to bookmark. That way, it becomes easier for other persons to find their content. This does not negate the concept of folksonomies. The social component to this phenomenon is such that we learn to trust others and the tags they use to describe content. Therefore, I still propose that other services that incorporate folksonomies into their systems provide a mechanism for rating taggers on a “trustworthy” scale.

Tags: [Vander Wal, Thomas Vander Wal, VanderWal, folksonomy, tagging, MIM, UMCP]