On Thursday April 8th I will be headed to the 11th annual IA Summit, held in Phoenix, AZ. I’m really excited about the program, because the subject matter covers both practical and theoretical concepts related to Experience Design topics.

I also look forward to chatting with others. It’s amazing how many people I am only connected with via Twitter. I look forward forming new f2f friendships and deepening others.

If you’d like to intentionally meet up, give me a holler @robfay.

Tags: [Partial Recall, information architecture, IA Summit, ias10, ias2010, iasummit10]

Nice use of Twitter – @shorterjakob:

New Alertbox: IxDA mailing list people are f%&$ idiots: http://tr.im/nOtp

So I saw some retweets of this synopsis of Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox. What made me laugh is that it’s so true. Folks in the UX industry should know that the best designs are those accompanied by user observation and other types of user feedback, but some design teams feel that such UX methods slow the process down and are unnecessary. In addition, the reality is that for some teams, not every design can be tested or observed, so designers are often left with providing “expert review.” Unfortunately, expert review is not necessarily a stopgap measure when it’s success as a tool is not as proven as other methods. I think we as designers and UX professionals need to be reminded that although we may be very talented, if we are not the target user, we cannot assume we have the right design unless there is validation by observing our users. Nielsen brings all folks in the UX industry back to earth by reminding us that the user is always right.

In addition, what Nielsen and Jared Spool emphasize is that there’s nothing more important than observing users. Nielsen argues that even observing 2 users with the design can dramatically influence your success (compared to expert review) at deploying the best design. Nielsen’s point is not to denigrate interaction designers. Instead, his point is OBSERVE, OBSERVE, OBSERVE. Design without observation is merely art. Design w/ observation is a good product.

Tags: [Jakob Nielsen, usability, expert review, Partial Recall, user observation, interaction design, IxD]

I was fortunate to be able to participate in the first show. Here was the question I posed,

“I work for an e-learning company. We have a grading feature in our product that gives teachers the ability to grade an assignment by applying a grade to a gradebook. When we designed this, because of time constraints, we only focused on a few “grading” use cases and we only came up with a few design ideas. I wish we had brainstormed more. How can I influence my team’s culture to value design exploration, even within our current constraints?”

Basically, I wanted to figure out how the team could explore a lot of ideas before widdling down these ideas to a select few. Listen to what Jared and Robert have to say: Userability Podcast #1: Exploring More Design Alternatives.

Tags: [userability, Robert Hoekman, Jared Spool, UIE, usability, user experience, web design, design, podcast, Partial Recall]

Tags: [IxDA, interaction design, user experience, Partial Recall]

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]

Tags: [Edward Tufte, Tufte, iPhone, Partial Recall, Apple, interface design, GUI, interaction design, HCI]

After conducting some user testing, it seems as though button placement had more effect than using color to contrast primary and secondary actions. Although there was no clear winner, my vote would be for the left-align button placement with contrasting colors.

Tags: [Luke Wroblewski, web design, usability, interaction design, user experience, Partial Recall]

• 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]

If you missed the IA Summit in Vegas this year, fear not! DCIA will be holding a redux on Saturday, May 12 at 9am. We have commitments from several speakers to recap their talks.

Details:

Where: BCC Services Center
When: Saturday, May 12, 9am – 1pm
What: Mini-sessions, panel discussions, five-minute madness, networking, and bagels — lots and lots of bagels.
How much: $5 to cover the cost of food and venue

Speaker	Detail	Presentation File
Celeste Lyn Paul on card-sorting	description	PDF (519 KB)
Hallie Wilfert on her grandmother as IA	description	PPT (10.8 MB)
Stacy Surla on Second Life	description	PPT (6 MB)
Thom Haller on clear and useful content	description	PPT (8.5 MB)
Dan Brown on IA documentation	description	PPT (3.5 MB)
Austin Govella on IA’s impact on business	description	PPT (1.3 MB)
Lorelei Brown on lessons from failures	description	SlideShare (online)

We’ll be breaking into small groups to talk about several of the themes that emerged during the Summit, including: documentation for rich internet applications, management issues, and design processes.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: If you attended the Summit and would like to talk about your experience or lead a small group discussion, please drop me [Dan Brown] a line at brownorama@gmail.com.

Tags: [IASummit, IASummit2007, IASummit07, DC-IA, information architecture, interaction design, usability, experience design, Partial Recall]

[Runtime: 136 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: [adaptive, adaptive interface, interaction design, information architecture, IA Summit 2007, Partial Recall, Stephen Anderson]