IA Tool development - challanges for new notations (E)

(Image: IA Tool Development, Spirit Link)

At Spirit Link we recently developed a new version of our IA Tools for research, analysis and concept documentation. The goal was to develop a first tool version that supports the project process throughout all phases. It was my pleasure to lead the tool development after a evaluation process (in phase 1) which helped us to decide about the appropriate tool itself and the tool requirements for this version V1.0.

In the IA community you can listen and read a lot of tool discussions since a while. It is strongly requested that we develop and use new tools and notations that are up to date for our daily challenges. The reasons are obvious:

• Evolving technologies like AJAX and RIAs challenge us and the documents we communicate with all stakeholders
  
• The growing need to simulate the digital solution way before the development phase
  
• A drive for efficiency and rapid development
  

So what are the next steps regarding IA Tool developments for upcoming versions?

• Visualisation of the user scenarios(use cases) to communicate them with stakeholders
• Documentation of the different status/views of a dynamic system
  
• Simulation of the user-system interaction
• Support rapid development
• Dokumentation of the data

What challenges with IA tools do you face in your daily life? Please, give me your feedback

IA Institute website concept - Part I (E)

(Image: Method - Global Mental Model, Wolf H. Nöding)

Since the launch party of the new IA Institute website at this years IA Summit in Las Vegas 2007 I was asked quite often from people how the concept deliverables of the new website look like. Well, here we start with describing some main steps of development.

Note: I was told from people of the IAI Community that they used this Global Mental Model as a communication tool with their clients very successfully already. And a while ago I was asked by James Kalbach to write a brief method description of this Global Mental Model for his upcoming book where he mentions this method briefly which I developed during the conceptional phase for the IA Institute website.

The following is a short description of the method:
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High level Mental Model

Short description of a Diagram that's part of the concept for the IA Institute website.

As one part of a concept for the IA Institute website the diagram shows an abstract(higher level) mental model. With it's molecular like appearance this model presents the main tasks of the website(arranged on middle circle) in it's Top Down and Bottom up stakeholder context.

The goal - create communication base

The general goal here was to deliver a complete(global) scenario with its strongest leverages, relations(active and passive) and POIs (Point of interests). Business goals and requirements as well as user requirements will be able to be discussed, based on this overall scenario.

Method - process of development

The input for the diagram results from surveys and interviews with IA members(US and Europe) and was first clustered in a mindmap. According to the given information the diagram is developed and growing iteratively based on all important relations (visualised as active/passive and less/strong demand arrows ). A variety of keys indicate relations like:

• one way/two way relations
• active/passive
• Top-Down, Bottom-Up
• strong Demand
• regular focus
• strong focus
• sub case

There is an active/passive relation between “Contribute” and “Find IA information” for example. This indicates that the contribution of documents is related to their findability and therefore can actively support the process.
The strong relation between Contribution and Collaboration indicates a higher amount of requirements which address the relation between them.

The complete diagram finally reflects the given input during the information gathering process e.g. interviews and surveys. In the continuing concept workflow the diagram is used as an information source to develop detailed use cases and wireframes. Until the final launch it’s also always useful to support the iteration steps including optimisations and fine tunings as a “consulting” document.

Consolidated findings

• Useful to receive an awareness over the complex relation scenario of the website
• The scenario is global and should therefore be complete.
• As an information visualisation it’s valuable for communication purposes between team participants.
• Using an abstract model like this it’s necessary that all concept team participants have a sense for abstract thinking. This might not always be the case.

Your feedback is very welcome, Wolf

User Centered Design - Workshop at Namahn (E)

(Images UCD Solutions: Namahn)

Related to this article:
Listen to: Podcast at IA Voice with Joannes Vandermeulen (Namahn Founder and head of business development)

I was invited recently to participate in a two days workshop, led by Tom Stevens, at the Namahn agency in Brussels. While I know already quite a bit about User Centered Design, Usability and IA I still learned a lot more about solutions and methods to solve Business Pains in this two days master class.









The following topics were learned to the master class participants:

• User Centered Design as a discipline
  

The UCD process:

• Field Study
• Personas
• User Requirements/Use Cases
• Scenarios of Use
• Conceptual Model
• Conceptual Design
• Mock-up
• Graphic Design
• Usability Test
• Detailed Specification/ Style Guide
  

After the UCD process the class learned even more about the development process and the ROI which was important to know in order to use and implement these methods in the daily project workflows. Alltogether I'd recommend this master class to all people who are interested in the IA and UCD methodology.

What do you think about the UCD process?

IA Magazine - suits not just for myself (E)

(Image: Wolf's IA Magazine)

A while ago I set up my own IA Magazine just for fun to syndicate usefull information about my favourite subject, Information Architecture (IA News, IA Job Offers, IA Bookmarks, Relevant IA info, IA Podcasts, IA Fotos, IAs in Europe, ...), into one comfortable overview for myself. I used Pageflakes (or alternatively: Netvibes)as a service platform which gives you the option to build your own website by adding so calles "flakes" to it. The palette of flakes offers quite interesting functionalities to receive relevant information from other platforms. I experienced that this IA Magazine works quite effective since the information suits my own information requirements just like a tailor-made suit.
And I experienced that the information is also appreciated by others. I'd like to know if you have made similar experiences with platforms like pageflakes. Where are they?

IA Summit Key Session - Documenting RIAs (E)

(image: Presentation - "IA for rich interaction")
Designing RIAs(Rich Internet Applications) is a hot topic since the last couple of years. And IAs are facing quite some challenges in this movement of applications from static to more fluidly, dynamic applications(to present large amounts of data) in their strategic and conceptional work. The demand from the client side for RIAs is stronly increasing these days since Business sees the benefits to meet their high business goals concerning information structures.
During my stay at the IA Summit I visited three mayor sessions about strategies and documentaion of RIAs(And these are worth keeping in mind and may be usefull for RIA-IA projects in the near future):

1. Everything old is new again: IA and RIA - you know more than you think you do

• Some of the most recognizable attributes of RIAs: fluidity in behavior, speed in their responses, engaging in their appearance
  
• Customer Experience is in the driver's seat
• Design-Centric vs. System-Driven
  
• RIA Notation.vss on the IA Institute website (see image on left)
  

1. The living Design Document and ION: Documenting RIAs
2. IA for rich interaction: Tools and techniques from the trenches

• User types and complex interactions
• Documenting user types
• User Personas
• User Type definition
• Mapping user type
• Mapping user type transitions
• Adding user types to site maps/flows
• ...
  

View the Presentations and tell me what you think :).

IA Summit - Key Session - Project Touchstones (E)

(image: sticky room, infinity diagrams, Jesss McMullin)
Jess McMullin was talking during his presentation "Project Touchstones" at the IA Summit about efficient methods that focus on the value for both Business(Return on Investment) and Users(Return on Experience). To me his methods sounded very usefull to synchronise the different views of stakeholders of a project(client side and agency side). This particular points, if not solved correctly, can easily eat up a tremendous part of the project budget.

He recommends the following approach:

• Get the right people in the room, work together to create artifacts and models that let them articulate business needs.
• Peel Back the layers
• Start Small: Partner, Pilot, Publicize

From my point of view (To several of the situations that Jess mentions in his talk I find parallels to my daily teamwork again) I would say the following are well worth to consider to optimise your work relationships with clients and your inhouse teams:

• The opportunity we have as user experience practitioners to become a Peer with Business
  
• User Centered Designers Understand, Solve, Evaluate and Refine Things to get the right solution(Through Iteration) - great but not very sufficient.
  
• We have to understand what creates the Value in our projects!
  
• Value Centered Design: Business Goals and Context and Human Goals and Context
• Business Centered Design: 1. Using design methods and tools to understand business needs 2. Beyond the run-of-the-mill business discovery 3. One half of value-centered design 4. Beginning of becoming a business peer.
  
• 2 Ways to think about Deliverables: a) Deliverables That Define Solutions(Review & Approve) - always Prower Imbalance, b) Deliverables That Define Problems (Read: Arias and Fischer 2000: "Fundamental challenges facing communities of interest are found in building a shared understanding of the task at hand")...
• Delivelables that define Problems Together help us to become a Peer in Practice
• Building a bridge to overcome different viewpoints
• Deliverables that define problems together
  
• Define Problems together(e.g. Infinity diagramms from interview transscripts): One of the keys to becoming the Peer with Business
• Principles: 1. Codesign 2. Simple 3. Concrete 4. Flexible 5. Evidence-Based 6. Surface Agendas
• ...
• The whole speach will soon be in the IA Voice Podcast...

View his presentation here:

IA Summit - Key Session - IA in the design process (E)

"Where does IA fit in the design process" was one session I'd label as an important "key session of the IA Summit 2007" because understanding this subject means a great impact in our daily user centered design life. It's interesting to notice that also in many other companies and agencies the concerning of IA in context of the design process seems quite modern. The presentations were held by Moderator: Peter Boersma. Panellists: Larisa Warnke, Peter Merholz, Livia Labate, Leisa Reichelt and Josh Seiden and their discussion topics were about...

• IA deliverables,
  
• IAs in the design team,
  
• IAs in interdisziplinary teams,
  
• comunication of IA processes to newbies and
  
• how to improve design processes.

Here are the summaries that I took out of this panel session:
Lisa Reichelt - "Waterfall is bad - washing machine is good"



Livia Labate - "Balance user needs and business goals to conceive solutions which enable positive experience"
Peter Boersma - panel Moderator for following questions:

• What is a design process?
• Who needs a design process?
• When should IAs be part of the design process?
• Where do you keep your design process?
• How do you communicate a design process?
• Why should you create a design process?
  

Larisa Warnke - "Pictures of my process - 4 phases and 9 Disciplines"
Josh Seiden - "Process...is never the goal, ...makes our work visible, ...driven by project parameters and goals"
Peter Merholz

Medical Usability (E)

In my search for some more IA berries I found this interesting german website labeled Medical Usability.
It caught my attraction since I'm always interested on the focus of other Usability Experts, IAs or UX Designers within a special market field. Peter Morville always mentiones the Medical oriented field in his books and speeches as a high performing and, at least in the US, an industry that uses IA and User Experience Design competence to strengthen their wordwide competitiveness.
Most of the US Healthcare Companies are in process or established already IA departments in order to drive process and workflow oriented strategies of their information environments.

Medical or Healthcare business, as one of the most growing markets and industries, certainly is a very potential field for IAs worldwide. What I'm finding worth reading in Ulf Schubert's blog Medical Usability is his focus on subjects like these:
- Search Form Usability
- Usability of Educational Websites
- Eyetracking
- Evaluating the ROI
- Search Mental Model
- Design Patterns
- Interaction Modeling
- User Experience
- Prototyping Tools
- User Oriented Design
- and many more ...

Pipes - new directions (E)

By browsing through our german IA forum at XING I just read
some more discussions from people about the pipes from Yahoo. Also Jan just mentioned something about them on his German IA blog.

Did you have a chance to try the Yahoo Pipes out already?

The idea behind it looks very interesting to me... and I could imagine, just by thinking about some current projects, that this
could be very valuable for example for:

• Intranets/Extranets
  
• CRM systems
• Knowledge Management
  
• E-Learning
• Corporate Collaboration Apps
  
• etc.
  

IA cherries on these new vision cakes (E)

See this movie demo(and close your eyes for the first few seconds).

Are you also getting these links from collegues and friends with great new interactive design visions? Here for example is a great one about "remapping the universe".

First I think(with my IA glases on), hey these ideas have a lot to do with Information Architecture. A lot of these visions would actually need semantic relations, classifications, meta data, usabiliy, tagging and so on in order to make it really happen what these nice interaction design visualisations are showing.

Interaction Design has found a great advantage though in visualising it's ideas. This means that the audience, especially the clients, see the benefit in terms of efficiency, fun, economic benefit etc. . It shows that good communication of a discipline has great leverage.

Then second it makes me a little wondering, if it's also possible to present IA (Research) Visions like that. I'm actually quite sure about it!

Any comments on this?

IA Voice - Podcast Interviews with Information Architects (E)

We are reading Books on Information Architecture since years now. The inspirations and ideas of authors like Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld, Jesse James Garrett or Christina Wodtke became probably even part of our own daily workflow and routine.
But who are these people, what are their own challenges, IA methods or where do they see the field of Information Architecture tending in the near fiuture?
IA Voice (www.iavoice.com) is an Interview Podcast Channel which exists since 2005 and allows you to listen to many interviews with IA Authors, interviews at the IA Summit or EURO IA conference and practicing IAs. Listeners have the options to listen through the browser, in iTunes or even download and listen to these interviews on an iPod or any other mp3-Player while being on the road. IA Voice also takes listeners feedback and comments as inspirations for new interviews. What do you think about IA Voice or in general podcast interviews with information architects?

An excellent guide for facetted classification (E)

In most daily worflows concerning internet, intranets or extranets people are searching through websites to find products, services or solutions. Findability as an important aspect and the users goal to focus quickly on the right information given by a platform, forces Information Architects to create new smart concepts for their clients. And this also concerns Enterprise IA.
Simple product listings or navigation hierarchies are easily overextended with the hundreds and thousands of different views and needs users are trying to focus on their prefered information.
Therefore it is a strategicly smart step to create platforms which offer these multiple ways for the end user to focus and narrow down on the prefered information.
But what's the right method of doing so? Developing a faceted classification is certainly one solid way. William Denton has published this terrific description called "How to Make a Faceted Classification and Put It On The Web" which describes the most important steps including analysis work, basics thoughts behind the method and finaly the imlementations.
It's worth reading. What are your comments on faceted classification and how important is it for you?

Podcasts around IA (E)

There are not too many Podcasts for the IA community out there so far. Things will change in the near future though since the theme about and around IA will become more important. Who knows some more IA Podcasts?

Listen to some examples here:

- There are some interesting podcasts from the Ars Electronica(2005) in Linz(I recommend David Weinberger, Marco Susani, Derrick de Kerckhove and otheres which are very valuable)
- Silicon Valley, Technology, Media InfoTalk - interesting subjects around IA

Join the IA Club in Germany (E)

Hi, all European IAs are welcome in the german openBC (Business Club). Just sign in and start networking.
In response to some very interesting chats at the EURO IA Konferenz this month, the whole team would like to welcome you in our IA network. We would like to get to know IAs from all over Europe. Our team just started inviting people from Germany. So it's never too late to say hallo for you :).

Language Disclaimer: We can always start an english section for you if that helps us networking here.

IA paper in two pages (E)

An IA paper should cover the range from simple description to wider
"birds eye view"

Questions
- Who has some input?
- What information is interesting for the target audience? (> clustering)
- Already existing documents in English? (IA wiki)
- Any other existing white papers in other languages? (> language represantatives)

Categories so far:
- 01 General IA views/descriptions (definitions of famous IA people)
- 02 Business value (Synergies,ROI)
- 03 Graphical descriptons of IA
- 04 Deliverables
- 05 IA Processes and Methodologies - short teasers (image/text/links)
- 06 Readable Books - Linklist

EURO IA 2005 in Brüssel (E)

>> View the Conferenz Site of the EURO IA 2005
>> Contacts: Some are in the Euro IA Blog
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In short the important messages from the speeches:


Keynote Speech - Andrew Dillon
- IA will be relevant in the Web 2.0 movement:
movement from Web 1.0: >> to Web 2.0:
> Ofoto >> Flickr
> Mp3.com >> Napster
> Britannica >> Wikipedia
> Personal Page >> Blog
> Taxonomy >> Folksonomy
> Stickiness >> Syndication
> Publishing >> Participation
> Page views >> Costs per clickscreen
- User experience has strongly to do with(triangle): Behavior,
Emotion, Result
- IA is a craft-based discipline > problems with craft disciplines
- Information has more than physical shape: Meaning, Imagery,
Aesthetics, Value, Emotion, Shape
- Diagram for "Designing Usable Electronic Text"
- Beyond navigation: Patterning, Wrappping, Anchoring, Emergent
structure

Data is stored - information is experienced:

• experiences have human consequences


• We are shaping the experience of millions


• How does content impact action


• information breeds

- Usability is a design value, not a competitive field
- And, the discussion between big or little IA won't bring any advantages

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IA in a European Dimension - Peter Bogaards
- A view on the rich and big european background (Otlet, etc.)
- UCD (User Centered Design) - European tratition with roots in Scandinavian academics
- Multilingual, multicultural, and multidisciplinary
- Mobility, open source, and Web 2.0

Weaknesses:

• lack of coherence


• different connotations of the term "IA"


• Proficiency in verbal and written English


• Euro economy no big support for IA


• No real IT or internet industry (Apple, Sun, IBM, eBay or Amazon)


• The state-run educational system (very slow integrated programs/reforms, brains move to US)

Opportunities:

• The Lisbon Strategy - stimulation of the knowledge society by the Lisbon Agenda of the European Union


• Initiatives will result in increasing opportunities for IA's to get a job


• Emerging local players idetify user experience in general and information architecture as critical success factor


• Growing IA comunity in Europe


• open source and the so-called "Web 2.0 paradigm of participation"


• The community of European IA must face it's challenges.

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Marketing IA - Experiences and examples from Norway - Mona Halland
Lessons Learned
- Documentation and quantification is powerful
- Keep it simple
- Speek up with a clear voice
- Forget the Jante law
- We all should network and start bloging

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Shared References - Eric Reiss
Creating effective shared references

- Creating a shared frame of reference
- What do we have in our toolkit? > visual, words, sound
- CONTEXT IS KING
- Culture can kill individual elements

- What are you looking for in a SHOE? > Great example!
- Written descriptions - "But don't just take our words for it"
- Common vocabulary - or foreign language?
- The "as" factor
- "Sometimes size DOES matter (action photos and common objects)
- Ergonomics #1 - wireframes
- Ergonomics #2 - feedback

Let's lern from Eric :)!

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The Italian and the English Model - Simone Fuchs&Luca Rosati
- Case study
- Berrypicking (change, continue, alter, do)
- Faceted Classification method + vocabulary
- The two Methods described
- Different mental models (I want..., I need..., I'm in Turin, ... )
- An associative model
- For more information...

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Getting Around the BBC
- Case study
- Combination of Search, Navigation and Index
- IA is only part of it - three things influence: user experience, infrastructure, Culture
Lessons learned:
- Take time to get buy-in at the start
- Need operational and political champions
- Takes a long time to effect change
- Even if IA stuff not that hard - getting it agreed on and implemented
- That means dealing with technology, politics, corporate culture, business processes, etc.

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Putting UX Design at the Heart of the World's Largest IT Projekt - Lit Lewis, Framfrap UK
- Case Study
- Why a Common User Interface (UI)?
The approach
- Design methodology
- User research
- Designing for safety
- Information standards
- Participation of experts
- Incorporating clinical decision support

IT in healthcare
- Healthcare provision must become more efficient
- Historically, IT has been a low priority
- IT is a key part of modernisation
- Efficiencies are possible at the same time as increasing safety & quality of care
- UK primary care
- UK secondary care
- Internationally
- Required cultural shifts

- National diversity
- Different UIs
- Clinical subject areas
- Approach
- Clinical terminology
- Accessibility
- Clinical knowledge framework ("Map of Medicine")
- International adoption (international and own standarts involving other countries)
- NHS NPfIT is leading the world in joined-up healthcare
- NHS has scale to influence international product development

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IA for Augmented Shopping Environments
- User-centered Design (UCD) ISO 13407
- Spiral methodology for requirements capture
- Interesting virtual/real shop installation (Prototype)

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Paul Otlet, the man who wanted to Classify the world
- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Mobile Internet Campaigns - Reinoud Bosman
- Building mobile internet sites is complex(markup standards, browser standardization, ...)
- Approach: Task Analysis, Screenflows, Wireframes(-highlights)
- Lessons learned: Dead-end IA, End-to-end IA, Forms are a pain, Latency vs. Speed, Minimise memory load, Screen design, Leave out what you don't need,...


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Panel: Using Community Tools to Capture Knowledge in the Organization
- Comparing three Systems from the NATO,the BBC and icogs NV
- Blogs, Wiki's, Enterprise Content Management
- each panelist will present one of these solutions

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IA as a Means of Assessing and Creating Organisational Information Coherence
- Given that most IA related work starts somewhere in the middle how does one manipulate the client to get into an IA situation?
- Getting a golobal picture
- A Web Site or a Web based Intranet is NOT the place to start!
- Interesting: Measuring the Value of Metadata(Linda McHugh, Baseline Consulting Group, www.baseline-consulting.com)
- Diagram: Metadata Maturity

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IA for the Personal InfoCloud

One of the most interesting sessions
- InfoClouds: Personal InfoCloud, Local InfoCloud, Global InfoCloud, External InfoCloud
- Personal InfoCloud (PIC)
- IAs and PICs
- Key Properties of PIC (Person-centered, Access, Organization, Tasks, actions, context aware)
- Person Attracts Information
- Model of Attraction
- MOA-Receptors
- Personal Info Cycle (Seeking, Recognizing, Retaining/Storing, Using/Creating, Following)
- Info Ruse
- Work > Mobile > Home > Office > Driving > Meetings
- How to: PIC for IA
- Granular Content Assessment
- Assemble Information for Use
- Structuring Information
- Focus: Person & Info Reuse
- Design&Develop: Standards
- Kontakt: Thomas Vander Wal

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Wrap-up & 5-minutes Madness
All readable in the Euro IA Blog
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