Fritillaria
Tuesday, July 05, 2016
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Again!
Is an information architect just a wireframe monkey? No, of course not! But unfortunately, sometimes we're confined by a mindset that thinks IA is a box to check off on a project plan.
We need a framework and shared vocabulary to build the discipline of IA and help us all become better information architects. So... what's missing from whatever we're using now?
In "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: A Language of Critique for Information Architecture," presented at the 2016 IA Summit, I discuss Van Gigch's Meta-Modeling Methodology (M3) and Michel Foucault. I walk through the M3 model as a tool for distinguishing among 3 key levels of critique: day-to-day practices, IA/UX theories and models, and the paradigms that shape what we can do or can even think about doing. The goal is to work towards a discipline-level framework and a shared vocabulary for making sense of what we do.
Saturday, October 10, 2015
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Language of Critique for Information Architecture
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At the 2014 Language of Critique roundtable, Marsha Haverty
said “If we don’t have a way to describe what we do, we’ll be limited to… being
wireframe monkeys.”
IA is more than wireframes. But we’re confined by the
mindset that thinks IA is a box to check off on a project plan. If you find this a problem, you’ll want a way to change the discourse.
A language of critique is going to help you become a better,
more influential UX professional. We can
all use that.
Furthermore, maybe you’re at a stage in your career where
you’re elevating the practice. Are you teaching, researching, or publishing?
Then you might be interested in the project to shape a language of critique for
IA. In order for us to develop IA as a
discipline, we need a framework for evaluating the goodness of information
architecture, both as a whole, and in specific cases.
So what’s a language of critique for IA? And what’s wrong with whatever we’re using
now?
Tuesday, August 04, 2015
Thoughts about a Discovery Sprint
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At a recent federal/industry roundtable
discussion, Greg Godbout, former director of 18F Consulting, suggested that user
experience can be incorporated into agile development through the use of
something called a Discovery Sprint. GSA's boutique agile shop provides
this service as one of the short-term offerings on its menu. Now called a Design Sprint, following Google Venture's
model, its purpose is "…to assess your team's or organization's readiness,
understand your customers and their needs, brainstorm ideas, and provide
guiding principles and recommendations to move forward."
This advice reflects an understanding that, for all its strengths, one
of agile’s downsides is that it’s not a user centered method. Agile scrum is
optimized for rapid development and release of working code. It’s not optimized
to make products that will get adopted by end users.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Design Doing: Creating a Digital Practice
The environment matters
The
environment we work in matters. It gives
us agency – the ability to affect things with our actions. As user experience
professionals, it’s important for us to think about transforming the business –
our environment – so Design Doing can happen.
Listen to the podcast at http://library.iasummit.org/podcasts/design-doing-creating-a-digital-practice/
Listen to the podcast at http://library.iasummit.org/podcasts/design-doing-creating-a-digital-practice/
Friday, November 21, 2014
User Research: What’s in the Kit?
When I prepared for my first
anthropological field research in West Africa, I carefully planned and packed all
the stuff I was going to carry. My kit had to be portable, and it had to
include everything I really needed to do my work (and stay sane).
In the user
researcher’s portable kit of tools, there are a core set of items that let us
get the job done. These essential
articles pack very tight, because they’re made up of skills and attitudes. The following travel pack gives me the
confidence to get the job done in any setting – be it a conference room of
hostile contractors and distressed clients,
an animated gathering of a rural women’s agricultural cooperative, a
dimly-lit coffee shop for guerrilla usability testing, or a well-lit,
well-managed usability lab.
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
Research: The Order of Things
In the Digital Strategy group at ICF International,
my user experience team gets frequent requests for support in planning and
carrying out a special kind of inquiry called user research. This practice encompasses
usability and a wide range of other investigatory activities that are all aimed
at finding out what will work for the people who will use your system.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
The Dubious Waves of Error
From the customer’s point of view, an
error message is a crisis. When you’re
hit by an error on a website, you’re in trouble – by definition. To make things worse, the message can be so
cryptic it stops you dead. A poorly-designed error message drives you to a
competitor’s site, on the phone with the call center, back to paper-based
processes, or just giving up.
Don’t let this happen to your users! It’ll take work, but make the effort to
establish consistent and effective messages and standards for your websites. The end result should be simple; the error
message tells your visitors what went wrong, helps them over any barriers, and
lets them get on with their business.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
User Research on the Team
Customers need websites that work. Business owners need projects that deliver on organizational goals. IT developers need to know what to build. Enter user experience: the profession that bridges the gaps.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
eGovernment Challenges and Information Architecture
Government work provides profound, often deeply frustrating, and generally amazing wide-reaching opportunities to apply our IA/UX powers in the service of millions. But this year’s Information Architecture Summit had no sessions specifically about IA in government settings.
And so I asked... “Shall we lunch?”
And so I asked... “Shall we lunch?”
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Service Design and the Customer’s Journey
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