Information architecture

For me, the next few months are full of conferences and workshops. My calendar is so packed I don’t know where the work will fit. You can catch me at:

• Web standards group Canberra (4 Feb): Talking about user research, why we don’t do enough of it and my new user research decision diagram
• Webstock, Wellington (11-14 Feb): I’m not speaking here, just hanging out at a conference for once
• South by Southwest Interactive, Austin (13-17 Mar): On a panel with the awesome Nick Finck & Michael Angeles, called Wireframes are wicked
• IA Summit, Memphis (18-22 Mar): I’m teaching my full day workshop on information architecture, and doing a presentation called ‘Design games for IA’
• Wellington, NZ (end Mar): my good friends from Optimal usability are hosting me to teach beginning and advanced IA (more details to come soon - this will be the first time teaching my new advanced IA workshop)
• April - wow, I have the whole month free
• JBoye09, Philadelphia (May 5-7): I’m teaching my half day IA essentials workshop, and doing a talk called Getting content right
• UX London (Jun 15-17): I’m teaching two half day workshops - IA essentials and  Designing for people

I hope I see you at one or more of these.

And remember, I can teach any of these workshops in-house to your team (see my list of IA, interaction design, usability & content workshops).

I was in a meeting recently to talk through a new website project - discussing the stages of the project. I was suggesting my normal approach - understand the project goals, do some user research, analyse content, draft the IA etc etc.

As we were talking through the process, I noticed one of the senior managers was clearly unsettled. After we talked a bit about the early steps, he finally said “Why do we need to do this? Why can’t we just come up with the IA. After all, it’s not rocket science”.

He, as a senior manager, had a fairly good idea of  the domain. So he had a fairly clear idea of how it would best be represented on the website. His ideas weren’t bad at all, but I didn’t know if they were ‘right’. After a bit of discussion we agreed to make some quick changes based on his ideas, but reserved the right to change it when we had collected some information.

But it did make me think. Why do I think there is some complexity to creating a good IA for a website, when to others it appears simple? (I’ve noticed that people generally think their own field or expertise is complex, and assume that other fields are straightforward - I think that is just human.)

I don’t really think IA is as hard as rocket science. But I do think there are some hard parts:

• We usually deal with messy problems
• Our projects are all about language and concepts, which vary from person to person
• A lot of what we do is pulling together different (often competing) inputs to try our best to create a balance
• We have to work with opinionated people. And everyone has an opinion on how things should be grouped, labelled and what is most important!
• There is no one right answer
• Our individual experiences contribute to solutions - so the ‘answer’ depends on who creates it

But it is achievable. I think part of the trick to helping people understand that there is complexity is to better explain the pathway and rationale for decisions - show how inputs contributed to outputs, how we’ve balanced priorities. Not just show the end result…

I’ve just been away for a week at two of my favourite conferences - OzIA and Web Directions.But this post isn’t quite about that…

I read some of the feedback from OzIA on the weekend. And one comment stuck out and worried me a bit. The comment was along the lines that my talk seemed silly (which I can deal with) and cliquey (which worries me).

Now I know that a couple of times I mentioned folks in the audience by name. I know that I know a decent proportion of the crowd. And there definitely is a group of IA folks in both Canberra and Sydney who see each other regularly, hang out together, eat together and even do non-IA stuff together.

But it worries me that it may be seen as a clique. Something that has an in-crowd and an out-crowd. I worry that it might look like there is an in-crowd that doesn’t want to involve other people, because that’s just not the case.

Those of us who do hang out together do so partly because we have gotten involved in something. We’ve been to conferences together, attended IA meet-ups together and volunteered together. We’ve discussed the future of IA and what it all means over drinks. That crowd has built up over time and changes over time. There is no membership and no secret handshake. It is just a bunch of folks with a shared interest.

So, please. If it looks to you like there is an IA clique that you are not involved in, just get involved. Here’s how:

• Go to one of the regular IA events (Canberra IA group or Sydney IA peers)
• Start your own IA group
• Join the IAI and get involved in a volunteer project
• Join the IA Australia mailing list and share a story or ask for help
• Contact me for other ideas about ways you might contribute

We aren’t an exclusive clique and we really do love getting to know other people who do IA.

Just announced: Student rates for Oz-IA. Full conference rates are only $198 and workshop rate is $77. That’s fantastic pricing and a great incentive to help students attend!

Oz-IA, one of my favourite Australian conferences, has announced a call for proposals.

And they’ve made it super-easy - it is a call for expressions of interest, rather than full, detailed proposals. But the hitch is that they need to be in soon (25 July). So if you have an idea for a talk about IA, or of interest to IA folks, please submit. And if you would like me to look over your idea, let me know!!!!

Someone asked me recently how many items were ‘too many’ to have in a navigation bar on a website. Of course, there is no definitive answer to this (and please don’t ever believe it if someone tells you 7+/-2: the research behind that is completely irrelevant). I don’t think I’ve seen reliable research on this, and if I did I think I’d be suspicious of it anyway as the complexity of the issue isn’t about number, but about complexity of concept.

So I spent some time thinking about what the underlying principles would be if you had to think this through for a decision (I always like thinking from basic principles out, not just relying on simple answers).

One of the main principles is Hicks Law. This describes the time it takes for a reader to make a decision when provided with a number of choices. It basically says that the more choices, the more time (obviously) but it is a logarithmic relationship, not a linear one. So that’s one part of it.

Another important part is the concept of basic-level categories. There is a level of a hierarchical classification that is called ‘basic’ that is more cognitively real than other levels. People think at the basic level. A simple example is this: Mammal - dog - dalmatian. We usually think about ‘dogs’, not mammals or dalmatians.

In practice, I’ve seen people cope with long lists when:

• the items are at the reader’s basic level
• the content in the list feels like it belongs together
• the sequence of items makes sense to the reader (this may mean they are clustered sensibly, or alphabetic for known-item tasks)
• the concepts are known to the reader

The opposite to a long list of course is a shorter one. This will usually mean breaking down the long list hierarchically, or group some of the items together (e.g Products & Services). The challenge with this is doing it in a way that still makes sense to the reader - as the level of abstraction increases, it is harder for people to determine what might be in a more abstract category.

The other challenge is that, even if you do make a really good long list that is full of great terms and works well for readers, everyone else will challenge you because there is a perception that long lists are bad (even users will say ‘oh, that’s a long list’ before they jump in and use it really easily). If I were about to do implement a long list I’d set up a mini-usability test that compares a couple of options - long lists, grouped items, more hierarchy). I developed a quick usability testing method years ago that I still use that would be good for showing whether the list works or not.

What do you think? How do you figure out how long to make your navigation lists? And how do you convince other people that a long list is OK?

Yet another workshop announcement…

On 7&8 August, I will be teaching a 2-day master class on information architecture and collaborative design, run via Ark Group. The thing that is slightly different about this workshop compared to my IA workshop is that, duh, it includes a lot of collaborative design.

I’m adding more material on user research, design games, usability testing and designing in teams - I don’t usually get to teach these in a one-day workshop. And 2 days allows more hands-on, practical stuff than one, and that is always good.

So if you know someone who may be interested, and can get to Sydney, please pass on the details: Information architecture and collaborative design workshop.

I had an IA Summit epiphany today…

When I looked at the program this year, I was a bit disappointed that some of my favourite and noisiest IA folks weren’t speaking. It felt a bit odd to see a program with loads of names I didn’t know (back story - I’ve been on the organising committee and closely involved in the previous 4 summits). It didn’t bother me, and would never stop me from attending, but did feel a bit strange.

But then I was hanging out in the hallways in a break today and spotted lots of people with ’speaker’ ribbons that I didn’t know. And I felt something I thought was interesting. I felt glad that there were loads of new-to-summit folks who had gotten their stuff through a tough review process; and glad that there was a venue for the same folks to communicate their ideas to peers.

It really felt quite strange, and reminded me of why summit is my favourite conference, by far, for the year.

I’m very excited to announce that I’m teaching a new workshop with Russ Weakley. It’s called “Website user experience & CSS workshop: Designing for usability, building for the future“. It will be run in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, in late March and April.
I’m teaching the day on user experience, and Russ is teaching on CSS, which is lucky for you as I’m pretty good at ux and Russ is awesomely good at teaching CSS.

I’m really looking forward to it - I’ve wanted to go to one of Russ’ tutorials for a couple of years. And I love teaching user experience design for the web - I’ve spent a lot of time doing it, and a lot of time thinking about what I’ve learned and how to best share it.

I hope to see you, or your colleagues, there. Please pass details on to anyone you think may benefit.

Workshop description

A hands-on workshop with user experience expert, Donna Maurer, and CSS
expert, Russ Weakley.

Over two full days you will build detailed websites layouts from the ground up - starting with page layout, navigation and form design; and ending with clean markup and elegant styling using XHTML/CSS.

Day 1: Planning and designing the user experience - Donna Maurer

On day one you will plan and design a website - focusing on the user experience: designing the navigation, page layout and forms.

You will:

• learn techniques to understand your users, and prepare user scenarios
• understand your content with content analysis methods
• create an effective and usable site structure (information architecture)
• design a range of navigation methods
• create page layouts for content, home, index and special pages
• design simple forms

For each step, Donna will outline the fundamentals and show examples from small and large website projects. But most of the time will be hands-on -you work on your own project, ask questions and discuss with the group.

Day 2: Building beautiful sites using CSS - Russ Weakley

On day two you will build your website from the ground up - starting with structural markup, adding accessible markup and then styling your layout using CSS.

You will learn:

• how to create well structured, accessible markup
• the basics of CSS including rule sets, selectors, shorthand rules, inheritance and the cascade.
• how to structure efficient CSS files
• how to create a full CSS layout from a flat graphic mockup
• how to deal with browser issues including specific browsers such as IE5,IE6 and IE7.
• how to create a resolution dependent layout
• how to create CSS for printing and hand held devices

Dates

Canberra - Monday 31 March and Tuesday 1 April

Melbourne - Thursday 3 April and Friday 4 April

Sydney - Monday 28 April and Tuesday 29 April

Brisbane - Thursday 1 May and Friday 2 May

Register

More information and registration here: http://maxdesign.com.au/workshop2008/

[This post is part of the Evil Election Eve Blog Carnival]

It is less than 24 hours until Australia’s Federal Election. And I’m about to start panicking.

The same thing happens to me every time an election is called. I start with good intentions - this year I’m going to pay attention to the issues, figure out who really deserves to get my vote, learn how the voting system works and vote very deliberately.

But every time, as the time approaches, I get more and more overwhelmed. The media is saturated with crap that immediately makes me avoid it. Stuff ends up in my letter-box that is full of rhetoric and no substance. Advertising features people’s faces (which I have a chance of remembering), but I have to vote by name (which I have no chance of remembering). Pretty soon into a campaign I’m so over it that I block everything out.

Then there’s the overhead of trying to figure out the voting system. I’ve lived in NSW & ACT. State elections have a different system to the Federal Election. I’ve never gotten it straight and haven’t a clue how it works.

So I get to this point. It is 4.50pm, I have to leave the house in less than an hour to go to dinner, then vote early next morning. So I have less than an hour to figure out who I want to vote for and how to make my vote count. Oh, and I have to figure out where to vote, given I’m registered in NSW and live in ACT.

Given this marvelous thing called the internet, that should be OK. I’m sure someone sent me email this week about how to vote. I’m sure there is some good information out there.

But, really, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to spend the mental effort of figuring out where to start, finding what I want, cross-checking it for bias, absorbing it, remembering for tomorrow morning.

So I’m going to do what I always do. Walk into the polling booth, looking like I know what I’m doing. Ignore all the people thrusting how-to-vote cards at me. Get inside, wish I had a how-to-vote card. Vote for the same party I always do.

Who knew? I always thought Andy Clarke was a great visual designer and CSS dude. But what I didn’t know was that he’s a closet information architect.

I attended his workshop today at Web Directions. In this, and in his book (Transcending CSS), he spent a big chunk of time talking about meaning and structure - about identifying meaningful content chunks, using semantic naming for pieces of content and using microformats to make small pieces of content more usable.

I know this isn’t usually considered to be information architecture, but I personally think it is. What is more IA than analysing content, finding meaning and creating macro and micro-structures? That sounds like IA to me.

Andy talked about the idea that ‘designers’ should be involved in the development (or at least planning) of code structures. I think this is a perfect place for IA folks to also be involved (if they are involved in a project) - to best figure out how detailed content chunks can be used. But I don’t think this is only an IA role - it is important that everyone thinks at the broad level of communication design and the detailed level of communication execution.

And it was a fantastic workshop, wonderfully supported by The Jam & Paul Weller.

Oz-IA finished yesterday. For me the best part is catching up with smart colleagues I don’t see enough of (and smart friends I see often). And I certainly got to do a lot of that. I hardly stopped talking!

There were a couple of outstanding presentations (especially Matt’s semantic analysis preso which never fails to stun me). There were some good, solid, interesting case studies (my favourites were the news website redesign, user research in secondlife and the mentoring case study). There were some good theory presentations (Steve’s statistics, Iain’s page length).

There were a few disappointing presentations*. I won’t name them - that would hardly be professional ;). But there were a couple of presentations that were content-poor, impractical or overly general. There was one that I found quite condescending (without sufficient rigor to back up particular criticisms).

I mention this as I know we can do better. I know a large proportion of the IA folks in Australia and I know that you have the skills and the content. So I would like to encourage the organisers to focus on presentation quality next year - get the call for proposals out earlier, involve the community in choosing and be more transparent. And I would like to encourage all you smart folks to put in a proposal.

[* Who am I to criticise, after the most disastrous start to a presentation ever. It was bad enough that I had a screaming backache and forgot to grab my water and notes, but then the lapel mic battery died - I hate using handheld mics - if I can't talk with my hands, I can't express myself.]

What happens when an information architect has a lot of wine? She creates a complicated organisation scheme…

I’ve told lots of people about my wine rack, but hadn’t written about it, so I thought I should show just one aspect of my obsession with organising stuff. People always laugh at me when I tell them about this. Not sure why - after all, I do organise messy content for a living.

So here’s my grand scheme:

• White wines are on the top half of the rack, red on the bottom
• Each shelf holds a different varietal (some have more than one shelf)
• Each shelf is sequenced in vintage order (oldest at the left, newest at the right

That’s OK, isn’t it? Better than some random method.

Well, where I think it tips into the slightly crazy is this… Each bottle has a sticky label on the end that lists where we got it, when we got it and a range of years to drink. It is a little label, so I can’t fit much else.

Oh, and if I got it from a wine club, I tape the tasting notes to tthe bottle.

Actually, this doesn’t sound mad to me— it is just useful. I can look along the row, find an older wine that needs to be drunk right now, and know it will be good. And that’s pretty much exactly what I need my organisation scheme to do.

I could, of course, create a computerised catalogue of it all. I could stack it randomly, and have my computer re-organise it on the fly. David Weinberger would call that a second-order of organisation. Believe me it is tempting, but until I go completely mad or everything turns spime, I’ll stick with my first-order scheme.

And I’ll have a lovely time tidying it every month or so when a new order arrives.

In the past week or so I’ve come across many situations where a comment or question has been posed by someone in ‘our field’, and someone has responded from a related field. Unfortunately the comment from the relation has been something like “I can’t believe your field doesn’t know that - we’ve known it and have been writing about it for years”.

It always comes across in that condescending tone - the tone that says ‘gosh, I can’t believe how stupid you all are’.

Although I understand how this happens - you can be so deeply involved in what you know that you can’t believe other people don’t know it - it is unfair, unrealistic and conceited to to expect everyone to chase your precious knowledge. In many cases people don’t even know your field is interested, in some cases they don’t know how you describe it, in some cases you just haven’t made your information easily available.

But gosh, there is so much to know. I have been doing information architecture and interaction design work for seven years, professionally, non-stop. I have done many projects, studied, taught and mentored. I have read hundreds of books on many topics. I regularly read stack of blogs. And every single day I find something new that would help me do my work and that I wish I knew before (e.g. last week Andrew told me about Peter Drucker, but he didn’t make me feel small about it). It is just not possible to know everything relevant.

So if you see someone naively interested in something you already know there are two ways to tackle it. You can take the self-centred view and get huffy about the fact that these idiotic people don’t know what you know; or you can take a user-centred view and look at how you (or your field) has communicated and made information available, then do something to fix that (yes, that was the leadingest* answer I have ever written).

And guess what - you can also politely help the person who is keen to know about your area of speciality. Given them some decent resources to follow up and some smart people to talk to. Use their enthusiasm to spread the word in their field.

Your word will get out, you can stop feeling superior and the world will be a smarter place.

(* leadingest is not a word, but for some reason it makes me feel like Bruce Sterling)

Yes, it has been almost a week since the IA Summit finished and I am only now posting my wrap up (the long back-story combines a long flight, my birthday, a server rebuild, an office reorganisation and waitressing - you don’t want to know).

I attend a lot of conferences and the IA Summit is by far my favourite. It has to be - I wouldn’t offer to be program chair for something I didn’t care deeply about.

My IA Summit experiences fall into three categories (yes, I am an IA): content, personal and life/business:

My favourite content experiences were:

• Joshua Prince-Ramus’ keynote which showed how function contributes to form, how end-to-end design process works and great visualisations
• Again doing the IA Slam, and again spending more time watching how teams work together than producing the deliverable
• Andrew Hinton’s presentation was great - he did an excellent job talking about communities of practice, how to design for them and wrapped up the discussion about whether IA is a community of practice or a discipline. This was particularly neat as I think the three elements met the needs of a large proportion of the audience
• Remembering that much of the world is not like me, in Jason Hobbs’ Communal computing and shared spaces of usage: a study of Internet Cafes in developing contexts
• Seeing Grant Campbell combine a research paper with observations from the conference (this was amazing)

Personal:

• Hanging out with Lynn, Mags, Eric, Chris, Matthew & Dan (I have this niggling bad feeling about mentioning just a few people out of everyone I like, but I have hung out with these guys for 3-4 conferences and they are fab!)
• Standing on the edge of the grand canyon
• Being introduced to Escargot & Thai tea (in separate meals!)
• Talking about name dropping with name-dropees
• Looking around at lunch on the first day and seeing 500 people in animated discussion
• Being amazed at how many people went out of their way to stop and say thanks for the work I did
• Talking to my family every day for as long as we liked (and knowing it wasn’t costing much)
• Doing the ‘Star Trek Experience’ with skeptical, grown-up Trekkies (and squealing & jumping out of my seat)
• Meeting Andrew Hinton face-to-face (we had previously met only in Second Life)
• Having a couple of people ask about my Fair Trade T-shirt

For the life/business category, the IA Summit always feels like the start to my work year. It is a chance to stop barelling along, think about what I do, what I like and what it means. I have made the most significant career decisions at this conference - in 2004 I realised how connected I was to this community; in 2005 I realised I wasn’t doing what I wanted and quit my consulting job; in 2006 I realised that university study wasn’t giving me what I needed and quit in order to study what I wanted. This year’s decision was not so profound, but solid (I’ll elaborate further tomorrow but would like to say thanks to Jared, Dan, Lou, & Ant for kicking me in the pants).

See you next year!

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