Yu Centrik

It’s 1 in the morning and here I am back in Montreal after the last day of the conference: quite the positive experience.

Some of the IA Summit’s strongest attributes are the excellent ambiance, where knowledge sharing and constant encouragement from the event organizers enlightens this unique opportunity to spend four days in the company of world-renowned information architects (it’s not every day that we find ourselves in the same room as Jesse James Garret, Jared Spool, Peter Morville, etc.).  Inevitably, there were also some weaknesses, such as a few less interesting subjects and unprepared speakers.

For those who follow our information architecture training or those who are just interested in the subject, I highly recommend you find your way down there.  Me, I’m already waiting for February 2009 when the next summit will take place in Memphis, Tennessee.

On this third day of the IA Summit, a specific presentation in particular inspired me: ”Extending the gaming experience to conventional UIs” by John Ferrara.  It showed us how concepts based in video games can be applied to more traditional products like desktop applications, websites and traditional intranets.

Other interesting moments were Peter Morville’s ”search patterns”, a collection of online search examples which could be quite useful, and the discussion panel about prototype modes which showed the importance of using prototypes as validation elements for the different design steps of a project, whether it’s a paper wireframe or XHTML.

Tomorrow is the last day and let me just say that the conference is moving so quickly that if I blink I just might miss it.

As expected, the day started off with Jared Spool’s keynote.  Always funny and provocative, his presentation was based on an expression the left everyone perplexed: “User-centered Design has never worked”.  After digesting everything he said, my understanding was that he questioned using UCD systematically in every situation, in every case, and on every project, without first asking whether all the steps and all the tools are really necessary or pertinent.  In fact, we already understand this and use the standard user-centered design method only as a toolbox here at Yu Centrik.

A few other interesting presentations filled the rest of the day.  Luke Wroblewski’s “Content Page Design Best Practices” is a good example.  He described how to optimize internal pages to compensate for the fact that a growing number of visitors are bypassing the welcome page.

But the strongest point of the Summit is the free exchange between the professionals attending.  For example, a wall of deliverables shares ideas for better communication of design solutions, allowing us to actively discuss why the creators chose one approach over another.

It’s also worth mentioning that our friends from Techsmith were present – as always - and also that Axure 5.0 will be available soon, though they are still working on a Mac version (according to the company representatives).

So here I am, at the most important event for information architects, the IA Summit being held in Miami this year.  It’s the moment that the community reunites to share domain-specific knowledge and advance the discipline.

The real conference starts tomorrow, Saturday.  Today is a pre-conference day.  I assisted in Peter Morville’s training session (one of the two fathers of IA - the other is Lou Resenfeld… that’s right, IA has two dads and no mom).  The presentation, “Information Architecture 3.0″, was an interesting talk about the integration of web 2.0 concepts such as user-generated content, social networking tools and dynamic pages with information architecture.

Saturday will be filled with small presentations and discussions which will be kicked off by Jared Spool’s Keynote address, a fact which guarantees us a few laughs to get the conference started on the right foot.

Greetings one and all!

World Usability Day will take place next November 8 and we would like to organize something for our business community. Nothing pretentious, but inviting enough to allow us to exchange ideas or projects outside of a work context. In this day and age of the Web 2.0, it is quite normal to sound the call and solicit ideas for content regarding the event we are planning. It was our thought to hold a type of “Pecha Kucha” evening here in the office on the 8^th, from 4 o’clock to 8 PM.

But what is “Pecha Kucha?”

Users of portable electronic devices must obviously deal with many constraints due to the characteristics of the devices themselves, such as screen size and limited data storage capacity. These aspects of interface design are relatively known and documented but what about the context in which users are using these devices? This is the question which concerned Akseli Anttila and Younghee Jung, Nokia (Finland), researchers whose work was presented on April 28 at CHI 2006.

The results of two studies were presented: one conducted in 2000 with users aged 16 to 23 from California and the other in 2004 with users aged 20 to 49 from Japan, Korea, and England.

This study is quite unique because of how the data was collected. Researchers combined different techniques borrowed from the field of ethnography. The test subjects were asked to keep a daily Media Journal in which they detailed how they used their portable electronic devices throughout the day. Another technique consisted of having the test subjects take digital photos of their environment in order to put together a visual profile of their personal universe. They were also invited to put together a collage of those photos to illustrate their perception of how their portable electronic devices affect their lives. Interviews and focus groups were then organized to discuss the data collected throughout the study.

These methods enabled the researchers to collect a large amount of data without having to follow each test subject on an individual basis, throughout the duration of the study. This would have been impossible because of budget and logistical constraints.

In addition to the few cultural differences observed during the study, Anttila and Jung identified some basic truths about user contexts that were applicable to all groups observed and that should be taken into account when designing interfaces and developing content for portable electronic devices.

Here are the most important design drivers:

• Participants used the media on their portable electronics to avoid boredom

• The cellphone was the portable electronic device most used by participants

• The mobile telephone was used during mini-breaks between two activities (for example, on the bus to go to school)

• Users want to be able to stay alert to their surroundings (their attention is shared between the device and the world around them)

• Test subjects played different roles within their circle of friends: they acted either as facilitator, distributor or consumer of media.

• Users are frequently interrupted and how to best manage these interruptions is an important consideration.

Other important results of this study: subjects don’t want to have to pay to navigate content but are willing to pay to download a media element, whether it be a ringtone, a specific song or a video.

To someone who is familiar with the portable electronics universe, there’s nothing new or surprising about these design drivers, however, in this case, the findings are supported by a study conducted using the recognized and respected ethnographical method.

Information system developers must find inspiration in these types of studies when they start to develop a new product. The Scandinavians are known for applying these principles to their work and the success of their designs only proves they are justified in doing so.