Top Tags

Tag information architecture

Entries 4 Total

iA Writer for Mac

Jun 10, ’11 8:29 AM

iA Writer for Mac

Information Architects have released iA Writer for Mac. The application accompanies iA Writer for iPad, which we featured here last September.

A Writer for Mac is a digital writing tool that makes sure that all your thoughts go into the text instead of the program. iA Writer has no preferences. It is how it is. It works like it works. Love it or hate it. It’s unique FocusMode allows me to think, spell and write at one sentence at a time. iA Writer is fast; it works without mouse. It automatically formats semantical entities such as headlines, lists, bold, strong, block quotes written in markdown.


To see how it works, have a go at watching this

iA Writer for Mac from Oliver Reichenstein on Vimeo.

Comments (0)

7 Steps to a Kick-Ass UX Portfolio

Apr 19, ’11 11:40 AM

7 Steps to a Kick-Ass UX Portfolio

Soundtrack: “Homesick” Kissy Sell Out Featuring Oh Snap!

“I was reminded over Twitter of a post I made to the Interaction Design Association list regarding the design of a UX portfolio for someone looking to move into their next great job. Here is the edited version of that post.

Question: I need to create portfolio to show my ability to design end-to-end user experiences with examples of design proposals, scenarios, use cases, interaction flows, wireframes, UX architecture, visual designs and specifications. I am looking for guidance and examples for how to create an interesting portfolio.”

You already have all the tools you need, you just don’t realize it yet.

The first step is to back away and re-imagine the problem space. For this particular one, you don’t need to necessarily go all the way back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but pretty close. Getting work to put a head over your roof and food on the table would seem to be the most basic way to set the problem and solution – needing a job. This doesn’t really require white-boarding and blue ocean strategy. The next step is always harder, and I think most of us approach it bass-ackwards, as if every UX method, process, activity and deliverable we ever did was wiped from our memory like some godforsaken episode of Lost, leaving us quivering, alone, and drooling over a half-eaten pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Instead of applying at least the semblance of UX to our own career development (and portfolio design), we jump right into the visual design and copywriting of our last 4 successful projects (leaving out our failures – just kidding – I’ll get to this), crank open Photoshop, or Omnigraffle, Visio (shudder), or InDesign and begin from the end – our portfolio. I think this sucks. It is an affront the very craft we say we love.

What is the first thing we usually do when we take on a new UX project of almost any size and scope? If you answered “Kickoff Meeting” – then you get the cookie. What I mean though is not the traditional kick-off meeting with a bunch of knuckleheads gathered around a conference table with fluorescent lights and stale baked goods from the local caterer. I mean engage in some of the following activities:

1. Project Definition, Goals and Objectives: Ultimately this should be finding and getting your next perfect (or near perfect, or at least your next least sucking job/contract/gig). You need to have a vision of who you want to be in 2 years, not just that you want to eat next week.

“Designers have a prescriptive job. We suggest how the world might be; we are futurists to some extent,” said Bridget Botja de Mozota.

Have a vision for where you want to be, and sketch out a strategic roadmap for how you think you can get there. Don’t worry — that roadmap can and may include picking up some freelance gigs just to keep the rain off your head and a scotch in your hand.

2. Competitive Analysis and Research: Identify and research the top 5 companies or agencies you would love to work for. I think most UX Designers have this list floating around in their head, even if they never admit it. It could be a top tier design agency like IDEO or frog; it could be reinventing the way social justice entrepreneurs fund their next innovation – anything – but write it out; research those opportunities; gather data about the way they phrase their job requirements.

Then identify at least 1 or two people at those companies and stalk them – virtually. Check them out on LinkedIn — try to find out what in their past: their writing, blogging, publishing, and tweeting – got them hired to this dream position. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What do you need to learn, or skills you need to acquire to get where those people are now? This is often called the “Design Gap,” the difference between where you are today and where you want to be.
  • What does your T shaped skill-set look like? What additional disciplines should you spend time on? Great at wireframing, but terrible at doing remote usability testing? Perhaps you should focus on that. But make sure you focus your learning on things you want to do in the future — remember, this is moving towards a future version of yourself. Align you skill enhancing activities with your goals.
  • What soft skills should you focus on improving? Do you talk constantly? Too fast? Do you take forever to get to a point? Are you judgmental? If you need to become better at communication — either verbal or written, do you have a plan in place?
  • What ingrained, annoying behaviors and personality defects have prevented you from succeeding in the past? Be honest about this – write it down and stick it on your monitor. One personality defect I have is that I rush to judgement to quickly, sending off scathing, sometimes biting comments without thinking, so I have been trying really hard to be more empathetic – to engage my mirror neurons and put myself in the shoes of the person I am responding to. It’s not easy, this behavior is ingrained and toxic – but I have acknowledged it, and trying to temper my communications accordingly.

3. Stakeholder Interviews: Use your network of friends, friends of friends, school connections, IxDA, IAI, SIGCHI, UPA, whatever – to engage with people that make hiring decisions at companies like the ones you want to work at. Have a simple list of 3 or 4 questions you would ask them about what they look for in a portfolio. Let them tell you what the portfolio should show, how it should be communicated, and at what level of details. While you’re at it, observe everything from their mannerisms, affect, language to how they answer the questions.

Then take this information combined with the information gleaned from activity #2 above – and craft at least 1 straw-man persona based on that information. You’re designing your portfolio (like a product or solutions) to meet a need of a target audience which means that you need a persona that identifies those decision makers (hiring managers), and their goals, needs, pain-points, desires, background, aspirations, work habits, etc. Be explicit in the detail, but remember – you will never show this persona to anyone – EVER.

4. User Scenarios: Write at least 1 if not 2 User Scenarios, or narratives, from the perspective of the hiring manager. Write into the narrative a day in the life: all the people they interact with, and their interactions with the team they manage. Make sure that if you can – identify other people on the team and bring them to life. Hiring decisions are rarely left to just one person. Write some dialog, if you feel inspired. The key is to humanize these decision makers, place yourself in their shoes, and understand that you are designing your portfolio as a means to solving a problem *they* have — ignore your problem of needing a job. That’s not their concern.

5. Narrative Writing: Find one solid story that you can tell from your previous or current position that tells a complete story of your skills, background, and thought processes. This is far better than showing wireframes across 10 different projects. Would you rather see 10 different decontextualized sex scenes or one epic movie with a love scene? Which do you think will get you the job?

Tell a story — make it compelling, and … wait for it… be honest about when you failed, how you dealt with it, and what you learned. Do not be some douchebag that frames failure as being everyone’s fault, or state something meaningless and vapid like “I was just too passionate about making sure it was the most elegant, mind blowing social buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, and the rest of the team just lacked the desire to be as focused as me.” Save it for someone stupid enough to believe that load of crap – real hiring managers are human beings that want authentic engagement – stop re-writing your past like some PR press release. In fact, move in the opposite direction and PWN that failure. Every project has some failures, and every project has to deal with the realities of resources, time, commitments, team dynamics and dickhead stakeholders, clients, or boss’ wife that wants some button green. Professionals take ownership and losers point fingers.

6. Craft a  Portfolio: From the story you have crafted as a long form narrative — which will never be shared — craft a portfolio that tells your story, in context, to your audience. Make sure it addresses their needs, goals, and desires from their perspective. The portfolio should be concise, easily understandable, and provide a richer picture of you. It should represent the value you bring to an organization — things that can’t be found on your backward looking resume.

7. Plan for everything: Choose the best tools to tell the story. Never count on an Internet connection when you finally do get in front of the hiring manager. Make print and web versions. Make them downloadable. Send your entire story to these people when they ask for a resume. Then the interview becomes a conversation focused on the two most important things: Are you a good fit (personality/culture/demeanor)?; and How you will make their lives easier so they can go home early, play Legos with their kids, and enjoy a quiet evening with their spouse?

Good Luck. Everything above are just my random thoughts.
@semanticwill

Comments (2)

Ambient Findability: Book Review

Dec 15, ’08 4:28 PM
Ambient Findability

Ambient Findability

Information Architecture (that is – one of the things I do) – the words themselves are enough to cause the eyes of most executives to glaze over, and of course, my grandmother, who is still upset that I turned down an Ivy education and I didn’t become a lawyer (“why do you think I worked so hard, even cleaning houses for the rich gentiles, if not so you would have this opportunity)- so – on Information Architecture–it’s abstract, likely to be complicated and expensive and unlikely to produce near-term revenue, much less a measurable profit.

“Ambient Findability” – these words won’t help the average executive much either. Even my Microsoft Word application doesn’t like findability – it keeps suggesting that I change it to fundability (there’s a certain perverse logic here because, as I will suggest below, findability will lead to fundability – of course – I am the master of perverse logic – so let’s play with this!).

So I hesitate to say it – Ambient Findability is a great new book about an increasingly important aspect of Information Architecture.  Wait! Stop! Before you tune me out, hear me out.

Companies today realize that push approaches to marketing are less and less effective. As I have written about elsewhere, we are entering the era of reverse markets.  Ask business executives to define a market and they will likely say that it is a place where vendors can find customers and sell them more and more stuff.  Instead, we need to view markets through the reverse lens of customers who are trying to find appropriate vendors at relevant times and get the most value they can out of the their vendor. Powerful forces are re-shaping markets to make this reverse market lens much more helpful in determining how to create value.

If businesses are going to succeed in the future, they need to master pull approaches to marketing – how do you get potential customers to seek you out and how do you pull complementary resources together to become ever more helpful to customers? These pull approaches hinge upon the ability to improve findability. So, what does that mean? Peter Morville, the author of Ambient Findability (and, incidentally, one of the founding fathers of the discipline of information architecture), helps the reader with a dictionary-style definition:

Find-a-bil-i-ty n

a. The quality of being locatable or navigable

b. The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate

c. The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval

For those who are interested, Morville posted a fascinating blog entry, which I shared with many Gather Pre-Sims, preceding his book by a few years where he explores the relationship between findability and information architecture.

Later in the book, Morville sums up why executives need to pay attention: “. . . . findability will be a key source of competitive advantage. Finders, keepers; losers, weepers.” Blunt, but accurate.  In a world of increasing choice, findability becomes an essential dimension of competition.  Of course, it’s always been important – it’s the wisdom behind the maxim in retailing that there are only three things that matter: location, location, and location.

But now the traffic is not just flowing down well-defined city streets – it is working its way through the global web from link to link in highly idiosyncratic ways. And it’s not just the local retailers that are competing for the customer’s attention and wallet – it is every vendor and information producer around the world.  In this environment, becoming findable makes the difference between life and death.

Morville believes that push and pull will continue to co-exist, but he suggests that

“. . . in today’s attention economy, fitness requires a new balance between push and pull.  The playing field has shifted, and yet few companies understand the new rules. In their bias towards push, marketing is missing opportunities to make products more findable.”

Morville comments that a lot of businesses worry about usability of their products or their web sites, but they fail to recognize that “findability precedes usability.”  If a potential customer can’t find you, usability doesn’t really matter.

Findability is not just about new design or marketing techniques.  Morville observes that “findability is at the center of a quiet revolution in how we define authority, allocate trust, and make decisions.”  Its implications are profound not just for those who want to be found, but for those who are doing the finding.  As the dust jacket of the book maintains, “what we find changes who we become.” This is a thoughtful meditation on the implications for both finder and findee in a world where finding becomes increasingly important and challenging.

Morville provides us with a very well-written, even eloquent, book, drawing much needed attention to a key dimension of competition going forward. Business executives of all types will profit from reading this provocative book.  At the very least, it will put squarely on the table some key questions:

  • How findable are your products and services?
  • How findable is your business?
  • How findable are you personally?
  • What can you do to improve your findability for those who matter?

For those who want to find Morville, he has begun a blog findability.org.

I have a lot more to say about this interesting new book – but I just read it, and need to spend a bit more time digesting it, and as I do, I will post my thoughts both here and in the comments.

-Will
————————————————-

Note: Will Evans is a User Experience Architect for a risk modeling software company in Washington D.C. Previously he was responsible for designing the Gather.com user experience as well as Kayak.com. He has published articles about Information Architecture, User Experience, and Interaction Design. He has taught User Centered Design and Building Usable Enterprise Architectures to both small and large corporate audiences.

Comments (0)

The Design of Information Graphics

Dec 18, ’04 5:42 PM

Abstract

The design of information graphics requires the combination of text and images to explain a situation, process, event, procedure, and things. Topics can be from abstract to concrete; can give a general overview or specific details. Depending on their intent, information graphics have different enabling characteristics and utilize different strategies in order to communicate their meaning. While visual and verbal information offer unique perspectives on a topic, the data that they express often is redundant. Depending on the viewer, the application, the setting, and the intent, this can have both a positive and negative effect. This article will give a brief overview of the theories involved with the design of information graphics, a practical discussion of their ramifications, and will conclude with a case study. This article has the following sections: Introduction, Theory, Praxis: Case Study, and Conclusion.

Introduction


Theory

Information graphics are used when neither language nor imagery fully explain a given topic. Graphics shouldn’t be inserted just as an “attention-getting device, or a mere relief from text.” (Sevilla, 2002, ch. 7, ¶1) Rather, the two forms should be integrated in a manner that compliments, supports or amplifies the specific roles that each have. Each enable the viewer to understand the topic in different ways. While redundancy does play an issue in information graphics, the visual and verbal strategies have unique characteristics that add to the total comprehension of a topic.

Information displayed in visual form has many benefits. One reason is that illustrations offer additional perspectives to the viewer. (Sevilla, 2002). Information such as location, details, relationships, cause and effect data, transformation, and spatial structures is often best communicated in the visual form. “Humans can grasp the content of a picture much faster than they can scan and understand a text sentence because they have the ability to recognize the spatial configuration of elements in a picture and find the relationships between such elements quickly.” (Kamada & Kawai, 1991, pg.1)

Information that is communicated using the verbal medium has many positive aspects as well. Since text is understood sequentially, it is an excellent method for communicating procedural information, abstract concepts, and qualifying conditions. Pavio is quick to point out that verbal information pertains to language subsystems and does not necessarily translate to speech. Text is verbal information although it is received through the visual system. (Ware, 2000)

Instructional Design

Often, the purpose of an information graphic is instruction. Mayer’s research in this area is of particular interest, specifically in advance organizers, reading strategies, and how text can be written to support understanding. (Wright, 1995; Wright, 1998) Information graphics can serve as advance organizers to assist novices in setting up a conceptual model of a new topic. A conceptual model is defined as providing an appropriate (accurate, consistent, and complete) representation of a target system. (Norman as cited in Wu, Dale & Bethel, 1998) Because the visual and verbal realms support different tasks and different types of learners, each should be used in conjunction to reduce cognitive workloads and possibilities of errors. Thuring, Hannemann, & Haake wrote that “Psycholinguistic research emphasizes the relation between coherence and information processing: A document is coherent if a reader can construct a mental model from it that corresponds to facts and relations in a possible world.” (1995, pg.58) By combining the visual and verbal, an information graphic utilizes the strengths of each in order to present a unified concept. This serves both visual and verbal learners by activating many areas of the brain. (Sevilla, 2002)

Redundancy

One of the concerns mentioned before was redundancy. Redundancy comes into play when images and text accomplish the same task and each can stand independently. Shriver describes different types of redundancy in how prose and graphics interact. (Schriver, 1997; Schriver, 2000) Complementary, supplementary, redundant, stage-setting, and juxtapositional redundancy explain how visual and verbal content is used for different purposes, importance, and the ramifications of each pairing.

Redundancy can help to deepen understanding and lengthen retention by providing multiple hooks for a novice learner. As mentioned before, an advance organizer, such as an information graphic can help to supplant a missing or incomplete mental model. However, for an expert, the duplicate communications can be seen as noise because it imposes an additional workload. By providing redundant information in multiple forms, the expert’s task completion time is actually increased and frustration levels may rise as well. It is important to take your audience, their learning styles, level of expertise, and the complexity of their goals into consideration when utilizing information graphics.

Dual-Coding

Sensory inputs have been classified many times and many ways. Bertin categorized sign systems as belonging to auditory or visual information processing systems. (Ware, 2000) Baddelay describes a working memory model which consists of a central executive system that coordinates information from two storage subsystems; the visuospatial sketchpad (verbal) and the phonological loop (spatial). (Wickens, 1998) Paivio’s dual-coding theory proposed that the information stored in working memory were imagens, the mental representation of visual information, and logogens, the mental representation of language information. (Ware, 2000) As mentioned before, verbal information is not solely related to auditory language. It is processed by the same subsystems that support reading, writing, understanding and producing speech, and logical thought. The verbal and visual loops distribute incoming messages across both systems and reduce the mental workload of each system.

Split-Attention

Designers must be very careful of split-attention in their information graphics. Split-attention occurs when the viewer is unclear about what the verbal and visual segments are contributing within an information graphic. When a viewer is confused, error rates and cognitive workload increase. The enabling ability of an information graphic is taken away and performance deficits are produced. There are several reasons why an information graphic may produce the split-attention effect. One reason is that the verbal and visual information is supporting different tasks. We can relate this back to Schriver’s redundancy model. If the visual and verbal systems are supporting different tasks (i.e. the verbal information is supporting the visual information) then much of the information is duplicated and the viewer’s attention is split as a result. (S)he would be forced to go back and forth between the visual and verbal in order to get a clear understanding.

Information density is another cause of split-attention. When there is too much information available within an information graphic, a viewer can become confused as to what is important in the display. Detailed information should be used to support the purpose of the graphic. If too much detail, or reality, is used, a viewer’s attention could be pulled in too many different directions.

Another reason that split-attention occurs is when the information graphic is created poorly or is not naturally mapped. (Schriver, 1997) Poor or erroneous illustrations can interfere with understanding and confuse the viewer by forcing him/her to try to make a connection between the visual and verbal data. Finally, there has been significant research into what types of information is best communicated in what manner and for what purpose. Mayer, Gentner, and Schriver are just a few who have researched how visualizations and other performance supports, like advance organizers, enable or hinder a viewer in understanding a topic. (Shayo and Olfman, 1998; Schriver, 1997; Ware, 2000) One example of this is that abstract concepts are best communicated verbally. When visualizations are provided for an abstract concept, cognitive narrowing occurs, cognitive variability is reduced, and the abstract becomes concrete. This can cause split-attention if the verbal communication focused on the abstract and the visual information is focused on concrete. A designer must take into consideration all of these factors when creating an enabling information graphic.

Cognitive Workload

The final consideration in creating an information graphic is cognitive workload. Very briefly: Working memory is a finite resource; it is transient and is limited to capacity and time. (Byrne, 1996) It is affected by fatigue, environment, motivation, anxiety, mental models, age, time of day, technological aptitude, disabilities, domain knowledge, structure, sensory interference, tasks, framing, priming, beer and many other factors that have been previously discussed. (Shneiderman, 1984; West et al, 2002; Trumbo, 1998; Ware, 2000) What marks information graphics as an enabling strategy is that they can reduce or increase cognitive load based on their application. When information is split up between the visual and verbal, Paivio theorizes that cognitive load is reduced because the information is dispersed across two subsystems. Also, by creating multiple hooks, the effort to create long-term memory is reduced. However, if the viewer is an expert, and the information graphic if created in such a way that the visual and verbal information is redundant and neither adds any unique value, then cognitive load is increased.

Praxis: CaseStudy

I chose to create an information graphic of the diagnostic process for cervical cancer. A woman who receives abnormal results from preliminary testing is not given much information. She is often told that the atypical cells that were found could mean anything from “nothing to cancer.” There are no sources of information that provide a complete overview of what the diagnostic process is, what the probabilities of diagnosis are, what the statistics are, and what all the medical jargon actually means. The “C” word brings up primal fears and lack of knowledge only makes those fears stronger.

An information graphic such as the one I created, is not meant to be an all-encompassing one-stop shop for cervical cancer information. It is meant for a very specific audience: a woman who received atypical results from a Papanicolaou test (Pap smear) and has been diagnosed with the Human Papillomavirus. The woman is at the very beginning stages of the diagnostic process and probably has never heard of HPV. HPV is a STD and it is estimated that at least 24 million Americans have the virus. However, because symptoms are rare, most people do not know they have it. The purpose of the graphic is:

  • to inform the woman what HPV is and assure her that it is not life-threatening or rare;
  • to give a brief overview of the entire diagnostic process;
  • to define medical terms used in results;
  • to reassure her that the probability of being diagnosed with invasive cancer is very low;
  • to reassure her that survival rate of cervical cancer is quite high as long as the cancer was diagnosed early;
  • to encourage yearly screening in the future.

Finding the data for this graphic was difficult. While the basic information was easy to find, many of the cancer sites have conflicting information about treatment and statistics. One major cause of the inconsistency is that treatment for the disease is rapidly evolving. Also, it was difficult to find statistical data to use. Because I had a very specific purpose for my information graphic, I could not find data that directly related to this topic. I had to get total numbers and then apply them to my particular use case. (Caveat: most of this way as accurate as I could find as of the last date consistent data was available, June 2004).

I am satisfied with the information graphic. Much of the information a woman needs to know is on the graphic. What can be visualized, has. I think is serves the above mentioned goals. However, the layout of the information could be improved. I also think that images of normal and atypcial cells could have provided an additional view as to what exactly cervical cancer is. Unfortunately, I could not find any examples of this. If anyone has access to additional information or supporting images, I would love to hear from you.

Conclusion

Information graphics serve many purposes. They provide a general overview of a topic while providing supporting details. There are many things to take into consideration when creating an information graphic. Redundancy and dual-coding can support or hinder cognitive workload of an individual as a result of split-attention. Strategies should be incorporated to support the natural mapping of topic to display. For example, concrete topics benefit from detailed displays while abstract ones benefit from verbal ones. To conclude, information graphics have several enabling qualities that support viewer understanding of a topic. How a designer uses the visual and verbal systems within a display should support the viewer and the purpose of the information graphic.

————————————–

Note: Will Evans is a software information architect for a risk modeling software company in Boston. Previously he was the information architect responsible for designing the Gather user experience. He has published articles about Information Architecture, User Experience, and Interaction Design. He has taught User Centered Design and Building Usable Enterprise Architectures to both small and large corporate audiences.

He enjoys publishing his musings, ideas, poetry and pre-Simulationist and post-modern critiques of modern culture and aesthetics. He drinks way to much coffee and needs more sleep but is really trying to change that.



References

Byrne, M. (1996). A Computational Theory of Working Memory. CHI Doctoral Consortium. April 13-18, 1996. 31-32.

Kamada, T. & Kawai, S. (1991). A General Framework for Visualizing Abstract Objects and Relations. Transactions on Graphics. 10(1) 1-39.

Shneiderman, B. (1984). Response Time and Display Rate in Human Performance with Computers. Computing Surveys. 16 (3) 265-285.

Schriver, K.A. (2000). Readability formulas in the new millennium: what’s the use? ACM Journal of Computer Documentation 24 (3) 138-140.

Schriver, K.A. (1997). Dynamics in Document Design: Creating texts for readers. NY: Wiley.

Sevilla, C. (2002). Information Design Desk Reference. [Electronic Version] Crisp Learning. Retrieved March 31, 2003 from: http://www.books24x7.com

Thuring, M., Hannemann, J. & Haake, J.M. (1995). Hypermedia and Cognition: Designing for Comprehension. Communications of the ACM. 38 (8) 57-66.

Trumbo, J. (1998) Spatial memory and design: a conceptual approach to the creation of navigable space in multimedia design. Interactions. 5 (4) 26-34.

Ware, C. (2000). Information Visualization: Perception for Design. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

West, R., Murphy, K., Armilio, M., Craik, G., & Struss, D. (2002) Effects of time of day on age differences in working memory. The Journals of Gernotology. 57B (1) P3-P10.

Wickens, C, D., Gordon, S. E., Liu, Y. (1998). An Introduction to Human Factors Engineering. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Wright, P. (1995). Reading strategies, mental models and text design. ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation. 19 (3) 368-5.

Wright, P. (1998). Designing Information-supported Performance: The Scope for Graphics. ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation. 22 (4) 3-10.

Wu, C., Dale, N, & Bethel, L. (1998). Conceptual Models and Cognitive Learning Styles in Teaching Recursion. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Proceedings of the twenty-ninth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education. 30 (1) 292-296.

Comments (0)