Groundhogs In The Source Code: Navigation as Cross-Channel Sense Making

Today on Radio Johnny, Jeff Parks talks with Andrea Resmini from the 2012 IA Summit in New Orleans about his presentation “Groundhogs In The Source Code: Navigation as Cross-Channel Sense Making”. Andrea describes the ultimate goal of navigation is that of helping the end user understand the places and spaces in which they interact. Drawing on Hollywood movies like Groundhog Day and Source Code – and classic stories such as Dracula as metaphors – Andrea takes listeners on a quest to help them find their way through a variety of interactions.

Quotes

“I was trying to make the point… when we say ‘navigate’ we really want to say ‘understand’. It seems simple to make but it’s actually very, very complex if we don’t structure the experience of the reward.”

“The people who are actually investigating video games, and in general interactive spaces, are always dealing with how do you look at this – how do you criticize this, how do you look at these [spaces], and how do you theorize…I look at a game, for example, as if it were a story and that’s how I criticize. Whereas another faction says that, no that is not the way as a game is a very peculiar thing and it should be investigated as an actionable space – the story has nothing to do with how we should look at a game…. a number of people are recomposing this fracture [noting] both of these are true…and the way we can do that is the way quests are built.”

“I think the best point for us as IA and UX designers is that quests are actually a way to reconnect fragmented pieces of a narrative into one single cohesive experience. Which was the whole point of the talk since we were talking about cross-channel experiences, which are by definition something that is very fragmented over a number of devices, environments, places, and contexts. Quests seem to be a good way to think about a way of reconnecting something, not just the story.”

Notes

* Follow Andrea Resmini on Twitter @resmini
* 2013 IA Summit announced for Baltimore
* Andrea is one of the founders and Associate Editor at the Journal of Information Architecture
* Thank you to sponsors IA Summit for your support.