Still a saddening lack of dinosaurs though.

With their February 24^th revelation of more features in the upcoming OS X Lion operating system, Apple may have taken its first steps toward an unfamiliar future… a future in which the file system does not exist.

Credit for this observation goes to Mike Rundle, who tweeted about being able to imagine “a future in which the Finder does not exist”. Documents would be associated with the apps that created them, like on the iPad. Mike went on to describe his vision in more detail, a vision in which users simply have apps. “Documents associated with them appear magically. Presto.” While this might sound like some kind of user experience utopia, I have a grave concern that eliminating a file system in this manner misses a huge audience.

Us.

While opening Pages to work on the family newsletter might make sense for casual home users of a computer system, it does not make sense in a professional context. In the professional world, we work on projects. Projects are composed of many different types of files. And yes, we might have the same apps open all day, but do we want to be forced to duplicate a hierarchy of information in every single application?

No.

Besides, “projects” are just one type of organizational scheme. As a user experience designer, I’ve seen a lot of professionals in other fields organizing a lot of stuff in a lot of different ways. So even attempts at inter-app organization around the concept of a project, such as Microsoft’s Project Center, are not effective replacements for an infinitely flexible organization scheme like simple folders.

Some Wheels Need Reinventing

The conversation that Mike’s comments sparked led us both to the conclusion that we still need a high-level organization system of some kind. And that is the challenge. It’s a challenge because that problem has already been solved by the file system. The challenge is to solve it better.

At Interaction11, Tim Wood called for designers to reject the “complacency artifacts” of the past, design patterns that have lost relevance in the modern world but continue to be used simply because that’s how things are done. He encouraged us to be bold enough to reinvent wheels that need reinventing, and that’s exactly where we’re at with file systems.

Gestural user interfaces, effortless portability, and ubiquitous network access… All these things and more are redefining how people interact with technology. UX designers need to recognize this and push themselves beyond the limits of our vision. Yes, we absolutely must continue observing people interacting with technology, analyzing those interactions, and synthesizing solutions that work in context. But what’s even more important now is that we rely on our raw creativity for that last part. There are old problems out there that need to be solved in new ways, and the file system is one of them.

——
Header image courtesy of Tim Wood.

Two parties and four hours after day 2 of the IA Summit 2009 closed. Day 3 opened with a low-key UX Book Salon organized by Lou Rosenfeld of Rosenfeld Media.

The UX Book Salons are an opportunity for people to get together to talk about the content, presentation, style and form of UX books (that we love or hate). For the publisher, these impromptu gatherings provide a valuable source of customer insight. And for me, I just like talking about books occasionally.

Yoni tickling the ivory. Photo courtesy of Jonell Gades

After a fairly soft start to the day, the next session was a fair smack in the brain muscles.

Matt Milan & Michael Dila: Innovation Parkour

In this presentation Matt & Michael presented their ideas on innovation – how to obtain a level of mastery such that we are unconsciously competent during the design process. They began by asking the question: Why do we do our best thinking when listening to angry music? It’s when we let everything go.

Parkour is a confrontation of the physical, built environment. It’s about the flow; and it’s fun. In parkour the practitioner doesn’t follow the paths laid down by the architect or city planner; rather they confront the structures and makes their own way.

When things become uncertain – in an emergency; in times of massive change – we need to observe, orient, decide and act (OODA) in a conscious, yet unconscious way.

The presenters discussed four stages of mastery:

1. Unconscious incompetence: we don’t know; and we aren’t aware.
2. Conscious incompetence: we don’t know, but now we know we don’t know.
3. Conscious competence: we know, but it requires conscious thought
4. Unconscious competence: we know, but we no longer require conscious thought before acting appropriately

How do we train to be free?

In a sport like tennis, the player practices drills for hours and hours, day after day. They do this so that, during a game, they no longer need to think about how to play a shot: they can instead concentrate on the strategy needed to beat their opponent.

Some practices are well defined, but bottomless (we never become ‘perfect’). Examples include tai chi, yoga, or design.

“The best design thinking is design doing.”

Kyle Soucy & Nassir Barday: Professional IA/UX Organizations: How to start up and run a successful local group

Given my involvement in the UX Book Club I thought I had to go along and hear what Kyle (UPA) and Nassir (IxDA) had to say about local groups. And I’m glad I did, although I didn’t leave happy.

Kyle and Nassir presented a very good overview of how one might go about setting up and running a local group based (loosely) around UX. They covered organizations such as UPA, IxDA, IAI, CHI and others, and looked at the presence of local groups around the world. They also discussed the pros and cons of forming local groups under the umbrella of one of these existing institutions.

In starting up a group the presenters advocated for just doing it. Pick a date and a venue and get the word out there. Team up with an existing organization only if and when it makes sense to do so. Make the meetings regular and consistent so that people can plan ahead to attend. And be communicative: let people know in advance what’s coming up.

The reason I walked out angry was simply that in the course of an hour-long presentation on IA/UX groups, with particular focus on starting up local groups, there was not a single mention of UX Book Club. I’m sure no one else in the room noticed; or cared; but in the space of four months UXBC has grown to over 1,000 people in 40+ locations, so I’d have thought a mention was warranted at least. Meh.

[I skipped lunch and the next session while I calmed down. That left the Closing Plenary...]

Jesse James Garrett: Closing Plenary

JJG’s closing address to the IA Summit caused quite a stir. For those people attending who’ve never identified themselves as Information Architects it seemed like a lot of fuss over nothing. From the stalwart IA crowd the reaction was mixed.

The crowd follows JJG as he wanders the room. Photo courtesy of Andrea Resmini

Jesse lamented the slow pace of innovation within the IA community; the lack of new ideas; the lack of a language of critique; and the lack of clear examples of ground-breaking information architecture. Where is the IA avant garde?

The full transcript of Jesse’s speech is available for reading here: http://jjg.net/ia/memphis/ and it’s well worth a read.

There was a great deal of applause, cheers, and then it was clearly over. As 5-minute madness got under way people started making their quiet goodbyes as the first departures headed for early flights home.

The conference was a great experience, although I won’t be back next year. But that’s a story for another day.

Title photo courtesy Todd Zaki Warfel

Day 2 rolled around far too fast, after a late night and some really engaging conversation. A leisurely breakfast at the famous Arcade Restaurant removed the cobwebs and prepared me for the day ahead. I missed the first session as a result, but we made up for it by having a round-table discussion on personas: how we use them; how we go about creating them; and when they are(n’t) appropriate to the project. There were a lot of good insights, and we managed to get through breakfast without setting up opposing camps.

The famous Arcade Restaurant in Memphis.

Richard Anderson & Craig Peters: Strategies for Enabling UX to Play a More Strategic Role

This working session was run over two timeslots, the aim being to allow participants to arrive at strategies that would work within their own context. Richard and Craig introduced a series of strategies commonly used by UX practitioners to help elevate the awareness and importance of the practice within their organizations. Participants then discussed each strategy, looking at why it might or might not work for them.

The first strategy presented was the “Just Say No” approach. Essentially: decline any project that doesn’t advance the prominence or importance of UX within the organization.

Participants generally felt that, whilst this approach may work for some organizations – busy agencies, for example, or internal UX teams already overburdened with work requests – however it works less well for UX teams attempting to build a presence. The counter approach – to take on all projects and over-deliver – seemed to be the preferred approach in building a UX culture.

Additional strategies discussed include: Evangelizing UX; the ROI approach; organizational structure and placement of UX.

Most participants were attempting at least one or more of strategies discussed, with varying degrees of success. By exposing people to a broad range of tactics, and hearing the success and failure stories from peers, participants would have gone away with a new appreciation for the challenges they face in raising the profile of UX within their organization; but would also have been better equipped to meet that challenge.

Nathan Curtis: UX Design & Deliverable Systems

Nathan Curtis talks documentation systems. Photo courtesy of Dan Brown.

During this session Nathan Curtis – of EightShapes – presented the Unify design documentation template system, based around Adobe InDesign.

The primary object in the 8SUnify system is the template, with the main example being a wireframe. However, Nathan went to lengths to make it clear that the system can be used to create just about any type of design documentation.

Below the level of templates sit elements – standard, ‘atomic’ objects – and components – reusable page ‘chunks’. These standard elements provide both efficiency and flexibility.

The system comes with a range of page libraries – standard types of design documents – which are made up of components and allow for very rapid production of documentation.

Nathan explained the choice of InDesign as the foundation software. Namely, it was chosen due to its:

• Cross-platform
• Great for vector-based drawing
• The most/better modular system available
• Powerful support for styles
• Familiar to most/many UX designers.

Jared Spool: Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon

In this funny and engaging session Jared ran through a behind-the-scenes look at Amazon: it’s scale, scope, and fundamentals. Along the way the audience gained an insight into Amazon’s thought processes and evolution. More valuably, Jared distilled lessons from Amazon’s approach into four key concepts to help with those “Why can’t we just do it the way Amazon does it?” moments.

1. Engaging through content

Amazon’s product pages present visitors with a wealth of information about the product, much of which is provided (free of charge) from customers. Jared gave the example of Amazon’s brief foray into the sale of milk through the site – which attracted over 1,000 reviews, ranging from the mundane to the down-right literary.

The reviews for Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (the final book in the HP series) attracted 3,900 reviews. To help sort the gold from the dross, Amazon introduced the “Was this review helpful?” question, allowing them to promote most helpful, and most helpful critical reviews. In this manner they’re able to manage the quality of the reviews without actually imposing any editorial controls themselves: it’s all user-driven.

2. Don’t fear new ideas

Amazon has, over the years, introduced a range of innovations to the site. Analytics on buying patterns – “People who bought this also bought…” and “People who viewed this went on to buy…”; user-submitted lists; discussion areas; and the recommendation engine all being successfully tried and implemented. But then there’s tagging: a failed idea.

Given the size of Amazon’s customer base, and the volume of orders that goes through the site, they have a large incentive to try new things. Introduction of new ideas is tightly controlled, however, so that the impact of a bad idea is minimised, and recognised early.

3. Reduce tool time while delivering confidence

Tool time is that time spent performing tasks that don’t advance you towards your goal. Time spent directly working towards your goal: Goal time.

Amazon uses a three-tiered security model in the delivery of functionality to avoid asking you to do unnecessary tasks – like log in – unless it’s absolutely necessary.

4. Never forget the business

Jared’s last point is well worth remembering: never lose sight of your business (model) and your purpose. Whatever else you’re doing, don’t drift away from your core through little, tangential ‘improvements’.

Russ Unger: Heuristic Analysis for the Pitch Process

Russ Unger – co-author of Project Guide to UX Design – presented the case for the use of heuristic analysis as a method of quickly and cost-effectively demonstrating value to potential clients during the business development cycle.

Heuristics – those ‘best practices’ or ‘rules-of-thumb’ – are a convenient way of evaluating the quality of a user experience without recourse to user testing methods. They can also be applied quickly to an existing design, along with several competing (or competitor) designs, to produce a set of recommendations for ‘quick wins’.

Russ argued that provided potential clients with a small set of such recommendations can demonstrate expertise and establish a rapport that increases the likelihood of success in winning further business.

Russ’ was the last presentation I attended on Day 2. During the late afternoon I was happily ensconced in a hotel room with a talented group of folks (Todd Zaki Warfel, Matt Milan, Jeff Parks, Joe Lamantia, Joe Sokohl, Will Evans & Jon Tirmandi) discussing ubiquitous computing for a Boxes and Arrows IA Podcast.

Title photo courtesy of Jonell Gades

Friday 20th March marked the opening day of the 10th IA Summit. Held in Memphis (USA), at the Peabody Hotel (famous for its ducks) the 2009 conference revolved around the theme “Expanding our horizons”. 350 people from around the world converged on Memphis for the three day event, and after two days of pre-conference workshops; 2nd breakfasts, elevenses, lunch, afternoon drinks, dinner, after-dinner drinks, and nightcaps; and the occasional trip to Gracelands, BB King’s Blue Restaurant, and – of course – the March of the Ducks at the Peabody, the conference got under way.

Keynote – Michael Wesch: Mediated Culture

Wesch‘s background in anthropology was well in evidence during this engaging, wide-ranging, and fast-paced exploration of the role of media in shaping our culture.

The keynote started in remote villages in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and ended with the role of information architectures as architectures of human participation.

Michael Wesch’s work in Papua New Guinea in the late 90′s provided an opportunity to study a culture in which relationships are entirely unmediated. The lack of telephones, newspapers, letters – let alone email, IM, twitter, or facebook – necessitate direct interaction between individuals. In the absence of any written laws or legal code, disputes were settled with a group discussion wherein parties put forward their issues.

The physical layout of the villages were another reflection of this lack of mediation. Huts were positioned and oriented based on one family’s relationship to, and friendship with their neighbours.

The introduction of a Government census created a cascading set of changes to village life. The census required each individual to have a name by which they could be recorded, however people tend to have several names. Wesch likened this to our own multiplicity of identities online and off, but used examples such as “brother”, “father”, “husband” etc for the villagers. This new unique name – “Census name” – became the way in which individuals identified themselves officially.

The flow on effects were severe. Villages were rebuilt in linear arrangement, hiding the relational character of previous layouts. This linearity was to enable hut numbering – an address – to be given to each individual. A documented legal code introduced the notion of mediated disputes – the individual now presented their ‘case’ to an official – someone who understands and could interpret the specific issues being presented.

The essential point here was that media are not just tools; they shape our relationships.

Wesch then embarked on a rapid foray into Web properties such as Youtube to show examples of how media shapes our relationships today. Looking at topics such as ‘bias’ in media – intellectual, emotional, spatial, temporal, sensory, political, social, metaphysical and epistemological – Wesch showed how media has a real impact on the ways in which we interact and think.

Lastly, Wesch tied these topics into the role of information architecture in creating architectures of human participation. Looking at such ideas as media’s role in both distancing up – through mediation – and connecting us, Wesch set up the rest of the conference to look at issues of context, language, and architecture.

Andrew Hinton – “You are (mostly) here. Digital space and the context problem”

My first presentation of the day was Andrew Hinton‘s talk on context. Melding ideas from cognitive psychology and information design, with examples from such sites as Facebook, Andrew discussed the role of context in experience design.

One of the more interesting examples from this session was the different visualizations of a particular suburban location and the different information conveyed by each. But the point was made that, regardless of which map was being used, it was our understanding of the territory that was being shaped – not the territory itself.

In digital spaces, however, the map creates the territory; and language & context shape each other.

Dan Brown: Designing Rules – The Engine of User Experience

I really enjoyed Dan’s presentation. It was a good coverage of ground I’ve been operating on for a number of years -  how to specify the rules by which content, navigation, and interactions behave in a dynamic interface. By ‘rules’, Dan is referring to the algorithms which drive changes to the presentation and behaviour of the interface.

The presentation covered three broad areas:

• Content: rules that drive content selection and presentation;
• Navigation: rules-driven changes to the make-up of sub-navigation; and
• Business rules: inventory-driven presentation rules as well as rules for determining process flow;
• What makes a ‘good’ rule; and
• Some guidelines for documenting them.

These rules are not necessarily patterns, although patterns may suggest the use of certain rules. Nor are they components, although components may use rules to drive behaviour.

In short, Dan’s presentation covered the ways in which we can define, document and communicate the behaviour of a site or application.

Cindy Chastain: Experience Themes: An Element of Story Applied to Design.

Cindy Chastain presenting at IA Summit 2009. Photo courtesy of Jonell Gades

This was one of my favourite presentations of the conference. Cindy took a fresh look at the pointy end of experience design projects, presenting ideas from the art and craft of storytelling.

Using the notion of themes from fiction and film – the subject matter, topic or idea on which a work of art or literature is based – Cindy put forward a case for their use in experience design projects as a means of unifying teams, assisting in the work of defining strategy, and helping to design for pleasure, emotion and meaning.

The presentation looked at the tangible and intangible elements of a user experience. The content, pages, flow and visual design being the tangible; emotion, pleasure and meaning being the intangible elements.

Cindy went on to put forward the idea that writers and filmmakers design for emotion, pleasure and meaning all the time. For these pursuits, the theme represents the coordinating force – something that is often missing from Web projects.

The notion of a theme as a unifying concept for UX projects is a new one (at least to me) and contrasts well with the (rather jaded) Vision statement. I’m looking forward to seeing more on this from Cindy in the future.

Evolve or Die: Panel session

This panel session, comprising material from Gene Smith, Russ Unger, Joshua Porter and Christina Wodtke was perhaps the most contentious of any of the first day’s sessions. Part message of doom; part call to action, the four presenters addressed the question of how practitioners of information architecture (as opposed to the practice) can remain central to the work of designing effective and efficient Web sites and applications.

The perspective of the presenters seemed to reflect a reality that was different to the one with which I’m familiar; one in which information architects fulfil fairly narrowly defined tasks within a broader project. Coming from an agency and consultancy background in which information architecture, interface and interaction design are merged in the one job role, the central tenets of the presentation were foreign. However, theirs is a reality that is all too common in large US corporations.

Notebook, sharpie and conference notes. Photo courtesy of Jonell Gades

The advice for information architects in these narrow functions was solid: expand your toolset; focus on the end product, not the deliverable; you are not your title; go deep, if information is your thing – design rules for systems, social spaces, design algorithms, recommendation engines.

For those working in these narrow roles the advice surely caused some angst, but I don’t think most people saw anything terribly unconventional in the notion that we need to remain relevant to the business and provide value beyond cranking out wireframes and sitemaps thoughtlessly.

And so ended the formal part of Day 1.

Title photo courtesy of Joe Sokohl