Stanislaw Skorka - Users do not like any changes

• Director of Main Library at Pedagogical University of Cracow
• Talking about task analysis - What their goals are and what they actually do to achieve these goals. How their previous knowledge helps them achieve this.
• Book to read: Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior (Library and Information Science)
• 5 examples: Buying products, finding in library, betting on horse races, finding the law, I want to know more about cancer? I am confused…
• Comparing Amazon display to library catalogue. Seems like we missed a trick to improve the experience!
• Functions of a Library Catalogue by Charles A. Cutter (1904) from Rules for a Dictionary  - Interesting to see the main goals are still the same over 100 years later.
• Librarians used to find us physical books, now they are search engines!
• OPAC = Online Public Access Catalogue. Consistent system across all libraries which allows for integration.
• Interesting way of checking the navigation labels - Taking a screenshot with these options and allowing people to write what they thought the terms were.
• Final result was a cleaner, simpler interface with labels that people understood. However they had a negative reaction due to changes in the log-in / account details.

Webnographer - Low Cost Ethnography Techniques

Whilst the presenters, Sabrina Mach & James Page, seemed like lovely people, I didn’t like the selling aspect of this talk. I thought this was about different techniques for ethnography, guess I should read the fine print next time!

• The debate about whether ethnography conducted over a short period of time is actually ethnography. We want to be applying deeper conceptions and discarding crude and inaccurate assumptions.
• Film to watch: Kitchen Stories, Swedish Film.
• Discount Ethnography equals cultural tourism?
• Ethnography is about participation and immersion in culture. How do we replicate this on the cheap?
• Ethnography costs dollars and it doesn’t fit in with sped up agile development processes.
• Webnographer is their tool that they are developing.
• Like the way they fit in a jolly to a conference with their ethnographic research?
• Important to use both digital and real life research.
• Important to get the team involved. Eat your own dog food.
• Book to read: Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology (740) of Knowledge
• Fight between Idealists and Utopians.
• Gurus are less likely to be open to change. They don’t want to be a novice again.
• People find lab testing boring. As time wears on, they lose interest.

Maria Cristina Lavazza - From shelves to mobile devices

I was particularly interested in this session because it’s not often that you hear about the IA of food. Given it is something that is so central in our lives, it is quite surprising I’ve never really seen it mentioned before.

From shelves to mobile devices, structures change - Euroia09 - M. C. Lavazza
View more presentations from maria cristina lavazza.

• Time in everyday life is a key factor.
• The future is cross-channel integration.
• Another mention of the bridge experience at EUROIA. This is where we are now.
• Spimes connect experiences of space and time.
• Grocery shows peculiar features: repetitive, widely used, visual and high touch, developed careful and pervasive marketing tools.
• 37% of grocery consumption is considered very poor in real life.
• Carrefour slowed down their online offerings as they weren’t sure of their success.
• Countries like Italy with a strong food culture have a very low uptake of e-groceries.
• Maybe mobile / web could enhance experience rather than replace it.
• How do we replicate the real life experience online? Tesco is a good example but it still doesn’t come close.
• 1 channel, 3 steps, n services.
• The pod JOYA looks good but what does it do?
• Easy Grocery is a 3d shopping experience. Looks like Second Life for shopping.
• RFID allows better tracking and overcomes issues with out of date barcodes.
• NFC is the RFID for mobile. Safeway allows people to scan products, find out more and add them to their shopping list, then send ahead their order.
• Biometric Payments - Paying by touch?
• Mobile brings intermediacy and urgency. Brings personal ownership. Best to let the customer dictate the appropriate time and place.
• A digital ecosystem, a combination of balance and coherence.
• We must move the experience out from it’s original habitat.

Martijn Klompenhouwer & Adam Cox (User Intelligence) - Web Analytics & User Experience

A lot of this was stating the obvious for me but it’s definitely great for anyone unfamiliar with combining these methods. The book sounds like it would be a great primer.

Combining Methods: Web Analytics and User Research
View more documents from User Intelligence.

• Book to read: The Handbook of Global User Experience Research
• What is web analytics - Where are they coming from, what are they doing and where and when they are leaving.
• Web analytics is often seen as boring, their implementation is not always correct, often end up with a huge chunk of data without adequate interpretation.
• User research has data from only a small number of people, it’s just a snapshot in time, it’s difficult to capture some behaviour and the setting can be artificial (in a lab etc).
• The two methodologies help each other. User research helps interpret the data, data can focus the research. Improving the pool of information strengthens your argument.
• The example of an unexpected landing page, is something WA can pick up which UR can investigate.
• The example of preparing a usability test. Created a scenario based on these entry paths (Google)
• The example of advanced functionalities. What are people using? There was actually no data on the features.
• The example of unintended user flows. People not using internal search of a website. User research noticed that the page offered no reasons to stay.
• Web analytics can validate findings. Only 2/10 test participants experienced this problem. Quantified this issue with the data of thousands of visitors.
• The combined methods can be used throughout the process. One report without conflicting information.
• Even basic analysis helps, although the tools do not magically provide the insights. You can measure the impact of your changes. We should have access to this data, as we have information of the how and why.

IA Shuffle - Specialists in Design, do they breed failure?

• With larger teams things get lost in translation.
• They just used the “D” word.

Scott Thomas (Simple Scott) - The Power of Design

I really enjoyed Scott’s session, purely because it focused on the real world experience, in an area that not many of us have experience in. Some salient points about getting things done.

Designing Obama from mas / menos on Vimeo.

• Obama Online Experience
• Apparently furry pink unicorns were the key to the online Obama experience
• Having an emotive quality within the design is the most powerful thing. Sparking emotions and intellect.
• Rather than having multiple messages for a political campaign, just had one.
• It’s tough to allow other people to bastardize your logo. We should invite people to participate in the brand.
• Whatever you call yourself, it normally doesn’t fit in with politics.
• Their audience was diverse. They had to design it for everyone, including llamas!
• IA - we aren’t talking about IOWA.
• Like floor plans to a building, executives don’t look at them before the building is built and then realize it doesn’t suit their needs.
• IA is becoming the UX communities own baby. We are wearing too many hats.
• Obama is a product, we are trying to persuade people. People in the campaign got scared about making a political candidate ‘a brand’.
• Scott wasn’t concerned about the fold, used a standard one wide, narrow column.
• There should be no distinction in the different part of the website. mybarackobama.com was the personalized section of the website but people weren’t aware they were there. The log-in was seamless.
• There was numbers related to activity in mybarackobama.com
• “Our campaign looked like an internet start-up company”.
• Their video team focused on people around Obama, since that is what the election is really about. Telling a narrative. Their blog reflected this.
• Our campaign was about getting people to participate. Registering to vote was a really difficult process.
• Simple Vote was about recreating the physical experience of someone helping you fill out a form. 75% success rate.
• Making something successful and simple, often means you need to think lots about it.
• Our passion and enthusiasm for Barack Obama, kept driving us. We had one finish line.
• The answer is already there in some physical form. Good example of using White House architecture to create a grid.
• Travelled to Japan after inauguration, to have a break, look at things differently.
• Each thing is an interaction. All things we can learn from.
• Scott was writing a book and funding it through Kickstarter, it’s now available for pre-order.

Cennydd Bowles - Wayfinding

As you can see by the amount of notes, this was a great talk. Cennydd really packed in lots of great information and I highly recommend having a look at his presentation. He’s not put his presentation online but there is a great write up on Johnny Holland’s Blog.

• In 2001, after the twin towers fell people lost their way in NY.
• We need to understand how we wayfind. Using spacial awareness, mental models etc.
• Survey knowledge. We break things into smaller pieces.
• Procedural knowledge. We understand the procedure to get somewhere but if the procedure breaks, we don’t know where we are going. Specific route to a particular resource which may be broken in a redesign.
• Landmark knowledge. Twin towers are an example but anything that is memorable or recognizeable.
• Legibility can differ on the environment. NY has IA baked in, London does not.
• Through language we can express and codify geography.
• Folksonomy vs. Taxonomy when labelling areas.
• Navigation tasks can be separated into three types: naive, primed and exploratory.
• How have we tried to improve wayfinding over time? Town planners have tried to help us over time by using urban density. Architecture has given us consistent flooring to highlight a route.
• We think more often of wayfinding as signage, essentially environmental design. It’s not limited to signage but a number of things which guide people.
• There are a number of rules for designing maps.
  • We denote all the different things that contribute to understanding orientation.
  • We show where you are.
  • We have upwards as in front of people.
  • There are limitations.
• It’s important to supplement maps with signage. Five types: indentification, directional, orientational, regulatory, vernacular.
• Signs use icons and symbols. AIGA & DOT is particularly recogniseable in signage.
• GPS was originally released from the US Army because a Korean airliner was shot down in Soviet airspace. It was released with a margin of error to protect the US security.
• Satnav only shows routes but not suitability.
• The web has changed the landscape of maps. It has mostly been used as a preparation tool.
• However it’s mobile that has really brought digital maps and GPS into the real world.
• A trend in wayfinding is UGC wayfinding. If unknown to us but local, emotional to someone else. A la cart is actually using this as an antidote to glossy city guides.
• Communal wayfinding takes us into the territory of flocking. Things like safety and density of groups.
• The user is becoming a destination but we move. Our location right now, is not as interesting as our location in a few hours or days. Again, it lacks intent and context.
• AIl wayfinding using things like Roomba. It assesses the size, then does a spiral, then bounces off the wall. It’s most interesting journey is the one back to the docking station, as it must have the right amount of charge.
• We end up with ubiquitous inputs and outputs. We could make our environment the canvas to help us with wayfinding.
• It’s important that wayfinding is accessible.
• Spimes introduce the concept of time to wayfinding. We don’t need the presence of others as the digital trail left by others over time can guide us.
• Real world digital techniques can pull the semantic web into the real world.
• The two world API. Does it correspond between the physical and digital world? This is where wayfinding merges with information architecture.
• Cognitive load is going to limit our ability to wayfind. We need to embed information and tasks into one another. Communication should be subtle and unobtrusive.
• Our design vocabulary is going to have to adapt to the changes.
• Then, finally ethics will come into play. We need to play it safe, build in fuzziness.
• Does accurate wayfinding remove the joy of a new city? What happens when wayfinding doesn’t work in critical systems?
• The future of wayfinding is here but distributed unequally.

Andrea Resmini & Luca Rosati - Bridging Media

There was some interesting points in this talk but I didn’t feel like the time was enough for it to really get off the ground.

Bridging Media

View more presentations from Andrea Resmini.

• Talking about a booking a trip, there are a number of tough points, loops and obstacles in the process. Talking about how the digital process isn’t much different. Can’t we make this seamless? What happens when we get further in the future?
• Who is the designer? These are human information interactions.
• Currently as information moves to physical spaces IA is used to design the entire range of shared information spaces, places, services and processes.
• In the future, IA becomes the connector between different media and different contexts and provides experiential continuity to products and services. It becomes an ecosystem.
• Nothing stands isolated in the system. Everything is connected and related. It has to be designed as a seamless user experience process.
• We become intermediaries in this ecosystem.
• The boundaries separating media and genres gets thinner. All experiences cross environments.
• The horizontal prevails over the vertical. The focus shifts from designing experiences spanning processes rather than single items.
• Ubiquitous ecologies connects media and environments across an experience.
• Cyberspace is no longer a destination but a layer integrated in the world around us.
• Book to read: Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide