After a good night’s rest, I woke up ready for the third and final day of the IA Summit. As I had attended a couple of pre-conference sessions in Miami, it felt like it went incredibly quickly this time around. As I knew a lot more people this time around, the social aspect was a definitely lot better. I really enjoyed discussing IA over a beer with old and new friends.

The final day was particularly strong in regards to sessions, I’d recommend checking out Miles Rochford’s talk on IA for the rest of the world, as well as Livia Labate and Austin Govella’s UX Health Check.

Jesse James Garrett’s plenary was wavered between navel gazing and uniting the somewhat divided camps of the IA Summit. Ultimately, he made a valid point, that we should be known for what we do, rather than what we say, we should be looking outside for inspiration and improvement to our practise and finally, where is our peer reviewed journal like that of other established fields? Not two months later, this is already up and running, so it appears people listened on that point. There was a big movement at a dinner attended by quite a few IA’s to rename the IA Summit, as just the Summit so, I look forward to seeing what happens next year.

Day 3 IA Summit

Podcasts for all sessions

Leading With Insight
Speaker: Matthew Milan
Presentation: Leading With Insight

Insight

• People don’t know what they want.
• Recognising need is a condition of design.
• Authentic, inspired, clear point of view. (Design works if…)
• It can’t be a collection of input.
• It’s about recognising relationships or making associations between stuff that can help them solve new problems.
• Insight is recogniseable truths.

Being Insightful

1. You must ask thoughtful questions
2. You need to look beyond the obvious
3. You shouldn’t be afraid to reframe the problem
4. You must learn to trust your gut.

• Learned insight from Richard Feynman
• Prepare, Incubate, Illuminate and Verify.
• The prepared mind has a repeatable process, it’s always running this process, it looks beyond the obvious, it isn’t afraid to reframe the problem, the prepared mind trusts their gut.
• Thinking about consequence, restructuring, advantages, doing this patiently.

Leading with Insight

• Validation vs. inquiry.
• Don’t use research to tell you what you know, use it to tell you what you don’t.
• Real insights are memes.
• Immediately understood, self-replicated, seeds of transformation.
• Leading with insight means you can create the need.
• True differentiation.

Lessons from the Slime Mold
Speaker: Kate Rutter

• Evocative Objects: Things We Think with Edited by Sherry Turkle: Essay by Evelyn Fox Keller on Slime Moulds.
• Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software by Steven Johnson
• E= f(P,B) Environment is a function of the person and behaviour.
• B-E Our behaviours are our environments.
• The lifecycle of a slime mould is exploring, grappling, get up and moving, exploring.
• When environment is tough: signalling, sensing and investigating.
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck by Chip & Dan Heath.
• High Volume Signals: Memorable, energetic, have a pattern and get reinforced.
• Visual Signals: Get through faster, communicate a clearer idea.
• Get up and Moving: You need to know…
• What won’t you give up?
• What you can leave behind?
• How much will you participate in collective action?
• Your options are being a: cheater, martyr and survivor.
• Maslow’s Hierarchy

Rich Environment:

• Collective play.
• Always be sensing.
• Simple rules of engagement.
• Shared standards.

Exploring:

• TAZ: Temporary Autonomous Zones
• Listening Platforms
• Make places and spaces for collective play.
• Work out loud.
• Sense with intent, signal back what you learn.
• Constantly tune behaviours.

IA for the Rest of the World
Speaker: Miles Rochford
Presentation: Slideshare

• Life tools (mobile tools for emerging markets) Nokia.
• Data Mapper - IMF
• Emerging Markets are urbanising, growing, westernising.
• They are adopting our technology and trading habits.
• Challenges in EM include infrastructure, education and environment.

8 simple rules and observations

1. People rich, time rich and money poor.
2. It’s not what you know but who you know. Emerging markets are all social. Navigation needs to be flexible because of the changing environment.
3. Order through chaos.
4. Everything is shared.
5. Context is king.
6. Expect the unexpected. Design to pause, resume and for partial attention.
7. Stay on the beaten path.
8. Everyone is Macgyver, people want to fix and customise.

• Use pictures, metaphors and memorability to help your experience.
• Keep in mind that in some markets, there is no alphabetical order, right to left reading and concepts that just don’t translate.
• What are the IA conventions in emerging markets?

UX Health Check
Speaker: Livia Labate & Austin Govella
Presentation: Slideshare

1. Capabilities for your website.

2. Sort these capabilities into groups.

3. Numerically rate our progress on each aspect of service.

4. Rate it once a month.

5. Create a scale.

6. Set targets, how good do we need to be?

7. Choose competitive benchmarks.

8. Evaluate and score. Be quantitative, compare apples to apples.

9. Tally up and communicate.

Agile for the Rest of Us
Speaker: Anders Ramsey
Presentation: Slideshare

UX Reading of the Manifesto

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive document.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over following the plan.

Initiate > Research > DesignBuild > Test > DeployDocumentsSoftware

• Developers need to be involved as early as possible.
• What do the developers need to know to build the application?
• What is the minimum?

Foundation: Core Needs & Big PictureResearching Ahead & Designing AheadRelease, Reflect, AdjustPhase ZeroRelease > Design > BuildWorking Software Released

• Design for the Delta, for conversation. As a means, not an end.

Key Takeaways

• Don’t flip the methodology switch.
• Iterate the transition.
• There is no silver bullet
• Participate in evolving agile.

Closing Plenary
Speaker: Jesse James Garrett
Podcast: Plenary on Boxes & Arrows