Day 2 didn’t start to well. I was feeling a little worse for wear. I’d had a few glasses of some of the local Ghost River beer which must have been a lot stronger than I thought. Despite only having three or four small glasses after a big meal, I was really unwell. I ended up missing a really good working session, although I was lucky enough to sit next to one of the speakers at lunch - Craig Peters. He filled me on how they had run the session but as it was a group exercise, there wasn’t really any slides for me to look over later.

The latter part of the afternoon saw the IA Summit degrade into what Cennydd Bowles described as IA going through “Puberty”. I’m not really interested in defining the damn thing or who belongs to what community or even who puts on the IA Summit, as grateful that I am that they do. For me, it’s all about learning and shared experiences. Whilst we are sat defining it or claiming territory, we aren’t moving forward and I certainly wasn’t learning which is why I spent all that money to go to Memphis (or Yahoo! did, mostly). I’m not saying that these discussions shouldn’t happen at all, I just think they would be a lot better with beer rather than sessions within the Summit.

Highlight of the day had to be Jared Spool. It was entertaining, insightful and with some great takeaways.

Day 2 IA Summit

Podcasts of all sessions

Personas & Politics
Speaker: Adrienne Massanari
Presentation: Slideshare

• Users is a problematic term suggests an instrumental, one-way relationship.
• Lots of different examples of personas.
• Three themes of users: Stupid, Victims of Bad Design (Designers as Heroes), As co-designers.
• We can’t simply understand users and then ignore them - Robert Hoekman.
• We need to think strategically about integrating users as partners within our work.

Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon
Speaker: Jared Spool

• Three things we can learn from Amazon:
  • Engage through content.
  • Don’t fear new things.
  • Eliminate tool time whilst delivering confidence.
• Show log-in as late as possible in the process.
• Amazon’s security levels
  • Level 0 > Doesn’t know who you are (no cookies)
  • Level 1 > Knows you from a cookie. That’s how it recommends books or knows if you are a 1 click shopper.
  • Level 2 > Wants you to reveal something that only you should know.
• Goal Time vs. Tool Time.
• Goal Time is when the user is improving the outcome of the experience.
• Tool Time is when the user is moving forward without any improvement in the outcome of the experience.
• Never forget the business.
• Amazon’s negative cycle creates a huge cash float = they can sell it at cost and still make a profit.

Business Centred Design
Speaker: Christina Wodtke

• 5 questions to ask:
  • What does it mean to be responsible for P&L?
  • Difference between expense and investment?
  • Key metrics for your business unit?
  • What market are you in?
  • What is your unique value proposition?
• B=f(P,E) Behaviour is a function of a person and his environment.
• AOF Activity, Objects and Features.
• Users need to:
  • Create an identity.
  • Connect with others.
  • Build a reputation.
  • Create & Share content and work.
• Pattern for relationship
  • User gets value.
  • User returns, gets more value.
  • User reciprocates, they add content and/or contributes money.
• Get metrics, know what matters.

A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand
Speaker: Eric Reiss

• Tribes exclude, communities welcome.
• 5 C’s - creators, critics, collators, cheerleaders and commentators.
• Big Architect, Little Architect Article - By Peter Morville

Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Best Practices and Patterns for Designing the Social Web
Speaker: Erin Malone & Christian Crumlish
Presentation: Slideshare

• Remember to talk like a person
• Use language of contemporary speech.
• Read copy out loud.
• Ask yourself if that is how you talk.
• Participate in their pattern library at Designing Social Interfaces
• Most of this talk was taken from their forthcoming book (URL)