Day two. Information Architecture – Structure and context with Dan Brown. I was sure he wrote the Da Vinci code but he didn’t mention it. Mind you he did mention his other book he had wrote oh and his son. First impressions of Dan where that he had some sort of throat infection as his voice was so gravely it was almost like he was putting it on. He assured us that was how he spoke and he kicked off by talking about himself, his second favourite subject, his first we would later find out was his son. Where his wife featured in this I’m pretty sure came a lame fifth after violent magazines and IA. He is a co owner of Eightshapes a user experience consulting firm based on Washington DC. Anyway that’s enough about him as he did a pretty good job of talking about himself.
We were straight in with the first topic which was about tips, tricks and techniques. The first tip was around Paradox of choice. Until today I wasn’t 100% sure of what paradox mean but in this context it simply meant, don’t give your user too many choices. Limit the choice and keep things as specific as possible to avoid watering down what your actually trying to achieve.
The second; context through content, basically provide examples where possible.
The third was use plain language, fairly obvious really. He showed an example here of a US government website where it had quick links but the quick links where all acronyms. Ok if you knew what they meant I guess.
The fourth tip was multiple front doors. Now on this trip I’ve already seen multiple front doors, most of the illuminated with a red neon light but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what he was getting at. What Dan was getting at was that users come to a site via multiple routes and as outlined yesterday they very rarely see your homepage. So he suggested building from the bottom up, start by looking at your deep linked pages, your lower tier pages and not your homepage. He suggested his home page designs came out of what he proposed with the lower tier pages.
Number five, growth. Design pages that are versatile, pages that can cope with change. The example he used here was CNN and how they had an area for ‘hot topics’. This could be updated daily with the latest optical news story.
Number six. Multiple way finding systems – sounds slightly perverse but maybe that’s because I’m sitting here watching re runs of Sex in the city, Dutch TV aint that great so gimme a break. Cant really remember the exact reason for this being a tip but I’m fairly sure it was something to do with having releavnt content, even if its duplicated, in every corner of the site. Something we thought we had to move away from for the Aviva re brand project.
Number seven. Abstraction, templating, modularization. Now at this point he started to loose me. If we look back at point three, use plain language he is already contradicting himself and we were only 45minutes into the seminar! He lost me so much that all I have in terms of notes is spend time working out your template design. I’ll check this one with Martin.
Number eight was his most valid point so far. Progressive disclosure. Again a bit ambiguous, why he couldn’t just say bite sized information or something similar was beyond me. By progressive disclosure he meant show small sizable chunks of information where possible. The example he used this time was another news story. This one having a high level summary linking to the full story if the user choose to do so. As most of the research I have seen so far suggests users scan read and in a F shape it would make sense but it does add another click into the process. Dan assured us this method tested extremely well and the extra link caused no detriment to the journey.
That was the last of his three T’s and quite frankly he peeked a little too soon as the next few hours was if I’m honest were like a Manhattan cocktail without the alcohol, naff. I need to turn off Sex in the city now! As I mentioned in my earlier blog the one thing that did make me sit upright in my chair was when Dan the man suggested that sitemaps where a dying trend. He displayed his own take on what he felt sitemaps where evolving into and proclaimed “sitemaps are dying and experience maps are evolving”, surely that’s the same thing right? His diagram looked like some sort of molecular structure with lots of circles linked together. I’d question this pearl of wisdom, as much as they pain me, lets not write off sitemaps just yet.
His slides where un inspiring and monotonous and without any notes in six months will mean nothing. So we hit lunch a little deflated. Dinner yet again was fabulous and yet again contained more red meat. After lunch things did pick up but the continual references to his favourite subject, his son where beginning to grate on us. I was starting to feel like I was learning more about him and hid favourite subject, his son than I was IA. We trawled through more examples of both good and bad IA including flickr and how it organises the user needs without compromising design and then we moved on to content types. I was hopeful that this may teach me some new techniques but with slides like, ‘stickies help brainstorming’, ‘click through the existing site’ and ‘interview content owners’ it quickly became apparent that I would just be validating what I already knew.
As the day wore on I picked up a few more tips around navigation and how they can be broadly categorised but one thing which did surprise me was how he seemed quite happy to endorse the use of content being duplicated and over lapped in several parts of the site. I thought this was bad practise but Dan suggested otherwise. I questioned the use of duplicated content and time and time again he gave it his endorsement.
He last part of the day was around wireframing. For a little while me and Martin joked that perhaps he would rubbish the use of wireframes and we would be out of a job by the time we got back but no, he was a massive advocate of wireframing. I wont bore you anymore than I already have so the highlights where;
Thinking about the site in components. What are the components that will make up your site, think about them in a list then position them on the page.
Have some rules that can be applied all over the site, I’m confident we do this well already.
Consider the appropriate fidelity – base this decision on your desired outcome and audience.
Collaborate – use every resource at your disposal and talk to people
So in summary an up and down day. At some points it was a little dry and his documentation didn’t nothing to inspire learning but I always feel if you can take away a handful of things you have achieved something. A common theme is starting to emerge though. We’re listening to experts talk about all facets of the web and so far what we do at NU is bang on with everything that I have heard so it’s a good feeling to know I’m part of something pretty damn good.
We were straight in with the first topic which was about tips, tricks and techniques. The first tip was around Paradox of choice. Until today I wasn’t 100% sure of what paradox mean but in this context it simply meant, don’t give your user too many choices. Limit the choice and keep things as specific as possible to avoid watering down what your actually trying to achieve.
The second; context through content, basically provide examples where possible.
The third was use plain language, fairly obvious really. He showed an example here of a US government website where it had quick links but the quick links where all acronyms. Ok if you knew what they meant I guess.
The fourth tip was multiple front doors. Now on this trip I’ve already seen multiple front doors, most of the illuminated with a red neon light but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what he was getting at. What Dan was getting at was that users come to a site via multiple routes and as outlined yesterday they very rarely see your homepage. So he suggested building from the bottom up, start by looking at your deep linked pages, your lower tier pages and not your homepage. He suggested his home page designs came out of what he proposed with the lower tier pages.
Number five, growth. Design pages that are versatile, pages that can cope with change. The example he used here was CNN and how they had an area for ‘hot topics’. This could be updated daily with the latest optical news story.
Number six. Multiple way finding systems – sounds slightly perverse but maybe that’s because I’m sitting here watching re runs of Sex in the city, Dutch TV aint that great so gimme a break. Cant really remember the exact reason for this being a tip but I’m fairly sure it was something to do with having releavnt content, even if its duplicated, in every corner of the site. Something we thought we had to move away from for the Aviva re brand project.
Number seven. Abstraction, templating, modularization. Now at this point he started to loose me. If we look back at point three, use plain language he is already contradicting himself and we were only 45minutes into the seminar! He lost me so much that all I have in terms of notes is spend time working out your template design. I’ll check this one with Martin.
Number eight was his most valid point so far. Progressive disclosure. Again a bit ambiguous, why he couldn’t just say bite sized information or something similar was beyond me. By progressive disclosure he meant show small sizable chunks of information where possible. The example he used this time was another news story. This one having a high level summary linking to the full story if the user choose to do so. As most of the research I have seen so far suggests users scan read and in a F shape it would make sense but it does add another click into the process. Dan assured us this method tested extremely well and the extra link caused no detriment to the journey.
That was the last of his three T’s and quite frankly he peeked a little too soon as the next few hours was if I’m honest were like a Manhattan cocktail without the alcohol, naff. I need to turn off Sex in the city now! As I mentioned in my earlier blog the one thing that did make me sit upright in my chair was when Dan the man suggested that sitemaps where a dying trend. He displayed his own take on what he felt sitemaps where evolving into and proclaimed “sitemaps are dying and experience maps are evolving”, surely that’s the same thing right? His diagram looked like some sort of molecular structure with lots of circles linked together. I’d question this pearl of wisdom, as much as they pain me, lets not write off sitemaps just yet.
His slides where un inspiring and monotonous and without any notes in six months will mean nothing. So we hit lunch a little deflated. Dinner yet again was fabulous and yet again contained more red meat. After lunch things did pick up but the continual references to his favourite subject, his son where beginning to grate on us. I was starting to feel like I was learning more about him and hid favourite subject, his son than I was IA. We trawled through more examples of both good and bad IA including flickr and how it organises the user needs without compromising design and then we moved on to content types. I was hopeful that this may teach me some new techniques but with slides like, ‘stickies help brainstorming’, ‘click through the existing site’ and ‘interview content owners’ it quickly became apparent that I would just be validating what I already knew.
As the day wore on I picked up a few more tips around navigation and how they can be broadly categorised but one thing which did surprise me was how he seemed quite happy to endorse the use of content being duplicated and over lapped in several parts of the site. I thought this was bad practise but Dan suggested otherwise. I questioned the use of duplicated content and time and time again he gave it his endorsement.
He last part of the day was around wireframing. For a little while me and Martin joked that perhaps he would rubbish the use of wireframes and we would be out of a job by the time we got back but no, he was a massive advocate of wireframing. I wont bore you anymore than I already have so the highlights where;
Thinking about the site in components. What are the components that will make up your site, think about them in a list then position them on the page.
Have some rules that can be applied all over the site, I’m confident we do this well already.
Consider the appropriate fidelity – base this decision on your desired outcome and audience.
Collaborate – use every resource at your disposal and talk to people
So in summary an up and down day. At some points it was a little dry and his documentation didn’t nothing to inspire learning but I always feel if you can take away a handful of things you have achieved something. A common theme is starting to emerge though. We’re listening to experts talk about all facets of the web and so far what we do at NU is bang on with everything that I have heard so it’s a good feeling to know I’m part of something pretty damn good.
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