Links on Information Architecture

Top 5 posts at The UX Bookmark in 2012

I wish you, all my readers, a wonderful 2013. These are the five posts which people read the most in 2012.

  1. A huge list of Style Guides and UI Guidelines
  2. Free User Experience books (Interaction design, HCI, web accessibility & Information Architecture)
  3. Download IDEO’s Human Centered Design Toolkit
  4. Ergonomics for Interaction Designers
  5. Mobile Prototyping Essentials
Posted in Accessibility, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, User Research | Post a comment.

The Anatomy of a Design Decision

Webstock ‘12: Jared Spool - The Anatomy of a Design Decision from Webstock on Vimeo.

What are the habits of highly effective design teams? The best designs come from not one, but hundreds of well-made decisions. The worst designs arise out of hundreds of poorly-made decisions. All that stands between you and a great design is the qualify of your decisions. Where do they come from?

For the last five years, UIE has been studying how designers make their decisions. When do they use outside information, such as research about their users? When do they go with their gut instinct? When do the designers look to past decisions and the lessons they’ve learned?

What they found is interesting. In this presentation, Jared does an entertaining deep dive into the gut instinct of the best designers (without looking at all the gooey parts). You’ll learn five styles of decision making, from Self Design to Experience-focused Design, and which style produces quality results.

Posted in Information Architecture, Research, UX Strategy | Post a comment.

Design for mobile first, then desktop

More often than not, the mobile experience for a Web application or site is designed and built after the desktop version is complete.

Here are three reasons why Web applications should be designed for mobile first instead:

  1. Mobile is exploding
  2. Mobile forces you to focus
  3. Mobile extends your capabilities
Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, User Experience | Post a comment.

I’m looking for a new UX opportunity

Hello readers, I am currently looking for a new opportunity and if you have one or are aware of one, I would appreciate your letting me know by emailing me at hello@conetrees.com

In summary, I have 6 and a half years of experience in client interaction, planning, leading, managing and executing projects working through user research, data synthesis and ideation, information architecture, interaction design and usability testing.

Some clients I have recently worked for, many of which we got repeat work from for great project execution and client satisfaction at PebbleRoad, Singapore are (with digital agencies as partners and otherwise) include Standard Chartered, VISA, DHL, Guinness, Singtel and government agencies of Singapore.

Some accomplishments that may be worth highlighting are:

  • I am a contributing author to the book, UX StoryTellers- Connecting the Dots.
  • I have designed and run The UX Bookmark (uxbookmark.com) and Cone Trees (conetres.com). They are featured in popular UX aggregators, acute search engines and design galleries like All Top user interface section, UX URLs and UX Pond.
  • I presented expert tutorial titled ‘Usability Testing in India’ at the India HCI/ IDID 2010 conference at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai n March 2010.
  • Some of my usability testing and interaction design articles featured in BCSCHI’s Usability News and published in Evolt. My usability Testing presentation featured on the front page of SlideShare.
  • I was a member of the Executive of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Special Interest Group 13.1 on Interaction Design & International Development (IDID)
  • My user interface widget libraries (clear input and gestures) featured on the Axure RP website and Wireframes magazine.

Have a great day.

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Usability Engineering, User Experience, User Research | Post a comment.

Organizing digital information for others

This short free to download ebook explores how lists, categories, trees and facets can be better used to organize information for others. You also learn how metadata and taxonomies can connect different collections and increase the findability of information across the website or intranet.

Organizing digital information for others

Disclosure: I work for the company that released the ebook. None the less, I have included it here because it I think it deserves to be here.

Posted in Books, Information Architecture | Post a comment.

What is the Deep-Dive Brainstorming technique?

Deep-Dive™ is the name of a technique used to rapidly immerse a group or team into a situation for problem solving or idea creation. This approach is often used for brainstorming product or process development.

Originally developed by the IDEO group (a learning design company) for rapid product development, the Deep-Dive technique is now widely and increasingly used for innovation not only in product development, but process improvement and customer service strategies. The method used by IDEO was documented by Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer (of International Institute of Management Development (IMD) business school), who latterly further enhanced the process and sold the rights to Deloitte Consulting in 2006.

What is the Deep-Dive Brainstorming technique?

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, UCD, UX Strategy, User Experience | Post a comment.

Five Myths about Taxonomy and SharePoint

Many organizations are finding that leveraging the full suite of capabilities SharePoint offers requires introduction of a new requirement – that of dealing with, managing and exploiting taxonomies. Of course taxonomies are not new, but there is some confusion about where managed metadata services and the term store end and true taxonomy management begins.

There are also some misconceptions about the process of deriving and applying taxonomies in SharePoint. The following are five areas of confusion that we have seen in our engagements and research.

  • Myth 1: SharePoint now has taxonomy management
  • Myth 2: Taxonomy is used as metadata and metadata is an IT problem. Therefore taxonomy is best left to the project’s technical resources
  • Myth 3: Librarians are the best people to handle SharePoint taxonomies
  • Myth 4: SharePoint taxonomies need to be comprehensive and finely grained
  • Myth 5: Taxonomies managed in the in the term store can be used everywhere in the SharePoint application

Five Myths about Taxonomy and SharePoint

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Sketchnote Army- a Sketchnotes Showcase

Sketchnote Army is dedicated to finding and showcasing sketchnotes and sketchnoters from around the world- from events, conferences, workshops or wherever sketchnotes are captured or created. If you want your sketchnotes to be featured there, you can send your sketchnotes URL and info to the webmaster.

Sketchnote Army

Posted in Diagramming, Information Architecture, Information Visualization, Interaction Design, User Experience, User Research | Tagged , , | Post a comment.

High Paying Jobs in User Experience Design

Here are top paying jobs for Information Architecture, Usability, and UX practitioners plus reasons to explore each for your user experience design career - and bank your account. (Salary figures based on Indeed.com and GlassDoor.com data)

  • User experience strategist: $67,000 to $135,000
  • Usability analyst: $81,000 on an average
  • User interface designer: $84,000 to $155,000
  • Interaction designer: $91,000 on an average
  • Interaction designer: $91,000 on an average
  • Information architect: $104,000 on an average

High paying jobs in User Experience design

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, UCD, Usability Engineering, User Experience | Post a comment.

Manager’s guidebook on intranet redesign projects

The intranet manager is one of the most important people in an intranet design project. Many times the effort that goes into such a project is on the same level as that of a major organizational change initiative. It is therefore important that the manager is thoroughly prepared for the journey. If you are managing your first redesign project or are new to intranets or just love intranets then we have the resource to get you started: Manager’s guidebook to intranet design projects.

This 64-page guidebook takes you through eight stages of a typical intranet design project. Each stage has many activities that go under it. The activities described and insights included are those gathered over the years by PebbleRoad.

Manager’s guidebook on intranet redesign projects

Disclosure: I work for the company that released the ebook. Of course, it’s included here because it I think it deserves to be here.

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, UCD, UX Strategy, User Research | Post a comment.