Recent posts in my IA Summit Category

May 24, 2012

“Designing the mobile wallet” - Tim Caynes at London IA

Last week we had the latest London IA evening, featuring a packed programme with an IA Summit theme, as Tim Caynes and Johanna Kollmann reprised their talks from New Orleans, and Giles Colborne provided an overview of the event. Here are my notes from Tim Caynes’ talk about designing the mobile wallet.

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May 23, 2012

“Making sense of messy problems” - Johanna Kollmann at London IA

Last week we had the latest London IA evening, featuring a packed programme with an IA Summit theme, as Tim Caynes and Johanna Kollmann reprised their talks from New Orleans, and Giles Colborne provided an overview of the event. As ever, Sense Worldwide were our hosts, and Zebra People our sponsors. I’ve already published my notes on Giles’ redux of the IA Summit, and here is what I made of Johanna’s talk.

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September 28, 2011

“Fill in the IA gap” - Mags Hanley at EuroIA 2011

This is my final set of notes from last week’s EuroIA conference in Prague - covering Margaret Hanley’s closing plenary session.

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September 26, 2011

Haakon Halvorsen, Kjetil Hansen & Anna Dahlström at EuroIA 2011

I’ve been catching up on the notes I made in Prague over the course of the EuroIA Summit. Here is what I made of a couple of talks with a Scandinavian twist - Haakon Halvorsen & Kjetil Hansen from Norway, and the BBC’s Anna Dahlström.

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September 24, 2011

“Understanding the Nature of Resistance” - Alla Zollers at EuroIA 2011

Over the last two days I’ve been trying to blog my notes from EuroIA as quickly as possible - which means plenty of spelling mistakes, typos, a lack of links, and a hurried style. But people seem to be reading them and enjoying them, so I shall plough on with my notes from Alla Zoller’s talk about encountering resistance during projects.

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iPads, kids and design lessons for adults - Wouter Sluis-Thiescheffer & Brian Pagán at EuroIA 2011

I’m trying to keep up the pace with “live blogging” the sessions from EuroIA as soon as they finish today, but there was so much packed into Wouter Sluis-Thiescheffer & Brian Pagán’s talk that I didn’t quite manage to write it up in the fifteen minute break that followed. It was fantastic though - and really great fun as well as useful. And please excuse an above average number of typos...

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“Pervasive IA for the Sentient City” - Andrea Resmini and Luca Rosati at EuroIA 2011

I’m trying to “live blog” my notes from EuroIA in Prague as quickly as I can. Here are my takeaway points from Andrea Resmini and Luca Rosati’s talk about pervasive IA in our cities, which has just finished. You’ll have to be forgiving of an above average number of typos...

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“Extending the Storytelling - Blending IA and Content Strategy” - Boon Sheridan at EuroIA 2011

I’m trying to blog my notes form the EuroIA 2011 Summit in Prague as quickly as I can, so you’ll have to be a little bit more forgiving than normal about typos, spelling, and thorough linking. Saturday morning’s sessions have started, and the first one I attended was by Boon Sheridan.

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“The IA of /Culture” - Martin Belam at EuroIA 2011

This is the essay version of the talk I gave yesterday at the EuroIA Summit in Prague.

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September 23, 2011

“Designing today’s web” - Luke Wroblewski at EuroIA 2011

This year’s EuroIA Summit kicked off with a keynote from Luke Wroblewski - whose book on web form design is one of my personal bibles. Here are my notes.

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“Navigating the Digital Spice Route” - Terry Ma at EuroIA 2011

Over the course of the next couple of days, I’ll be blogging my notes from the sessions at EuroIA in Prague. Not necessarily, it must be said, in the right order. I’m starting with my notes from a session that has just finished - LBi’s Terry Ma talking about localising web design to compete in the Middle East and Asian markets.

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All your EuroIA 2011 slides are belong to us

Welcome once again to my probably futile attempt to gather together all the EuroIA slides, resources, poster sessions, and blog posts into one place. If you know of a resource I’ve missed, then drop me a mail at martin.belam@currybet.net or ping me on Twitter - @currybet.

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April 15, 2011

"UX, (still) the next step for Information Architects" - Peter Boersma at the Polish IA Summit

This week I’ve been publishing the notes I made in Warsaw as I attended the Polish IA Summit. In the last of my notes, here is my take on Peter Boersma’s closing session.

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"Beyond the glowing rectangle" - Claire Rowland and Chris Browne at the Polish IA Summit

This week I’ve been publishing the notes I made in Warsaw as I attended the Polish IA Summit. Today I’ve got my notes on a brilliant session by Claire Rowland and Chris Browne looking at the design implications of ubicomp.

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April 14, 2011

The importance of community management when changing websites - Johanna Kollmann at the IA Summit

One of the things I was pleased to hear get a mention in Denver at the IA Summit was the value of community management. Johanna Kollmann gave a great talk entitled “We love change. Change is scary”, that explored why humans are initially uncomfortable with change, and recommended good community management as a way to deal with it

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Eye-tracking, designing for older users, and redesigning playmobile.pl at the Polish IA Summit

This week I’ve been publishing the notes I made in Warsaw as I attended the Polish IA Summit. Today I’ve got my thoughts on 3 sessions which featured eye-tracking, designing for older users, and redesigning playmobile.pl.

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April 13, 2011

"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning (slight return)"

The main reason for going over to Denver for the IA Summit was that Matthew Solle, Eric Reiss, Joe Sokohl and I were doing a very informal panel session on “UX communities: Starting from the beginning”. Matthew has blogged his round-up of the main points, and here is mine.

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"Designing the search experience" - Marianne Sweeny at the Polish IA Summit

I’ve just come back from Poland, where I was giving the opening keynote session at the Polish IA Summit, and this week I’m posting my notes from the rest of the sessions I saw in Warsaw. Today I’ve got my notes from the opening session of day two - “Designing the search experience (Not your mom’s SEO)” by Marianne Sweeny

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April 12, 2011

Sloppy science journalism - the rest of the web is laughing at us

For a while on this blog I had a Venn diagram in the top right-hand corner, which was there to remind me that I was supposed to be writing about stuff in the intersection between IA, digital media and journalism. That is where the professional communities that I belong to collide. So, it was uncomfortable to be sitting in Denver at the IA Summit last week, listening to one of my group of peers laughing loudly at the output of the other.

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Opening up data, and the future of IT - Krzysztof Trzewiczek & Tomasz Kopacz at the Polish IA Summit

I’ just come back from Poland, where I was giving the opening keynote session at the Polish IA Summit, and this week I’m posting my notes from the rest of the sessions I saw in Warsaw. Today I’d like to focus on the talks by Krzysztof Trzewiczek and Tomasz Kopacz, about opening up state data and the future of IT respectively.

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April 11, 2011

In the future, will we *all* have to code?

In Jared Spool’s presentation at the IA Summit, he talked about the “Holy Grail” being a UXer who can code. He didn’t mean someone who could just do both, but someone who could do both really well. Jared posited that in the near future, al UXers will need to know code.

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Designing for and with children - Hubert Anyżewski & Agnieszka Szóstek at the Polish IA Summit

I’ve just come back from Poland, where I was giving the opening keynote session at the Polish IA Summit. This is the first of a series of posts about the sessions I saw there, looking at two presentations that featured designing for or with children.

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April 7, 2011

5 lessons from an Information Architecture career

Today I delivered the opening keynote address at the Polish IA Summit in Warsaw, entitled “Come as you are”. It is the story of how I’ve come to spend 13 years building digital products, and how I’ve observed and been part of the changes and development in the UX and IA disciplines over that time. It finishes with what I consider to be the five key lessons about computers and people from my career as an IA practitioner. Here they are...

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Linklog special: "Come as you are" at the Polish IA Summit

This morning I gave the opening keynote talk at the Polish IA Summit in Warsaw. Here is a linklog special of some of the things I referenced in the talk.

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April 1, 2011

All your IA Summit slides are belong to us

A (probably futile) attempt to gather all the 2011 IA Summit slides into one handy reference point.

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"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning": #7 - Physical spaces and 'outsiders'

In preparation for today’s panel session at the IA Summit about UX communities, Matthew Solle and I have been blogging our thoughts about London IA, and what has made it a success, and what has been a failure. The final two themes I wanted to address were the idea of physical spaces and community, and the necessary role of “outsiders”.

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March 25, 2011

"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning": #6 - Professional development

Matthew Solle and I are making up half of a panel at the IA Summit in Denver. We’ll be joined on the day by Joe Sokohl and Eric Reiss. To prepare, we’ve been debating on our blogs the topic of the panel: “blah”. This is the sixth installment, looking at the role of professional development in a UX community.

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March 14, 2011

"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning": #4 - Scarcity

Matthew Solle, Joe Sokohl, Eric Reiss and I are running a discussion panel at IA Summit 2011 called “UX Communities: Starting from the beginning”. Matthew and I have been preparing by having an online debate about what makes up a community, and how you go about forming them. Matthew kicked off part one and I responded on currybetdotnet. On Thursday Matthew added part three, and this is part four.

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March 8, 2011

"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning": A debate - part two

Matthew Solle, Joe Sokohl, Eric Reiss and I are running a discussion panel at IA Summit 2011. It’s called “UX Communities: Starting from the beginning”. Before heading to Denver, Matthew and I wanted to prepare by having a debate about what makes up a community, and how you go about forming them. Part one of this discussion can be found on Matthew’s You The User blog.

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September 27, 2010

Oliver Reichenstein: "Journalists are information architects in their way as well"

One of the most interesting things for me at EuroIA this year was that keynote speaker Oliver Reichenstein has done so much work in digital newspaper website design. In the Q&A session after his talk he made the interesting suggestion that "Journalists are information architects in their way as well"

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September 24, 2010

EuroIA linklog special: "Implementing 'Identity' on Guardian.co.uk"

A special edition of the linklog today. If you were at EuroIA and saw my presentation "Implementing 'Identity' at Guardian.co.uk", then here is a list of links to things I mentioned in the talk. If you weren't there, then this is a taster of what you can expect to see discussed when I publish it.

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July 30, 2010

EuroIA 2010 update

This year's EuroIA conference in Paris is getting closer, and registrations have now opened. There are early bird discounts available until August 6th, and Eric Reiss tells us that uptake is 100% up on this time last year. Space is limited, so I urge you get registered soon.

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June 1, 2010

I'll be 'The information architect with an identity crisis' at this year's EuroIA

I'm pleased to be able to say that I'll be presenting a talk entitled "The information architect with an identity crisis" at this year's EuroIA in Paris.

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May 24, 2010

Google Diversity Grant places up for grabs at EuroIA

Google are offering two free places for female computer scientists at this year's EuroIA Summit in Paris. Here are details of how to apply.

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May 12, 2010

EuroIA Summit - Amsterdam 2008 revisited

The call for papers for this year's EuroIA Summit in Paris ends at the weekend. If you need some inspiration for your submission, here is a run-through of some of my notes from the 2008 event in Amsterdam.

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May 5, 2010

#DENDATAMEET, FOWD, JEEcamp and EuroIA - Upcoming conferences and talks

In the coming weeks and months I'll be talking at or attending #DENDATAMEET, Future of Web Design London, JEEcamp and the EuroIA summit in Paris. Find out more about the events and how to join me here.

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November 21, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 12

Yesterday I began to wrap up my series of posts about getting site search right with the start of a step-by-step guide to transforming the style of Google results that users are familiar with, into something with a richer user experience. Add structured data Google understands a lot about the structure of the web. It understands how all the pages that it has crawled on your site are linked together, and uses this to understand what the key pages...
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November 20, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 11

Transforming your results During the course of this series of articles, I've looked at various elements of interface design which have been employed, for better or for worse, across a wide range of European newspaper websites. Today I'm going to wrap up the series by laying out a step-by-step transformation of Google's search results listing into something that presents users who opt for 'site search' with a richer UI experience. Google's layout In part 2 of this series, I...
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November 18, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 10

Over the last couple of weeks I've been publishing a series of posts about getting site search right, based on my presentation at the 2008 Amsterdam Euro IA Summit. Today I wanted to look at some examples of poor search user experience design which you should seek to avoid. Don't use confusing gimmicks Lots of search technologies come with plenty of features in them for displaying relevancy to the user - almost all of them useless. Giving results a...
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November 13, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 9

I've been writing a series of posts about getting site search right based on my presentation at the Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam this year In the last part I started looking at some examples where search user experience goes wrong. In order to entice the masses away from Google, a site search needs to be on the top of its game, and avoid things like intrusive adverts, opening unnecessary new windows, and providing an inconsistent experience. Another sure...
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November 12, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 8

A couple of weeks back I began a series of articles on currybetdotnet based upon my recent talk at the Euro IA Summit. As well as looking at ways that site search can be made distinctive from Google by including thumbnails and information Google can't obtain, 'advanced' search, and following some positive European examples, I've been looking at areas of the user experience where designers need to show caution. Today I want to start looking at some examples of...
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November 11, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 7

Over the last couple of weeks I've been publishing a series of posts based on an expanded version of the presentation I gave at the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam at the end of September. There, I was talking about "Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google", and getting site search right for news. I've looked at ways that site search can be made distinctive from Google by including thumbnail images, information Google can't obtain, providing usable 'advanced' search,...
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November 7, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 6

Last week I started a series of articles on currybetdotnet based upon my recent talk at the Euro IA Summit. I've been looking at ways that site search can be made distinctive from Google by including thumbnail images and information Google can't obtain, providing usable 'advanced' search, and following some positive examples from newspaper sites across the continent. Today I want to look at two areas where designs need to exercise caution - 'scoped' search and the use of...
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November 6, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 5

Since last week I've been posting a series of articles based upon an expanded version of my Amsterdam Euro IA Summit talk. Having looked at ideas like handling advanced search and adding thumbnail images to search results pages, today I want to concentrate on some positive examples of search user interface design from amongst Europe's newspaper website. Hide complicated features Sometimes it is better to hide complicated features. Sweden's Svenska Dagbladet has several options on their homepage search, some...
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November 5, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 4

I've been presenting a series of articles based on my talk at the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam about 'getting site search right for news'. Last week I looked at utilising information that Google can't obtain to make your UI distinctive, and adding thumbnail images into the search results page to improve relevancy recognition for users. Today I want to look at a perpetually tricky area - advanced search. In recent years, even offering advanced search has sometimes...
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October 31, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 3

This week I've been presenting a series of posts based upon my Euro IA Summit presentation - "Taking the 'Ooh!' out of Google - Getting site search right for news". In an era where search usage is dominated by Google, it is important to make sure that site search doesn't just return great results, but that it does it in a way which offers a distinctive experience from Google. Yesterday I was looking at some of the information that...
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October 30, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 2

Yesterday I started a series of articles based upon an expanded version of my presentation at the 2008 Euro IA Summit. Having introduced the problem of what to do with site search in an era dominated by Google, today I'm looking at some of the things you know about your content that Google cannot glean from web crawling. The trick to taking the 'Oooh' out of Google and putting it back into your site search is to use that...
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October 29, 2008

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 1

Over the course of the next couple of weeks I want to present an expanded version of the presentation I gave at the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam at the end of September. There I was talking about "Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google" and getting site search right for news. Over this series of posts I hope to show how you can use additional information about content that Google can't get access to to make your site...
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October 3, 2008

Take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam - Part 4

Over the last three days I've been blogging my take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 EuroIA Summit in Amsterdam. On Saturday morning I was giving my own talk on how to take the 'Ooh' out of Google and get site search right for news. Here is my final installment of commentary on the conference. "Documenting Mobile 2.0 IA" by Scott Weiss "Now you understand why the animated chart is so helpful, you wouldn't want to do this before...
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October 2, 2008

Take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam - Part 3

Over the last weekend I was in Amsterdam attending the 2008 European Information Architecture Summit. The second day was when I was giving my own presentation, in the stunningly opulent Art Deco surroundings of the Tuschinski Theatre. I've been blogging about what caught my ear there, and here are my take-away facts and quotes from Saturday morning's sessions. Panel sessions There were two panel sessions at the conference. The first was an academic session entitled "Establishing a common ground...
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October 1, 2008

Take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam - Part 2

Yesterday I started blogging some of my take-away facts and quotes from this year's Euro IA Summit at the Tuschinski Theatre in Amsterdam. Here are some of the things that stood out for me on the Friday afternoon. "How do you re-design a business critical web application with billions of unique products" by Floris Ketel "KLM are in the room. If they have to correct me, I will get slapped" Floris Ketel was presenting a case study on the...
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September 30, 2008

Take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam - Part 1

Over the weekend I've been in Amsterdam attending the 2008 European Information Architecture Summit. It was held at the Tuschinski Theatre, which was a simply amazing venue. Despite a couple of schedule clashes - including missing a much anticipated presentation by Deanna Marbeck and Silver Oliver because it coincided with my own session - I got to see a great selection of presentations. Here are some of my take-away facts and quotes from the morning of day one. Keynote...
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September 20, 2008

My Euro IA Summit plans

This time next weekend I shall be preparing to give my presentation at the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam: "Taking the 'Ooh!' out of Google - Getting site search right for news". The event is being held in the Tuschinski Theatre, which should be an experience. I'll be posting a few notes from the event here, and also doing a more thorough write-up for the Free Pint stable of publications who put together the FUMSI magazine that I contribute...
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April 20, 2008

IA for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets - Part 4

This is part 4 of a 4 part article - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Another approach that adds more value and entertainment to widgets is including 'Easter Eggs' - hidden bits of content or functionality triggered by specific user actions. The recent marketing campaign for U2's U23D concert movie was a great example of this. Users could download a widget which carried clips of the movie, behind-the-scenes footage, and news about the film leading up to...
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April 19, 2008

IA for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets - Part 3

This is part 3 of a 4 part article - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Now I want to move on and look at a dimension that is often-underused on websites, but can be absolutely crucial for widgets - time. It is fine to have a website or mini-site devoted to coverage of a specific event, and to leave that untouched at the end of the event as an archive of what happened. This particularly applies to...
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April 18, 2008

IA for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets - Part 2

This is part 2 of a 4 part article - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Let us imagine a company, that has just been told by their whizzy new internet consultant that they need to develop their widget strategy if they are to stay relevant to their target audience. The company - Nom Nom - makes small fluffy toys of baby animals, aimed at the pocket money of their target market, 9 to 15 year old girls....
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April 17, 2008

IA for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets - Part 1

This is part 1 of a 4 part article - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 We are all familiar with the basic history of how mankind developed the written word. Initially, to keep any message preserved, or available to be read by a large audience, you basically had to bang it into the side of some rock. This wasn't a very portable format, and it certainly didn't have RSS feeds. Over time humans improved their written communication,...
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April 16, 2008

Take-away facts, quotes and top tips from the 2008 IA Summit - Day 3

I've just come back from Miami, where I was giving a talk about 'IA for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets' at the 2008 IA Summit. Here's my take on Day 3. Search Patterns - Peter Morville The first thing I went to on Monday was the repeat session of Peter Morville's 'Search Patterns' presentation. He seems to be doing a great job of discovering and exposing every possible variation on search interfaces that there is on the web. What...
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April 15, 2008

Take-away facts, quotes and top tips from the 2008 IA Summit - Day 2

I've spent the weekend in Miami at the 2008 IA Summit, where I was giving a talk on 'IA for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets'. Yesterday I published a round-up of my take-away facts, quotes and top tips from Day 1 of the conference. Here's my take on Day 2. Extending the gaming experience to conventional UI’s - John Ferrara I think it is a generation thing, but I've been to several presentations now at conferences where someone basically...
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April 14, 2008

Take-away facts, quotes and top tips from the 2008 IA Summit - Day 1

The IA Summit started here in Miami in earnest on Saturday morning, and I'm due to give my presentation today. As I did with the Euro IA Summit in Barcelona last year, I thought I would put together a summary of my take-away facts, quotes and top tips, on a day-by-day basis. Journey to the Center of Design - Jared Spool Jared was very entertaining and energetic as a keynote. His premise was that User-Centred Design was the stone in...
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