Recent posts in my Information Architecture Category

October 23, 2012

I always wanted bbc.co.uk to use CEEFAX page numbers

With the ultimate demise of CEEFAX due this week, I’m reminded that I was once a passionate advocate that BBC URLs should have a re-direct mapping from CEEFAX page numbers, so that bbc.co.uk/300 would go to the BBC Sport homepage, and bbc.co.uk/302 would be the football homepage.

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October 2, 2012

All my EuroIA 2012 notes are belong to you...

If you subscribe to this blog via RSS or the email updates, you’ve probably been inundated with a flood of blog posts as I wrote up all the talks I saw at EuroIA in Rome. And probably didn’t get a chance to read them all. Never fear - now you can catch up with the whole lot, including my talk about “Responsive IA” in one handy, free, ebook.

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October 1, 2012

“Responsive IA: IA in the touchscreen era” - Martin Belam at EuroIA

This is an essay version of the talk I gave at EuroIA 2012 in Rome, looking at responsive design and touchscreen devices have changed the approach I take to my IA work.

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September 30, 2012

“Micro IA and content that travels” - Sara Wachter-Boettcher at EuroIA

I’ve spent the last couple of days at EuroIA in Rome, doing lots and lots of bloggage. I’m nearly at the end now - and on Saturday morning I saw Sara Wachter-Boettcher bring content strategy to life for an IA crowd.

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September 28, 2012

“‘Stupid bloody system!’: Bad IA in the workplace” - Jonas Söderström at EuroIA

I’m trying to keep up with nearly-live-blogging EuroIA in Rome. So far I’ve posted notes on talks by Gerry McGovern,Peter J. Bogaards and Birgit Geiberger & Peter Boersma and Raffaella Roviglioni. I actually split my time during Raffaella’s talk because I wanted to see some of Jonas Söderström’s session on bad enterprise software...

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“An agronomist’s unexpected path to UX Design” - Raffaella Roviglioni at EuroIA

I’ve live-blogging EuroIA in Rome. I’ve posted notes on talks by Gerry McGovern,Peter J. Bogaards and Birgit Geiberger & Peter Boersma. I was really looking forward to Raffaella Roviglioni talking about her unique path into UX, and I wasn’t disappointed. Here are my notes...

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“Helping businesses to tackle a ‘wicked problem’” - Peter J. Bogaards at EuroIA

I’m at EuroIA in Rome, trying my usual frantic blog-it-as-it-happens approach. Up until the point where I give my talk on “IA in the touchscreen era” tomorrow. I’ve posted my notes on the opening session from Gerry McGovern, and here is session two with Peter J. Bogaards. Peter was one of the first information architects I ever started reading on the web, and one of the inspirations to start currybetdotnet all those years ago...

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“The dirty magnet” - Gerry McGovern at EuroIA

I’m at EuroIA in Rome, and will be trying my usual blog-it-as-it-happens approach. Whilst also putting the final touches to my talk on “IA in the touchscreen era” tomorrow. Here are my notes on the opening session from Gerry McGovern...

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May 22, 2012

“It’s all about content. It’s not about content” - Giles Colborne’s IA Summit Redux 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. Here are my notes from Giles’ talk.

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April 30, 2012

From display:none to display:relevant - Why “Responsive IA” is vital

You can’t be involved in digital product design and not have heard the buzz-words “responsive design” - building one URL that changes the information and design displayed as you access it with different devices with different screen sizes. The Boston Globe has won awards for doing it in the news space. A key component of a successful “responsive design” has to be a flexible and responsive IA.

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March 25, 2012

Responsive information architecture

I’ve long been fascinated by how to make content, context and user work on small screens, and intrigued by how to make coherent and satisfying user experiences with a minimum of design and sign-posting, so I’m very pleased to be able to announce one of my main projects for this year - on May 3rd I’ll be teaching a day long masterclass in “Responsive IA”.

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November 21, 2011

Mags Hanley and Vanessa Harden at London IA

Last week we held November’s London IA evening at the Sense Loft, sponsored by Zebra People and CX Partners. Mags Hanley and Vanessa Harden were talking.

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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 27, 2011

“The Rise and Fall...and Rise Again of Information Architecture” - Bob Royce at EuroIA 2011

I’ve been gradually working through the remaining notes I made on my trip to Prague to speak at this year’s EuroIA. One of my favourite talks was more heavily focussed on software engineering than anything else on the conference programme, which put a big smile on my face. Here are my thoughts on Bob Royce presenting “The Rise and Fall...and Rise Again of Information Architecture.”

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September 26, 2011

“Truth and Dare – Out of the Echo-Chamber, into the Fire” - My critique of Jason Mesut at EuroIA 2011

Before starting his EuroIA talk, Jason Mesut suggested that if you kept a count of the number of people he offended, you might win a prize at the end. He also asked for people not to tweet his soundbites out of a context - a tweetable soundbite in itself - and asked for a public critique of the talk at the end. Here is mine...

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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

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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September 6, 2011

How the Guardian’s custom CMS & API helped take content strategy to a traditional publisher

This is the essay version of a talk I gave this morning at the Content Strategy Forum in London - “Taking content strategy to people who already think they have one”. It covers how the Guardian has shifted from traditional to digital publishing, and talks about our CMS, our metadata, our API, and gives my advice for those entering the content strategy field when dealing with traditional publishers.

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September 5, 2011

Lisa Welchman and Eric Reiss at Content Strategy Forum 2011

My notes from 2 sessions at the 2011 Content Strategy Forum, featuring talks by Lisa Welchman and Eric Reiss.

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“CMS - the software UX forgot” - Karen McGrane at Content Strategy Forum 2011

My notes from Karen McGrane’s brilliant talk at Content Strategy Forum 2011.

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Gerry McGovern, Melissa Rach and Margot Bloomstein at Content Strategy Forum 2011

Download this, and all of my notes from the Content Strategy Forum as one printable PDF or in epub format for iBooks This morning I have been at the Content Strategy Forum in London. I’m entirely unconvinced that I can keep up this pace of blogging, refine my own talk for tomorrow, and handle all the feedback from last week’s “How digital transformed the news cycle - and what you can do about it” essay, but here - in an...
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August 31, 2011

(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, Understanding and the Sport section?

Since helping redesign the front page and sitting with the team for a few days, I’ve been acting as a kind of unofficial pseudo-techie-in-residence in the “You tell us” open thread on Comment is free. They are mostly a good-natured bunch. Unusually today, an information architecture question cropped up in the thread

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UX drop-in at the Guardian

We had our first “UX drop-in” at the Guardian yesterday, and judging by the waiting list to get tickets and the reaction on the day, it won’t be the last. It was quite a simple format - get a ticket, turn up at the Guardian on the day, there will be some short talks, the chance to play with some forthcoming products like our Android app, and some free beer.

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August 17, 2011

Join the Guardian’s UX team

There are a couple of opportunities open at the moment to visit the user experience team at the Guardian. We are having a “drop-in” open day, and there are vacancies.

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July 25, 2011

4 key pieces of audience engagement missing from Andy Rutledge’s news redux

Andy Rutledge published a fascinating blog post last week looking at the design of digital news, and to illustrate his points he did a redux of the New York Times. Whilst appreciating the visual design, I thought there were 4 key areas where I very much disagree with Andy’s analysis, and think it would fail to engage with mainstream news readers.

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July 19, 2011

“Live: Someone is dead” - how CMS software can damage the news UX

I posted a screengrab to Tumblr last night of the headline from The Times website which unfortunately managed to follow the formula “Live: Someone is dead”. I think it is the perfect example of something that wouldn’t be allowed to happen in print, but which hits a magic Venn diagram intersection of technology, editorial and information architecture allowing it to happen digitally.

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July 13, 2011

Forthcoming talks and events: August - October 2011

I just wanted to briefly post about some of the talks I will be doing, and events I am involved in, between now and the end of the year.

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July 5, 2011

“Information Architects: The Secret librarians of the internet” talk at LIKE26

Last week I spoke at the 26th meeting of LIKE, the London Information and Knowledge Exchange. With the title “Information Architects: The Secret librarians of the internet”, the talk was based on both “Come as you are” and “Tags are magic!”, giving an overview of how I became an Information Architect, and some detail on how we tag up our content for the Guardian website.

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June 17, 2011

“Come as you are” - Part 4: The Guardian years

This is part four of a five part essay based on my Polish IA Summit keynote talk “Come as you are”, looking at how I do my work at The Guardian.

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June 15, 2011

“Come as you are” - Part 2: The BBC years

This is the second part of my essay version of “Come as you are”, a talk I gave at the Polish IA Summit which looks back at my digital career and draws out what I think are the key lessons for information architects and user experience practitioners. This post looks at my time working at the BBC between 2000 and 2005.

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June 14, 2011

Introducing the rNews metadata standard at Hacks/Hackers London

Last night I was at the Hacks/Hackers meet-up to hear Andreas Gebhart, Stuart Myles and Evan Sandhaus talk about the proposed new IPTC semantic metadata standard rNews.

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“Come as you are” - Part 1: The Reckless years

Over the next few days I’ll be publishing an essay version of “Come as you are”, my Polish IA Summit keynote talk, which looked back over how I came to be an Information Architect, and what I’ve learned in the process.

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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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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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April 11, 2011

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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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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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 23, 2011

Martin Belam interviewed by Artur Kurasiński

In just over a fornight’s time I’ll be opening the Polish IA Summit, with a keynote presentation entitled “Come as you are”. It is a reference to the Nirvana track, as an anecdote about the band from my days working in a record shop is one of the elements setting up the talk. It is also a look back at the key things I’ve learned through 13 years of working with websites and digital products, and watching and being part of the disciplines of information architecture and user experience design evolving into the established job roles that they are today. As part of the build-up I’ve been interviewed by Artur Kurasińsk

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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 2, 2011

"Telling Stories with Data" - the BBC's Scott Byrne-Fraser at London Hacks/Hackers

Last week I was at the the latest Hacks/Hackers meet up and saw Scott Byrne-Fraser of the BBC talking about how their data visualisations and online interactives have developed.

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February 22, 2011

Upcoming talks in London, Manchester, Warsaw, Denver and Atlanta

I’ve been sitting on the news for several weeks now about some upcoming talks and appearances at conferences that I’ve got planned, but since they all seem to have finally been publicly announced I can reveal my jet-setting plans for the next few months.

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February 17, 2011

"Change, work with, ignore, fail?" - Dan Lockton at London IA

Last Wednesday we held the latest of our London IA events. As ever it was curated and organised brilliantly by Matthew Solle. I've already posted my handwritten notes from Relly Annett-Baker's talk - she banned the use of technology whilst speaking - and today I've got a rather more conventional blog post about Dan Lockton's talk.

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February 8, 2011

"From Pattern to Component" - Tyler Tate at Lightning UX

Over the last few blog posts I've been sharing the notes I took at last week's Lightning UX event organised and hosted by Lee McIvor. Today it is the turn of Tyler Tate's talk about UI components.

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February 7, 2011

"Dark patterns" - Harry Brignull at Lightning UX

I've been blogging my notes from last week's Lightning UX evening, and this morning posted my thoughts on Cennydd Bowles' presentation "The dip". Another member of the thriving Brighton UX scene is Dr Harry Brignull, and he was also talking at the event on Tuesday about "Dark patterns".

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February 4, 2011

"Why content strategy is a big deal for UX professionals" - Jonathan Kahn at Lightning UX

Tuesday night was Lightning UX night, featuring 8 speakers delivering five minutes each on a variety of UX and IA related topics. The second talk of the evening came from Jonathan Kahn, and it was about the relationship between content strategy and UX.

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"How a developer became a UX designer" - Boon Chew at Lightning UX

On Tuesday night I was at Sapient Nitro's offices for an evening of Lightning UX organised by Lee McIvor. Featuring 8 speakers delivering five minutes each, it was a new event on the London UX calendar. Over the next few days I'll be writing up some of my notes from what was a great evening which I hope to see repeated, starting with Boon Chew's talk about "How a developer became a ux designer".

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February 3, 2011

"Tags are magic!" series completed on the Guardian Developer blog

Over the last few weeks on the Guardian's Developer blog we've been publishing a series called "Tags are magic!". Written by myself and tag manager Peter Martin, it is based on the presentation we gave at Online Information in November 2010.

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January 27, 2011

Martin Belam talk at Leeds Community News Hub (and at The Guardian and at PublicZone) - resources

If you were at my talk in Leeds today, then here are some of the resources I mentioned during the presentation.

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January 25, 2011

Martin Belam talk in Leeds - Q&A session with student journalist Tom Page

On Wednesday I'll be in Leeds talking at the Leeds Community News Hub. In the run-up to the event I was interviewed by Tom Page, a second year sports journalist currently studying at Leeds Trinity & All Saints University College. Here is the Q&A session we had.

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January 13, 2011

"Mark Plant: Experiments and experience from the UX/Agile divide" at London IA

On Tuesday night we held the first London IA event of the year, and here are my notes from Mark Plant's talk explaining why wireframes are dead - "Experiments and experience from the UX/Agile divide"

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January 12, 2011

"Tags are magic!" on the Guardian Developer blog

This week on the Developer blog we've begun posting a series of articles entitled "Tags are magic!", about the metadata under-pinning the content on guardian.co.uk, co-authored by myself and Peter Martin.

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January 10, 2011

"Do Information Architects have a role in datajournalism?" debate on SIGIA-L

There has been a recent thread on the SIGIA-L mailing list featuring Eric Scheid and Stephen Collins asking about "the role of IAs in Data Journalism"

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December 17, 2010

Why I'm fond of flashing The Guardian's underwear

There was a lovely short post from Joe Leech a couple of weeks back about organisations showing their underpants in their navigational structures on the web. It is unhelpful for users, and totally works against them achieving task based goals. But I think news is different, and I'm actually rather fond of flashing The Guardian's pants at the world...

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