April 13, 2008
IA Summit 08: Content Page Design Best Practices
Content Page Design Best Practices
Luke Wroblewski
www.lukew.com
This was an amazing session. Luke clearly laid out some of the best practices for laying out content to fit the diverse ways in which people arrive to your site. The examples were clear, and the difference between bad and good were stark. (notes limited, see slides)
We optimize websites for the traditional tree structure, where as the web lives in a more random way. Using his website, he showed how only 5% of people experienced his site in the traditional tree structure, versus coming in via direct links, tags, etc.
Web Ecosystem:
- Communication
- Display Surfaces
- Content Creators
- Content Aggregators
- Search
Communication: IM, email, twitter, mailing list archives, etc.
- Direct communication, personal suggestions, etc.
Display Surfaces: Profiles such as Facebook, Yahoo Mash
- Spaces that you define your interests
Content Creators: Blogs
- Posting original content
Content Aggregators: del.icio.us, digg
Search: Google, Yahoo!
- Most crucial
This ecosystem shows how people may come to your site from many different environments. What happens when they arrive at your page?
A basic page is broken up in 3 different areas, Content, Context, and Related (see slides for layout relation)
Content:
Set good expectations
- HTML & Page title should be the same (consistency)
- Make good on promise of content, % of page dedicated to content should be significant (versus examples showing only 25%)
- Utilize visual hierarchy to manage attention (scanability, bullet points, white space)
Related:
- Showed BBC as a great example, that when searching for a story on the Iraq war, the left side becomes populated with related content. They even embed related video content in the actual story. But can be overdone, similar to the WebMD example for children's health.
- When given too many choices, the easiest choice is to not choose (the back button). Limit options.
Best Practices
- if you an make good on content promises, people are more likely to welcome related calls to action
- post related content on the site, based on the search that brought them there (his site is an example)
Context:
- This is the menu bars, etc. Make minimal
Slides coming soon
IA Summit 08: Taxonomy is User Experience
Taxonomy is User Experience
Dave Cooksey
GSI Commerce
Dave talked about how the establishment of a taxonomy is directly tied to how users experience a site... His examples revolved around a redesign of the Dicks Sporting Goods & Ace Hardware websites.
Some notes...
Taxonomy is a framework
- Taxonomy is classification & labeling
- Metadata is data about terms in the taxonomy both structured & unstructured (attributes for facets)
- Logic, systems that represent understanding i.e. mapping - did you mean this?
5 Good ideas for Taxonomy objects
1. Leave your cubicle
- engage everyone from client to designers & developers
- limit engagement with timelines & hard stops
- work collaboratively
- create conversations
- keep interactions in mind
- help plan implementation
2. Focus on Interactions
- taxonomy enables finding & decision
- facets & filters need good data
- crucial in highly interactive experiences
- make the connection, clearly demonstrate how data drives experience
3. Speak their language
- use shared references (the long tail)
- talk about results (analytics, quantitative UX indicators)
- celebrate success
4. Test using *real* users
- taxonomies must be user-centric
- involve users (implicitly / explicitly)
- keep it simple
5. Plan the future
- taxonomy guidelines
- plan maintenance
Taxonomy is strategy
Slides coming soon
IA Summit 08: Inspiration from the Edge
Inspiration from the Edge: New Patterns for Interface Design
Stephen Anderson
This was an inspiring session, encouraging participants to look at interface design of non-web applications for new web user experiences (notes cut short here). We were presented with a host of innovative interfaces, from applications, mobile devices and gaming as inspiration.
Where do you get your ideas for interface design?
Default Thinking (don't do)
- Look at competitors
Look at interfaces outside of basic web interfaces... (do)
- from architecture, film, gaming, etc.
Comments:
1. W/ new technologies almost anything is possible
2. Natural behaviors are superior to learned behaviors (A scrollbar, really?)
3. ...except when the learned behavior makes me feel better and more efficient (Quicksilver)
Think outside the UI Box
- pop up windows, similar to windows opening in OSX (Text, Fonts, etc)
(where windows communicate with each other, a window pops up to enter in your profile info, but when closed, it pushes the changes back to the main window
Slides coming soon.
See his other slides posted here:
slideshare.net/stephenpa
IA Summit 08: The Business of Experience
The Business of Experience: The Experience Impact Framework
Jess McMullin
nForm
In this session Jess discussed how to work within an organization to get the best results, using his experience impact framework. We have tools to understand our users, but there's need to understand the business to have a successful project.
1. Identify audience. Look at business persona / influence network
8 types of people:
- Advocate (on your side)
- Superior
- Peer
- Frontline people (front desk)
- Critic
- Validator (could be person, research or competitor)
- Gatekeeper (finance / legal)
- Maverick
2. Understand motivation
- Risk
- Reward (what is it?)
- Power
- Inertia (how things are going to be in the future)
- Vendorship
3. Understand activities
- Lead (insight, direction, resources, constraints, outcomes)
- Manage (people, process, money, materials, infrastructure)
- Execute (discover, develop, produce, market, sell, deliver, support)
4. Target your methods
Methods trump methodology
U.S.E. / Understand, Solve, Use (in cyclical motion)
- Understand (qualitative, quantitative, analysis, synthesis, modeling)
- Solve (model, architecture, flow, prototype, interface, specification)
- Evaluate (analytics, heuristics, usability testing, metrics)
Must have empathy for business needs
5. Commit to action
- Build Trust
- Open Questions (open ended)
- Closed Questions (looking for specificity)
- Will You? Questions
Slides:
IA Summit 08: How to be a User Experience Team of One
How to be a User Experience Team of One
Leah Buley
Adaptive Path
Leah gave a lively performance detailing her experience of being a UX design team of one, and had many great ideas on how to make this situation work for you. Some may sound simple, but I think that's what makes them so powerful.
Generative Design - generate ideas... lots of them.
- the refine, pair them down to the best ideas
Not about using Dogma or a Methodology...
1. Brainstorm a lot
2. Assemble an Ad Hoc team (non UX co-workers who have a stake in the project)
3. Pick the best ideas
Using eVite.com as an example, she walked through the process of how to build a better user interface.
1. Brainstorm within constraints
Using conceptual frameworks:
- Spectrum
- 2 x 2
- Grids
Experiment with Word Associations, them mix and match words
Keep an inspiration library, grabbing screen shots of sites you like.
- good for competitive analysis
- good for warshack analysis
2. Assemble an Ad Hoc team
Make Sketchboards
Host open design sessions, giving people a pen, paper and pizza
Run template-based workshops
Decorate your space with good ideas
Don't be an artist, be a facilitator
3. Pick the Best Ideas
How?
- Business needs are good, but user needs are better
- Business needs + User needs = Design Principles (use susinct statements that summarize needs)
How to get started?
- Start sketching - force yourself to draw 5
- Schedule workshops - get other people involved
- Draft design principles
Why it Matters?
- Personal satisfaction - feel good about your ideas
Slides:
IA Summit 08: A Management Fable
A Management Fable: The Little UX That Went a Long Way
Dan Willis
http://www.dswillis.com/
In this session, Dan used an impressively illustrated slide show to tell the story of the little UX that went a long way. It's was essentially using the fairy tale genre to describe the process that a UX designer has to go through when working on a project. It was an interesting story and here were some of the points of interest:
UX designers seek success without ownership
- frequently someone else owns the content
- frequently someone else owns the requirements
- frequently someone else owns the implementation
Acceptance is not buy-in. Everyone loves the user until it gets in the way of their personal desires.
Tips:
- Put the user experience in the definitions
- Adjust the requirements to help make the user unavoidable
(include user tasks, address user goals, define the ideal user experience)
- Offer solution for every problem you raise
- Be ready to work harder than all the other people
(take ownership of the minutia nobody else wants)
Powerpoint & podcasts coming soon
IA Summit 08: Exploratory Search and Folksonomy
Exploratory Search and Folksonomy: Exploration Paths in Social Tagging Systems
Tingting Jiang
University of Pittsburgh
This was the more academic of the presentations yesterday. Not that entertaining, but an interesting analysis of the different types of classification, information seeking behavior, and 3 elements involved.
Hierarchical Classification / LCC, DC, Google Directory
- comprehensive, fixed, non-overlapping
- heirarchical, numerative
- universal, local
- high investment
- professional, formal
Faceted Categorization / Flamenco
- set of small heirarchies
- conceptual dimension
- less investment
- still professional
- navigational searching
- flexibility
- query
- fixed collection
Tagging Dyamic Clusters / Grokker, Clusty
- dynamic, post-retrieval, unique
- clustering algorhims
- automation, less complex & less costly
- ambiguity, instability
- vivisimo customization
Folksonomy / del.icio.us, Flickr
- flat, inclusive
- anyone, any language
- liberal, distributed, dynamic
- inexpensive, responsive
- vocabulary problem (different terms to describe the same things)
Information Seeking in tagging systems consist of 4 activities.
- Browsing
- Searching
- Being aware (tagging only)
- Monitoring (tagging only)
3 elements exist:
- Resources - information space
- Users - social structure
- Tags - information structure
Being Aware uses Resources & Tags)
- recent / popular searches
- recent / popular tags
Monitoring uses Users & Tags
- users of interest
- tags of interest
Searching uses Tags, Resources & Users
- tag
- username
- resource keyword
Browsing (dominates information seeking in social tagging)
- resource description
- user central place (where people store tags, etc.)
- tag navigation
Check out the presentation (coming soon) to see the graphical representation of how these concepts interact.