User Experience Deliverables (January 27, 2009)

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000228.php

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It's an exhilarating time for the user experience community. Rising
awareness of our value plus emerging technologies and transmedia
trends have created conditions for a step change in our practice.

As an information architect, I'm enjoying the new challenges
immensely, even as they sweep me outside my comfort zone. I've
designed social software and rich user interfaces. I've sketched
scenarios for the future of mobile search. I've mapped the user
experience across channels and applications. And, I've increasingly
found myself striving to clarify ideas for folks in the executive suite.

Consequently, I'm rethinking my role, redefining my deliverables, and
embracing new forms of interdisciplinary collaboration. For instance,
I've ensnared Jeffery Callender as co-author of Search Patterns, a new
book (in process) about design for discovery and the future of search.

[Image: Tear Down The Wall]

Together, we're hoping to bring search to life with colorful,
compelling stories, maps, and illustrations, which brings us back to
deliverables.

Tools for Thinking

Two books have inspired me to think differently about discovery,
communication, and design. First, Made to Stick challenged me to think
simple. This book reveals the power of short phrases and surprising,
personal stories to change minds and shape memories:

* Proverbs are the Holy Grail of simplicity. Coming up with a short,
compact phrase is easy. Anybody can do it. On the other hand, coming
up with a profound compact phrase is incredibly difficult [yet]
enduringly powerful.

* We need to open gaps before we close them. Our tendency is to tell
people the facts. First, though, they must realize that they need
these facts.

* This realization - that empathy emerges from the particular rather
than the pattern - brings us back full circle to the Mother Teresa
quote: "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one,
I will."

* The story's power, then, is twofold: It provides simulation
(knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act).

Second, The Back of the Napkin encouraged me to think visual. This
book shows how sketching can help us discover and sell ideas:

* Visual thinking means taking advantage of our innate ability to see
- both with our eyes and with our mind's eye - in order to discover
ideas that are otherwise invisible, develop those ideas quickly and
intuitively, and then share those ideas with other people in a way
that they simply "get."

These two books are gems, and yet their simple ideas are surprisingly
difficult to apply. Making things easy is hard. But, for our projects
and our book, we're convinced it's worth the effort. So, building on
Dan's garage-sale principle: "everything looks different when we can
see it all at once," Jeff and I have begun collecting user experience
deliverables, and laying them all out, so we can look, see, imagine,
and show.

The Deliverables

This list describes twenty user experience deliverables with links to
relevant resources and examples. Clearly, these artifacts of the
process are not the whole story. We must also think about the
relationship between goals, methods, and documents. And yet, for many
of us, deliverables are the coin of the realm and merit special attention.

1. Stories. A good story about a user's experience can help people to
see the problem (or opportunity), motivate people to take action, and
stick in people's memories long after we're gone.

       Stories Storytelling in Business
       The Secret Language of Leadership by Stephen Denning
       Articles by Dave Snowden

2. Proverbs. High-concept pitches, generative analogies, and
experience strategies invoke existing schemas to put the world in a
wardrobe.

       Proverbs Experience Strategies by Jesse James Garrett
       High Concept Pitches for Startups
       English Proverbs (Wikiquote)

3. Personas. Portraits and profiles of user types (and their goals and
behaviors) remind us all that "you are not the user" and serve as an
invaluable compass for design and development.

       Personas Personas (Dey Alexander)
       Personas are NOT a Document by Jared Spool
       Personas (Wikipedia)

4. Scenarios. Positioning personas in natural contexts gets us
thinking about how a system fits the lives of real people.

       Scenarios What is a Scenario?
       Scenarios by Shawn Henry
       Use Cases and User Scenarios (IxDA)

5. Content Inventories. Reviewing and describing documents and objects
is a prerequisite to effective structure and organization. The
artifact (often a spreadsheet) is a sign of due diligence.

       Content Inventories Doing a Content Inventory by Jeff Veen
       Why You Shouldn't by Leisa Reichelt
       The Rolling Content Inventory by Lou Rosenfeld

6. Analytics. We learn by wallowing in interaction, search, and
navigation data. And, we teach by uncovering and charting the most
pivotal landmarks, portals, paths, and patterns.

       Web Analytics Web Analytics (Wikipedia)
       Web Analytics and IA by Hallie Wilfert
       Search Log Analysis (Dey Alexander)

7. User Surveys. Asking the same questions of many users across
multiple audiences can reveal existing gaps and common needs, and show
how they map to customer satisfaction.

       User Surveys When to Use Which by Christian Rohrer
       American Customer Satisfaction Index
       Pew Internet & American Life

8. Concept Maps. In the territory of concepts, a good map can help us
see where we are and decide what to do by establishing landmarks,
clarifying relationships, and identifying true north.

       Concept Maps Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam
       What is Your Mental Model? (Indi Young)
       Flickr User Model by Bryce Glass

9. System Maps. A visual representation of objects and relationships
within a system can aid understanding and finding for both
stakeholders and users. Shift gears from "as-is" to "to-be" and you
have a blueprint for structural redesign.

       System Maps Map - Territory Relationship (Wikipedia)
       London Underground Maps (Ask Edward Tufte)
       Developing Taxonomy by Christian Ricci

10. Process Flows. How do users move through a system? How can we
improve these flows? A symbolic depiction can enlighten desire lines
and show the benefits of (less) chosen paths.

       Process Flows User Flows (Google Images)
       Improving User Task Flows by Austin Govella
       Desire Path (Wikipedia)

11. Wireframes. Sketches of pages and screens can focus us on
structure, organization, navigation, and interaction before investing
time and attention in color, typography, and image.

       Wireframes Where the Wireframes Are by Dan Brown
       Real Wireframes by Stephen Turbek
       Wireflow Trading Card (nForm)

12. Storyboards. A series of sketches with narrative displayed in
sequence can tell a story and paint a picture by showing interaction
between users and systems in context over time.

       Storyboards Comics by Rebekah Sedaca
       Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud (Video)
       Swimlane Diagram (nForm)

13. Concept Designs. Interface designs and composite art invoke an
emotional response and capture people's attention by presenting a
high-fidelity image of how the product could look.

       Concept Designs Concept Designs (Flickr)
       Concept Design Tools by Victor Lombardi
       Found Futures (Stuart Candy)

14. Prototypes. From paper prototypes to pre-alpha software and
hardware, working models drive rapid iteration and emotional
engagement by showing how a product will look and feel.

       Prototypes Paper Prototyping by Shawn Medero
       Prototyping with XHTML by Anders Ramsay and Leah Buley
       WineM (Technology Sketch)

15. Narrative Reports. Writing is a great tool for thinking and
organizing. And, it's hard to beat a written report for presenting
detailed results and analysis or formal recommendations. Reports can
serve as a container for most other deliverables.

       Narrative Reports The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
       Strategy Report by Morville & Rosenfeld
       Business Brief (Adaptive Path)

16. Presentations. As the lingua franca of business, slideshows (and
videos) can be great for telling a story or painting a picture. They
can also be dead boring, unless you present in person, hit the
highlights, and beware the bullets. Presentations can serve as a
container for most other deliverables.

       Presentations The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint by Edward Tufte
       In Defense of PowerPoint by Don Norman
       IA Summit Presentations (SlideShare)

17. Plans. Project plans, roadmaps, and schedules guide design and
development activity by clarifying roles and responsibilities.

       Plans Gantt Charts
       Project Management (Wikipedia)
       The Deadline by Tom DeMarco

18. Specifications. An explicit set of requirements describing the
behavior or function of a system is often a necessary element in the
transition from design to development.

       Specifications Usable Software Specifications by Brian Krause
       Painless Functional Specifications by Joel Spolsky
       Just a Fairy Tale? by Dan Willis

19. Style Guides. A manual that defines a set of standards for
identity, design, and writing can promote clarity and consistency.

       Style Guides Guidance on Style Guides by Chauncey Wilson
       Web Style Guide (University of Pennsylvania)
       Web Style Guide by Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton

20. Design Patterns. A pattern library that shows repeatable solutions
to common problems can describe best practices, encourage sharing and
reuse, and promote consistency.

       Design Patterns About Patterns by Jenifer Tidwell
       Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
       Implementing a Pattern Library

Organizing the Deliverables

Of course, compiling a list is only the first step. For each project,
we must strive for the optimal mix. Since our deliverables resist a
taxonomy, asking questions may help derive their folksonomy.

     * Audience. Who must you reach?
     * Content. What is the message?
     * Context. Where is the conversation?
     * Process. When is the message?
     * Problem. Why are you communicating?

And, the questions never end. Should your argument be simple or
elaborate? Quantitative or qualitative? We can organize and describe
these deliverables until the end of time. We've made a start. Perhaps
you can help. Will you tag a few in our collection on Flickr?

Treasure Map

If you've made it this far, you deserve a reward. That's a lot of
words about a lot of deliverables. And, that's the problem. It's hard
to find the best trees when we can't see the forest. So, we often fall
back on old habits. We churn out wireframes when a story may be worth
its weight in gold. Some great deliverables stay hidden in plain
sight. That's why we created this treasure map for our wall (and yours).

[Image: User Experience Treasure Map]

Good luck exploring! And, please let us know what you discover!

User Experience Strategy (July 23, 2007)

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000179.php

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In recent years, my consulting process has become T-shaped, in part
due to the gentle jabs of Peter Boersma, but mostly as a result of the
fit between my expertise and the needs of my clients.

In the first phase, I conduct research (the three circles) and work
with my clients to define a user experience strategy. This narrative
expression provides a necessary but insufficient platform for design.

Figure 1. The T-Shaped Consulting Framework

In the second phase, I develop the information architecture, which
requires specifying the structure and behavior of a web site, software
product, or interactive service, so that users can achieve goals,
complete tasks, and find what they need.

And, it's this tangible expression of strategy, in the form of
wireframes, sketches, and prototypes, that reliably translates an
abstract vision into a well-grounded, actionable blueprint for design.
Without that structural foundation, the strategy just hangs in space.

Frame Analysis

But this article is not about information architecture. Rather, it's
an investigation of user experience strategy, a novel phrase that's
crept into our vocabulary and is shaping our future. Let me explain.

The words we use to describe or frame our roles, our teams, and
ourselves influence our own perceptions and the ways we are perceived
by others. As George Lakoff explains in Don't Think of an Elephant:

"Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As
a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we
act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions...Because
language activates frames, new language is required for new frames.
Thinking differently requires speaking differently."

In other words, user experience strategy is a term whose time has
come, and while it leads us to better design, it also obscures our vision.

Don't Think of an Experience

As an information architect, I'm sensitive to the fact that quite
often the last thing users want is an experience. In many contexts,
usability and findability simply outweigh desirability. Users want to
find it, use it, and move on. The best experience is invisible.

In other contexts, we must beware the lure of end-to-end control
invoked by user experience design. As Mark Weiser forewarned,
seamlessness impedes invention. It's seamful design that affords
appropriation, co-creation, mashups, swarming, and other elegant hacks.

Of course, all terms have limits. Information architects must stay
social and be wary of infoprefixation. And, interaction designers must
heed the hyperbole that in design, interaction is the last resort. But
these dangers don't negate the real value that new terms deliver by
helping us to think and act differently in unfamiliar terrain.

From Design to Strategy

Jesse James Garrett famously defined user experience design in a great
diagram and an even better book:

"Businesses have now come to recognize that providing a quality user
experience is an essential, sustainable competitive advantage. It is
user experience that forms the customer's impression of the company's
offerings, it is user experience that differentiates the company from
its competitors, and it is user experience that determines whether
your customer will ever come back."

Similarly, Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman explain that user experience
design "encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the
company, its services, and its products." And, Nathan Shedroff
positions user experience design as "an approach to creating
successful experiences for people in any medium."

A great deal has been written about user experience design but only
recently has much ink been spilled on the subject of user experience
strategy. I suspect there are a couple of reasons for the new focus.
First, the elevated stature of user experience and design thinking in
the business world have opened doors in the executive suite. Designers
have a real opportunity to influence strategy. Second, we're nearing
an inflection point in an expanding set of markets, beyond which
traditional product design is rendered obsolete.

Experience Ecologies

As we're increasingly able to embed information and intelligence in
physical objects connected via ubiquitous wireless networks, such
concepts as open source, open APIs, mashups, co-creation, and
findability are rapidly and irrevocably escaping the confines of the Web.

Adam Greenfield encapsulates the ensuing erosion of distinctions
between "product" and "service" and the importance of "beautiful
seams" in On the Ground Running, a brilliant piece that explores and
eviscerates the iPod, Nike+, and Amtrak Acela ecologies.

Peter Merholz offers a valuable and complementary perspective in
Experience IS the Product, and his partner Jesse James Garret, in a
mesmerizing podcast on Experience Strategies, drives home the absolute
imperative of designing from the outside-in.

Jared Spool positions what's going on as a simple progression toward
market maturity from technology to features to experience to
integration. I'm sure Jared's right, but this framing misses the real
story. The way we conceptualize products, services, and brands is
changing. We can glimpse the destination in Bruce Sterling's spime and
Julian Bleecker's blogjects, but the journey has already begun, which
is why we're talking so much about user experience strategy.

Experience Executives

In the past, I've used the following quote to introduce the complex,
intimate relationship between strategy and tactics:

"In strategy, surprise becomes more feasible the closer it occurs to
the tactical realm." - Carl von Clausewitz, 1832

Good strategy requires awareness of the full range of possible
tactics. Richard Dalton captures this nicely in the Forces of User
Experience, though I'll never know why he chose a rainbow over a
honeycomb.

Figure 2. The User Experience Strategy Honeycomb

The key point is that within an increasing number of markets,
executives can no longer afford to formulate strategy without
embracing user experience, and to the extent their offerings include
web sites, software products, and interactive services, these leaders
(or their successors) must understand the complex interplay between
strategy, scope, structure, semantics, skeleton, and surface. They
must become experience executives, in concept if not in name.

It's About Futurity

As Michael Raynor explains in The Strategy Paradox, strategy and
futurity are inextricably bound together:

"Most strategies are built on specific beliefs about the future.
Unfortunately, the future is deeply unpredictable. Worse, the
requirements of breakthrough success demand implementing strategy in
ways that make it impossible to adapt should the future not turn out
as expected. The result is the Strategy Paradox: strategies with the
greatest possibility of success also have the greatest possibility of
failure. Resolving this paradox requires a new way of thinking about
strategy and uncertainty."

Raynor argues that to manage uncertainty, companies must build
scenarios of the future, and identify strategies and strategic options
for each possible future. I'd argue that those who develop user
experience strategy would do well to embrace this framing in futurity.

For while our work certainly supports incremental progress towards
better usability, findability, and credibility, user experience
methods are equally well-suited to disruptive innovation. In the deep
dives of design research, we gain insight into the latent needs of
users, and with our sketches, mental models, and prototypes we bring
greater richness and depth to the exploration of possible, probable,
and preferable futures.

In short, we are futurists.

So, what about that empty cell in the honeycomb? Well, like our
understanding of user experience strategy, the hive remains
unfinished. We don't have all the answers, at least not individually.

Perhaps we can fill in the gaps together, tomorrow.

(Not) Everything is Miscellaneous (May 2, 2007)

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000167.php

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To the librarians. So begins Everything is Miscellaneous, David
Weinberger's mesmerizing new book about organization, authority, and
knowledge. I received my advance copy last week and read it in a
single day. I found it interesting and inspiring, and I recommend it
highly.

But, I don't agree that everything is or will be or should be
miscellaneous, and I don't believe David is entirely fair to
librarians, information architects, and other professional organizers.

The troubles begin with David's taxonomy which divides the history of
organization into a first, second, and third order of order. Implicit
in this taxonomy lies the assertion of linear progress, a lossless
swap of old for new, similar to the presumed step change into Web 2.0
that I challenged in Information Architecture 3.0.

In David's book, the inevitability and desirability of this migration
to miscellany is also made explicit:

"When you go to a commercial Web site, the business owns and controls
the information it wants to give you, the way you'll navigate through
that information, and the experience you'll have while doing so...the
miscellanizing of information, knowledge, and ideas rips these assets
out of the hands of individual businesses...the most successful
businesses will have to get over the second-order assumption that they
own the customer's experience. In a truly miscellaneous world, a
successful business owns nothing but what it wants to sell us. The
rest is ours."

It's not that I disagree with David about the power and potential of
user participation in the creation and organization of knowledge. But,
I do believe that the old serves as foundation for and coexists with
the new, or as I explained in Ambient Findability:

"We don't have to choose. Ontologies, taxonomies, and folksonomies are
not mutually exclusive. In many contexts, such as corporate web sites,
the formal structure of ontologies and taxonomies is worth the
investment. In others, like the blogosphere, the casual serendipity of
folksonomies is certainly better than nothing. And in some contexts,
such as intranets and knowledge networks, a hybrid metadata ecology
that combines elements of each may be ideal."

And, in fact, it's the "third order" information-as-commodity
companies like Amazon and eBay that have most aggressively and
successfully integrated traditional and novel organization methods to
create a positive (and profitable) customer experience.

Furthermore, while I agree with David that "second-order organization
is often as much about authority as about making things easier to
find" and that all taxonomies embed bias, the same can be said of
search engines, books, blogs, Amazon, eBay, and the Wikipedia. This
doesn't negate the value and good intentions of librarians,
information architects, authors, editors, designers, and users who
labor to improve findability, accessibility, and understanding for all.

It simply suggests that we must all be more aware, as consumers and
creators, of the incentives, biases, and weaknesses inherent in all
sources and structures of authority and knowledge.

Despite, or perhaps because of, these points of contention, I really
did find Everything is Miscellaneous to be an exhilarating read. David
has done a masterful job of weaving the histories of library science
and information architecture into a hot and sexy page-turner of a story.

Of course, I can't help but wonder about the dedication.

  A. To the librarians. Thanks for nothing?
  B. To the librarians. Thanks for everything?
  C. To the librarians. May they rest in peace?

After reading the book, I'm still not sure. What do you think?

Information Architecture 3.0 (November 29, 2006)

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000149.php

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At a recent gathering of CIOs, I was introduced, not as an information
architect, interaction designer, or librarian, but as a futurist. I
figure this affords me the latitude to make a prediction.

Next year, after the bubble bursts, we will enter the era of
Information Architecture 3.0. This won't surprise Tim O'Reilly who
slyly positioned the polar bear atop the #1 Google hit for Web 2.0 and
commissioned the third edition just in time to clean up the mess.

In fact, this future is self-evident in the undisciplined, unbalanced
quest for sexy Ajaxian interaction at the expense of usability,
findability, accessibility, and other qualities of the user experience.

Of course, user hostile web sites are only the tip of the iceberg.
Beneath the surface lurk multitudes of Web 2.0 startups and Ajaxian
mashups that are way behind schedule and horribly over budget.
Apparently, nobody told the entrepreneurs about the step change in
design and development cost between pages and applications.

But, that's enough gloom and doom, as the future's quite bright,
especially for information architects who find ways to connect the
timeless principles of design and organization with new transmedia
models of interaction, co-creation, tagging, and user participation.

Defining Information Architecture

Perhaps we should take a moment, before proceeding, to review the
definition of information architecture:

1. The structural design of shared information environments.

2. The combination of organization, labeling, search, and navigation
systems within web sites and intranets.

3. The art and science of shaping information products and experiences
to support usability and findability.

4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on
bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

As these definitions from Polar Bear 3.0 suggest, information
architecture extends well beyond taxonomies and the Web.

Still, there are a number of Big IA folks such as Christina Wodtke and
Adam Greenfield and Peter Merholz who feel constrained by these
definitions. And, while I truly respect their perspectives, I have to
agree, as usual, with Jesse James Garrett:

"Choosing a narrow definition for the discipline allows us to describe
a particular set of problems with precision. And such precision of
expression is absolutely required for any discipline to progress."

In his brilliant ia/recon essay, the father of Ajax articulated the
distinction between the role and the discipline:

"There is a discipline, known as information architecture; and there
is a role, known as the information architect. They have developed
more or less hand in hand, and up to now any discussion of one has
involved discussion of the other. But now that may have to change."

Once again, I agree with Jesse, though I believe it's vital,
especially now, to add a third concept of community.

[Three Circles of Information Architecture 2.0]
[Figure 1. The Three Circles of Information Architecture 3.0]

While the boundaries are naturally fuzzy, core elements of the
information architecture community include the IA Summit, Euro IA, the
Latin American IA Retreat, and the Information Architecture Institute.

Most who participate in the community's discussions, conferences, and
local events do not self-identify as information architects. In fact,
some are not very interested in the central concepts of the
discipline. Instead, they see the community as a collection of
vibrant, open forums for discussing diverse topics with smart,
sensible people.

Information Architects Under Attack

Sadly, both role and community are under attack, and in today's
political economy, where people can select their sources and choose
their news, the truth should never misunderestimate the power of
invention.

If it were only a few silly Death of IA posts, there'd be no response
required. But the current campaign, led by senior practitioners of our
sister discipline - interaction design - is worth mention.

Now, as I noted in a blog post, I've been digging deeper into
interaction design lately, and unfortunately, I keep finding
information architecture. I joined IxDA just in time for a celebration
of the total absence of information architects from Designing
Interactions by Bill Moggridge. I opened About Face 2.0 by Alan Cooper
and Robert Reimann, only to find them slamming information
architecture in the book's introduction:

"When corporate interest in the Web had reached its peak around 2000,
a discipline called information architecture (IA) seemed like it might
eventually embody the kind of design discussed here. But, even as the
financial prospects of the Web have waned, IA has largely retained its
narrow, Web-centric view of organizing and navigating content in
pages. With the apparent decline of the new economy, the fortunes of
the IA community have similarly diminished."

I find it rather astonishing that these interaction design leaders
dedicate such energy (and in their book's introduction, no less) to
denigrating information architecture as a community and discipline.

And, if I were feeling snarky, I might argue this is a manifestation
of the semantic envy of designers who would be architects of which Tog
wrote or that we're witnessing a classic case of the younger sister
competing for resources and attention. After all, there's a reason why
"information architecture" is five times more valuable than
"interaction design" in the eyes of Google AdWords.

[Google AdWords Traffic Estimator]
[Figure 2: Google AdWords Traffic Estimator]

But, I'm not feeling the least bit snarky, so instead I'll suggest
that while sibling rivalry is healthy (and fun) within reason, we
would do well to remember that we have far more in common than our
semantics may suggest. In fact, our clients can't tell us apart.

The Role: Strategies for Information Architects

I've been an interaction designer since 1994. I've designed online
communities, software products, graphical user interfaces, and
Ajax-enabled mapping mashups that leverage tags and taxonomies.

I've been an information architect since 1994. I've designed online
communities, software products, graphical user interfaces, and
Ajax-enabled mapping mashups that leverage tags and taxonomies.

Both of those statements are true, though it's also fair to say that I
am mostly known as (and self-identify as) an information architect.

My point is that in the separation of role and discipline, lies an
opportunity for information architects to explore well beyond
information architecture. Many of us have been asked by clients and
colleagues to explore not only the full breadth of structural design -
including the creation of architectures of participation - but to
serve as a vital bridge between strategy and interface, and to play an
active role in new product development. Perhaps it's time we sought
out these Big IA opportunities in a more proactive fashion.

Of course, after the bubble bursts, and we progress from the errors of
Web 2.0 into the era of Web 3.0, interaction designers would do well
to know some IA.

The Discipline: Information Architecture Strategy

The future looks bright for information architects, and that's
important because the role injects energy into the discipline. While
the vast majority of information architecture work is done by folks
who are not information architects, the specialists do play a special
role in building the community and advancing the discipline.

And, with respect to the discipline, we still have so much to learn
and unlearn, even within the "narrow" boundaries of search,
navigation, organization, and structure. The niche of search analytics
for instance, offers rich opportunities (in practice and research) to
better understand user needs and behavior, and inform the efforts of
marketing and design.

And, we have so many contexts in which to practice, from the myriad
ecologies of the Web to the transmedia environments of ambient
findability that beckon from a future not so distant. That's why I
agree with and applaud the Information Architecture Institute's
business plan to extend our practice to include a wider variety of
shared information spaces, including:

* Virtual (e.g., software, websites)

* Physical (e.g., museums, libraries, hospitals)

* Procedural (e.g., flows of information in work processes)

Of course, we shouldn't get carried away by going "beyond the Web"
since it will continue to serve as the hub - as both infrastructure
and interface - even as we create a world of UFOs and an Internet of
objects we can barely imagine.

The Community: Building a Big Tent

In recent years, I've had the wonderful opportunity to meet with
information architects and interaction designers in Australia, Brazil,
Canada, Chile, Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Japan, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States at a variety of
international and local information architecture events.

I am constantly impressed and inspired by these community members
around the world, who are among the most warm, smart, knowledgeable,
interesting, and fun people I know. They are the sustainable
competitive advantage of the information architecture community, and
for the most part, we need to keep doing what we're doing – creating
infrastructure, organizing events, and nurturing a culture that's
vibrant, open, inquisitive, and encouraging.

And, while I do think it's important that the IA Summit organizers (of
which I'm one) work harder to include topics well outside the
information architecture discipline (to keep us from getting stuck),
the summit annually lives up to its name as a magnificent high point.

And, I have to say that after reading the latest IAI Newsletter, I'm
so impressed by how far the community has come in a few short years.
The End of the Beginning

Over the past decade, information architecture has matured as a role,
discipline, and community. Inevitably, we've traded some of that
newborn sparkle for institutional stability and a substantive body of
knowledge. It's for this reason that some of the pioneers feel
restless. And, while I applaud their courage and entrepreneurial zeal,
as they step beyond the role and the discipline, I hope (for their
sake and ours) that they stay connected to the information
architecture community.

For those of us who continue to embrace the role and discipline,
there's so much going on already, and the world of Information
Architecture 3.0 will only bring more challenges, more opportunities,
and more work.

So, that's my prediction. What do you think?

Authority (October 11, 2005)
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000057.php

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I have a problem with authority. It's not that I'm independent,
insubordinate, and contrarian. I am, but that's not my problem. My
problem is with the rising abuse of the word amongst bloggers,
wikipedians, folksonomists, and other social software activists.

In the good old days, not so long ago, in the context of the written
word, authority was a term used primarily by librarians as a criteria
of evaluation. Along with accuracy, objectivity, and currency, we
judged source authority. Who is the author? Who is the publisher? What
are their individual and institutional qualifications and reputations?
Have the contents been edited and refereed? Is this an authoritative
source?

But then, authority was appropriated by the Technorati mob, where it
swiftly lost definition in a tangled tag soup of popularity, power,
trust, credibility, and relevance. These words were tossed around
indiscriminately in a Bacchanalian festival of semantic anarchy.

For those of us who value a taste of hierarchy along with our
hypertext, things were beginning to look a bit dicey. Fortunately,
before the tag clouds could totally eclipse the sun, a new entity
emerged as a source of authority and illumination.

The Wikipedia

Just as we feared that nobody was in control, the world's largest,
most accessible, and most widely used encyclopedia appeared to
reassure us that, to the contrary, everybody is in control.

From evolution to intelligent design, the accuracy, objectivity, and
currency is surprisingly good. And, in fact, the entry on authority is
really quite helpful:

"People obey authority out of respect, while they obey power out of
fear…Authority need not be consistent or rational, it only needs to be
accepted as a source of permission or truth."

The article describes Maximilian Weber's three types of authority
(traditional, rational-legal, charismatic) and offers links to related
concepts like law, power, and trust. Or, at least it did at the
precise moment in time when I visited. The words may since have changed.

But this fluidity, while problematic for citations, does not by
necessity harm its cognitive authority. Now, some old-fashioned
librarians may claim that due to the pseudo-anonymous, multi-author
nature of the Wikipedia, its articles have no authority. But they'd be
wrong. Authority derives from the information architecture, visual
design, governance, and brand of the Wikipedia, and from widespread
faith in intellectual honesty and the power of collective intelligence.

Of course, sometimes trolls intentionally post lies, and sometimes
amateurs mistakenly post untruths, but before we cast stones at the
Wikipedia, it's worth revisiting our faith in the authority of
traditional printed sources, for even the revered Encyclopaedia
Britannica is riddled with errors, not to mention the subtle yet
pervasive biases of individual subjectivity and corporate correctness.

And anyone who reads newspapers, books, or academic journals knows
things are only getting worse. As the industry endures a perfect storm
of rising competition and falling readership, traditional publishing
has entered an era of error. Proper spelling and punctuation are but
trivial casualties in a war of attrition that long since killed off
the fact checkers.

The Hyperbole of Folksonomy

In this disruptive milieu, the emergence of the Wikipedia as a poster
child for bottom-up publishing and collaborative categorization (along
with the relatively minor successes of de.licio.us and Flickr), has
inspired a motley crew of rapture-ready anarchists, anti-taxonomists,
and folksonomy fetishists to predict not just the demise of
traditional publishing but the end of hierarchy itself.

Though folksonomy was born on an information architecture list, it was
quickly hijacked by the Technorati. Says Dave Sifry:

"Tags are a simple, yet powerful, social software innovation. Today
millions of people are freely and openly assigning metadata to content
and conversations. Unlike rigid taxonomy schemes that people dislike,
the ease of tagging for personal organization with social incentives
leads to a rich and discoverable folksonomy. Intelligence is provided
by real people from the bottom-up to aid social discovery. And with
the right tag search and navigation, folksonomy outperforms more
structured approaches to classification."

Now don't get me wrong. I like tags as much as the next geek. And I
enjoy the revolutionary rhetoric of the free-tagging movement, to a
point. But when Tim O'Reilly, the publisher behind the lemur and polar
bear books, starts predicting the death of taxonomy, it's time to set
the record straight.

You see, tags are only the visible, superficial symbols of a much
deeper, more interesting revolution in findability and authority.
Wikipedia doesn't beat Britannica because it has better folksonomies.
It wins because it's more findable. And its success didn't come
without structure. In fact, the Wikipedia has a traditional
information architecture (with strong design conventions and a fixed
left-hand navigation bar) and a traditional governance model (with
Jimbo Wales and his Board of Trustees as the ultimate corporate
authority).

Of course, the Wikipedia is only a foot solider in this revolution led
by Google. After all, Larry and Sergey were the first to capitalize on
folksonomies in the 1990s with the advent of the PageRank algorithm
which uses links as indicators of authority and aboutness. In this
sense, Google is by far the biggest story in free tagging. And along
the way, Google has taught us a couple of lessons:

1. It's the Findability, Stupid!

2. The Revolution is Multi-Algorithmic.

Google is worth nearly $90 billion because Google helps us find what
we seek. And Google has delivered superior findability via a
multi-algorithmic approach that recognizes the value of:

* Full Text. Matching keywords in the query and content.

* Information Architecture. Analyzing the internal link structure and
hand-crafted metadata of each web site.

* Free Tagging. Leveraging the links between web sites.

And while famous Googlebombs like miserable failure show us that
sometimes the authority of the masses can redefine the aboutness of
the object, usually there's a good match between the words of the
author and searcher. As leading indicatrs of semantic serendipity, the
folksonomies of Flickr and del.icio.us are cool, but when it comes to
findability or re-findability, stacked up against Google and Google
Images and Google Desktop, they barely merit attention.

Authority Unbound

Herbert Simon's conclusion that we satisfice under conditions of
bounded rationality was decidedly optimistic. Anyone who's studied
bias in decision making knows that "unbounded irrationality" is a more
fair and balanced description of human psychology and behavior.
Well-documented decision making traps include:

* Anchoring. When considering a decision, we are unduly influenced by
the first information we find.

* Confirmation. Through selective search and perception, we
subconsciously seek data that supports our existing point of view, and
avoid contradictory evidence.

This puts into context the amazing power of Google and the Wikipedia
and other highly findable sources of information to influence what we
learn, who we trust, and how we make decisions.

Of course, we must also recognize the power that devolves to the
individual in an open media landscape that enables us to select our
sources and choose our news. In today's Google economy, we are
increasingly becoming our own authority.

The real upheaval lies just ahead, as a generation of school kids (and
their teachers and librarians) struggle to reconcile traditional
notions of education and objectivity and authority with the
constructivist web of social facts and collective intelligence where
folksonomies flourish and the truth is a virus of many colors. I can
hardly wait.

Viva La Revolution!

The Lemur Book (September 13, 2005)

http://findability.org/

---

It's been a year since I wrote an article for my Semantics column.
That's because I've been hard at work on my new book, Ambient
Findability, which should be available by the end of September.

In the meantime, please visit my new blog at http://findability.org/
where you can learn more about Ambient Findability and download the
first chapter for free.

And I promise to write more Semantics articles in the coming year.
Thanks for your patience. Cheers!

Peter Morville
President, Semantic Studios
www.semanticstudios.com

Information Architecture Research (September 7, 2004)

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000030.php

---

What do we really know about information architecture? Do we know
what works? Can we defend our designs? Are we improving?

In preparing for my upcoming seminars, I revisited the role of
research in the design process, and surveyed the literature most
relevant to the practice of information architecture.

It was hard work. When it comes to information architecture
research, the knowledge environment is highly fragmented. But I was
able to extract a few gems and gain some new insights.

So, for all those information architects who didn't spend their
summer in a research library, here's a brief summary.

Research in Context

Before we dig into the research itself, it's worth considering the
myriad inputs that shape design. They include:

* Goals and Scope. The stated project goals and scope which may be
conveyed in an RFP or as functional specifications.

* Constraints. The budget, schedule, project team, and technology
infrastructure.

* Discovery. Project-specific research to learn about your unique
blend of users, content, and context.

* Competitive Analysis. Reviewing what everyone else is doing and
borrowing from the best.

* Expertise and Experience. What you already know, including
explicit and tacit knowledge.

* Guidelines. Published heuristics and guidelines derived from
research and/or practice.

* Published Research. Results of academic or corporate research in
human-computer interaction, library and information science,
cognitive psychology, etc.

* Usability Testing. Iterative project-specific testing of prior
designs and new prototypes.

The information architect must somehow process each of these inputs
and reconcile the differences. That's the hard part.

What happens when one input contradicts another? Do we trust a
guru's guidelines, a researcher's results, or our own gut instinct?
How do we evaluate benefit to the user against cost of development?

Any literature review should be mindful of the critical role of
judgment in determining which research applies in which context.

So, caveats aside, here's a radically incomplete and idiosyncratic
list of freely accessible research papers worth review before you
plunge into your next information architecture project.

Information Seeking Behavior
Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men by Edward C. Tolman (1948).

The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online
Search Interface by Marcia J. Bates (1989).

Metaphors We Surf the Web By by Paul Maglio and Teenie Matlock
(1998).

Information Foraging by Peter Pirolli and Stuart K. Card (1999).

What Do Web Users Do? An Empirical Analysis of Web Use by Andy
Cockburn and Bruce McKenzie (2000).

Cognitive Navigation: Toward a Biological Basis for Instructional
Design by Steven Tripp (2001).

Toward an Integrated Model of Information Seeking and Searching by
Marcia J. Bates (2002).

ScentTrails: Integrating Browsing and Searching on the Web by Chris
Olson and Ed H. Chi (2003).

The Use of Proximal Information Scent to Forage for Distal Content
on the World Wide Web by Peter Pirolli (2004).

From Information Retrieval to Information Interaction by Gary
Marchionini (2004).

A Multi-Dimensional Approach to the Study of Human-Information
Interaction: A Case Study of Collaborative Information Retrieval by
R. Fidel, A.M. Pejtersen, B. Cleal, and H. Bruce (2004).

Structure and Organization

Depth vs. Breadth in the Arrangement of Web Links by Panayiotis
Zaphiris and Lianaeli Mtei (1997).

Web Page Design: Implications of Memory, Structure and Scent for
Information Retrieval by Kevin Larson and Mary Czerwinski (1998).

Age Related Differences and the Depth vs. Breadth Tradeoff in
Hierarchical Online Information Systems by Panayiotis Zaphiris, Sri
Hastuti Kurniawan, and R. Darin Ellis (2002).

An Update on Breadth vs. Depth by Kath Straub and Susan Weinschenk
(2003).

Navigation

Reproduced and Emergent Genres of Communication on the World-Wide
Web by Kevin Crowston and Marie Williams (1996).

It's the Journey and the Destination: Shape and the Emergent
Property of Genre in Evaluating Digital Documents by Andrew Dillon
and Misha Vaughan (1997).

Website Structural Navigation by Noah Lazar and Michael Eisenbrey
(2000).

Web Page Layout: A Comparison Between Left- and Right-justified Site
Navigation Menus by James Kalbach and Tim Bosenick (2003).

Breadcrumb Navigation: An Exploratory Study of Usage by Bonnie Lida,
Spring Hull, and Katie Pilcher (2003).

Breadcrumb Navigation: Further Investigation of Usage by Bonnie Lida
Rogers and Barbara Chaparro (2003).

Faceted Metadata for Image Search and Browsing by Ping Yee, Kirsten
Swearingen, Kevin Li, and Marti Hearst (2003).

Can Document-Genre Metadata Improve Information Access to Large
Digital Collections? by Kevin Crowston and Barbara H. Kwasnik (2003).

Cascading versus Indexed Menu Design by Michael Bernard and Chris
Hamblin (2003).

Search

Stuff I've Seen: A System for Personal Information Retrieval and Re-
Use by Susan Dumais, Edward Cutrell, JJ Cadiz, Gavin Jancke, Raman
Sarin, Daniel C. Robbins (2003).

Milestones in Time: The Value of Landmarks in Retrieving Information
from Personal Stores by Merrie Ringel, Edward Cutrell, Susan Dumais,
and Eric Horvitz (2003).

Bringing Order to the Web: Optimizing Search by Showing Results in
Context by S. T. Dumais, E. Cutrell and H. Chen (2001).

From E-Sex to E-Commerce: Web Search Changes by Amanda Spink,
Bernard Jansen, Dietmar Wolfram, and Tefko Saracevic (2002).

Using Categories to Improve Search by Edward Cutrell and Susan
Dumais (2003).

What I've Missed

I'm sure that I've committed many egregious sins of omission, so
please share your favorite research articles and sources.

After all, we know from the research that collaborative information
retrieval is a pretty good strategy. Let's share what we find, so we
can focus on the hard part of figuring out how to integrate what we
learn from research into the practice of information architecture.

User Experience Design (June 21, 2004)
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php

---

I've been practicing information architecture since 1994, and from
Gopher to Google have seen dramatic changes in the landscape of
organization, search and retrieval.

Through these ten tempestuous years, I've found the infamous three
circle diagram to be a great tool for explaining how and why we must
strike a unique balance on each project between business goals and
context, user needs and behavior, and the available mix of content.

Figure 1. The Three Circles of Information Architecture

While this diagram was conceived with IA in mind, it's equally
useful for explaining UX. In conjunction with Jesse's masterpiece, I
use the three circles to illustrate the distinction between user
experience and user-centered design. I'm still not convinced UCD
exists outside the realm of theory, but I practice user experience
design every day.

Facets of the User Experience

When I broadened my interest from IA to UX, I found the need for a
new diagram to illustrate the facets of user experience - especially
to help clients understand why they must move beyond usability - and
so with a little help from my friends developed the user experience
honeycomb.

Figure 2. The User Experience Honeycomb

Naturally, the jump from three circles to seven hexagons gave me an
instant buzz, but after several months of road testing, I can safely
say this diagram has survived the honeymoon.

Here's how I explain each facet or quality of the user experience:

Useful. As practitioners, we can't be content to paint within the
lines drawn by managers. We must have the courage and creativity to
ask whether our products and systems are useful, and to apply our
deep knowledge of craft and medium to define innovative solutions
that are more useful.

Usable. Ease of use remains vital, and yet the interface-centered
methods and perspectives of human-computer interaction do not
address all dimensions of web design. In short, usability is
necessary but not sufficient.

Desirable. Our quest for efficiency must be tempered by an
appreciation for the power and value of image, identity, brand, and
other elements of emotional design.

Findable. We must strive to design navigable web sites and locatable
objects, so users can find what they need.

Accessible. Just as our buildings have elevators and ramps, our web
sites should be accessible to people with disabilities (more than
10% of the population). Today, it's good business and the ethical
thing to do. Eventually, it will become the law.

Credible. Thanks to the Web Credibility Project, we're beginning to
understand the design elements that influence whether users trust
and believe what we tell them.

Valuable. Our sites must deliver value to our sponsors. For non-
profits, the user experience must advance the mission. With for-
profits, it must contribute to the bottom line and improve customer
satisfaction.

The honeycomb hits the sweet spot by serving several purposes at
once. First, it's a great tool for advancing the conversation beyond
usability and for helping people understand the need to define
priorities. Is it more important for your web site to be desirable
or accessible? How about usable or credible? The truth is, it
depends on your unique balance of context, content and users, and
the required tradeoffs are better made explicitly than unconsciously.

Second, this model supports a modular approach to web design. Let's
say you want to improve your site but lack the budget, time, or
stomach for a complete overhaul. Why not try a targeted redesign,
perhaps starting with Stanford's ten guidelines as a resource for
evaluating and enhancing the credibility of your web site?

Third, each facet of the user experience honeycomb can serve as a
singular looking glass, transforming how we see what we do, and
enabling us to explore beyond conventional boundaries.

A Different Way of Seeing

For example, I realized some time ago that while "information
architect" describes my profession, findability defines my passion.

Since then, I've found my focus on findability has opened my eyes,
leading me beyond IA while simultaneously making me a better
information architect.

Last Summer, while redesigning the Q web site, we identified
findability as a top priority. Our quest to make this small site
more findable took me beyond the discipline of information
architecture and deep into the realm of search engine optimization.

That experience proved useful last Fall, during a redesign project
for the National Cancer Institute, in which we used findability
concepts and SEO statistics to alleviate an unhealthy fixation on
the home page, raising awareness of the need to design findable
documents for direct access via the Google, MSN, and Yahoo! search
engines.

And this Spring, I was hired to perform my first findability audit
for a major international nonprofit. Feeling a bit concerned about
dedicating four weeks exclusively to findability, I asked whether I
should also consider usability factors. "No thanks," my client
replied. "We already had Jakob in last year to focus on usability."

A Big Hive

Though the findability audit was a success, it did feel ironic to
once again be ensnared inside a box (or hexagon) of my own making.

But I'm sticking with findability for now. Between my new seminar,
my new book, and findability.org, I'm busy as a bee.

And anytime I feel trapped, I can explore other facets of the user
experience honeycomb, or perhaps even create a new diagram.

For me, user experience design is a big hive: a dynamic, multi-
dimensional space where there's still plenty of room to build new
boxes and draw new arrows, at least for the next ten years.

International Information Architecture (July 14, 2003)
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000012.php

---

Connecting people from diverse disciplines, countries and cultures
is a strategic imperative, not only for AIfIA but for the
information architecture community as a whole. Our competitive
advantage derives from our very ability to build bridges and span
networks.

This argument alone should provide ample incentive for us to nurture
an international perspective within the practice, but there are all
sorts of idiosyncratic reasons why information architects should
reach across borders.

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things

George Lakoff's book about categorization is required reading for
any serious information architect. Consider this excerpt:

"The title of this book was inspired by the Australian aboriginal
language Dyirbal, which has a category, balan, that actually
includes women, fire, and dangerous things. It also includes birds
that are not dangerous, as well as exceptional animals, such as the
platypus, bandicoot, and echidna."

The ways we categorize are rooted in language and culture. This
creates unique challenges for information architects. For example, a
web site targeted for a Japanese audience may require a completely
different structure and organization than its German equivalent.
Localization isn't limited to translation.

These issues have been addressed before in library science circles,
as noted in an article in Information Services & Use (volume 17:2)
by Michele Hudon on Multilingual Thesaurus Construction:

The development of a multilingual thesaurus is more than
the "putting together" of several monolingual thesauri. The true
multilingual thesaurus offers complete conceptual and terminological
inventories for each one of the languages involved; most
importantly, to present a fully developed thesauri structure in each
language, so that a user consulting the linguistic version most
appropriate for her/him gets the same amount of semantic information.

Unfortunately, for many, this topic appears largely academic. We
recognize our web sites have an international audience, but we lack
the resources to engage in globalization and localization efforts.
Or at least that's the excuse we use, particularly here in the
United States of America.

US Centrism

Assemble a multi-national group of people, and it won't take long
before the incendiary topic of US centrism pops up.

In one of AIfIA's formative discussions, Karl Fast, a feisty
Canadian, responded to a US centric message with an all-caps blast:

JUST BECAUSE THE NET IS US-CENTRIC TODAY DOES NOT MEAN AIFIA HAS TO
BE US-CENTRIC TOO!

Since then we've had several similar incidents, each of which has
been stressful but informative. In my opinion, the gain far exceeds
the pain.

But why is this such a hot topic these days? Well, clearly US
foreign policy hasn't gone over too well. And, it's fair to say
there are elements of envy behind the animosity. But beyond these
factors, the plain truth is that most of US are pretty damn ignorant
about the perspectives and sensitivities of those in other countries.

This ignorance is not a symptom of stupidity or even arrogance.
Rather, as we optimize for income and quality of life, it's tough to
make a cost-benefit argument for exposing ourselves to attitudes in
Brazil or learning to speak fluent French.

Sure, we can check out the Indiatimes or the BBC News from the
comfort of our homes, but the ruthless efficiency of our information
foraging behavior steers us more frequently to CNN, the New York
Times, and our friends in the nearby cubicle.

Architects Without Borders

So, why should information architects in the US care about this
stuff when the dominant market incentive steers us towards designing
English-language web sites for US companies targeting US residents?

Low-Hanging Fruit. When you're starting from ground zero, a little
learning goes a long way. For many USIAs, spending one hour reading
about internationalization and localization may avert 80% of the
obvious blunders.

Insight from Outside. We can improve our methodology and create
better products for domestic audiences by interacting with people
who see and do things very differently.

State of Readiness. While the history of IA may have a US voice, the
future of IA will surely be international. We must build
understanding and relationships before we need them.

The State of Information Architecture

Now is the time to actively work on building these international
relationships. IA in the US has reached a plateau. We enjoyed major
investment and rapid learning in the 1990s. We developed core
concepts and methodology, and we experienced the trials and
tribulations of interdisciplinary collaboration. As the economy
revives, we're positioned to invest real energy in cross-cultural IA.

Meanwhile, I'm seeing growing interest in IA around the world. I've
spoken in Sweden and Italy and been invited to speak in Australia,
England and South Africa.

In AIfIA, I've had the pleasure of working with the wonderful people
leading the Translations Initiative. They come from Belgium, Brazil,
Canada, Denmark, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Panama, and they
bring tremendous energy and new insight to the IA community.

Eggshells and Empathy

They also bring controversy. We had one quarrel over the use of
Europe (except Ireland & the UK) as a category in our salary survey.
And we've had a vibrant debate over the establishment of discounted
membership rates for people in developing countries.

What's great is that people have felt comfortable enough to engage
in these difficult conversations. Obviously empathy is a key
ingredient for collaboration. But we also need the guts to honestly
share our own feelings and opinions about these sensitive topics.

Many in the US are very conscious of walking on eggshells these
days, but we must overcome our fear of being branded an Ugly
American, if we're to enjoy the benefits of real engagement in
international collaboration.

So, what do you really think? Come on, let's break some eggshells.

Appendix I. International Insights

Stories, quotes and insights I've gathered in recent weeks through
research and serendipity.

Collaboration
As the grassroots level, people are reaching across borders:

The Q Connection. I've been working closely with a US design firm
named Q which enjoys a productive relationship with a German design
firm also named Q. They transformed a fun coincidence into an
opportunity for international collaboration.

Polar Bears in Haiti. I recently had lunch with students who are
helping a community in Haiti to setup a library, a technology center
and an intranet. They delivered 6,000 books (some donated by
O'Reilly), 92 computers and 3,200 pounds of pinto beans in a lime
green school bus.

Web Blunders
Stig Andersen highlighted the following examples:

Time Magazine Europe Subscription. After having chosen "Denmark"
they prompt me for a "Salutation" that makes no sense in Denmark.
Also they offer me, as first option, to pay with American Express, a
credit card which is not widely used here. Not to mention - why not
bother to translate this page? I know - the customer is buying an
English magazine, but still.

IBM Denmark. Say I have an IBM PC and I need support or to download
a driver. I go to the Danish page and choose "Alle downloads &
drivere" (means "All downloads and drivers"). Ups! Without a warning
comes a page in English. This is very typical. Microsoft and Sun
have the same problem, but these two sites warn me that the
following page will be in English.

Amazon. Now take Amazon. We like to praise them as best practice.
Well why is it they offer me an American Woods 1305T Windsor
Collection Chaise Lounge with Sidetable in my Gold Box when they
know I live across the Atlantic?

The Need for Translations
English is not the world's language:

Today, several IA groups around the world are poorly serviced when
it comes to information about IA as a discipline (particularly non-
English speakers). Many practitioners feel isolated in their current
locations, lacking the support and enrichment provided by a group of
people with similar interests.
Lívia Labate, São Paulo, Brazil

The people who deal with information within a company and in
customers relations - can be reached far more easily if stuff on IA
is available in the native Dutch language. These are people who use
PCs with Dutch language software, who do not read/think in English -
and for whom the "all-Anglified" subculture of IA-wizards are a non-
entity.
Oskar van Rijswijk, Zoetermeer, The Netherlands

Go to Amsterdam or Antwerp or Oslo and you will find that almost
everyone speaks superb English, and yet if you venture into almost
any bookstore in those cities you will usually find only a small
selection of books in English. For the most part, people want to
read works in their own language.
The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

On Professional Associations
The real benefits of membership vary by location:

I have recently moved to London from South Africa and until now
found most of these kind of memberships too expensive to consider.
It is not simply the cost of the membership, but also the level of
face-to-face interaction and the access to events such as
conferences that ultimately means in more developed countries you
end up getting far more for your membership.
Vanessa Wolfe-Coote, London, England

Interestingly, one person noted on SIGIA that people in Kansas and
Kentucky may feel the same way, since most events in the US occur on
the east or west coasts.

On US - European Relations
In today's tense world, we can use a little humor and a lot of hope:

I fully understand the frustration that you and probably most US
people feel when they find themselves portrayed as coke-drinking,
imperialistic Mideast invaders :-) I have as many friends in the US
who share this frustration as I have friends in France, for example,
who are frustrated by the way they are portrayed in the press and
movies in Hollywood.
Stig Andersen, Copenhagen, Denmark

The social gap between us and America is small, and from a business
perspective modern technology has helped to make the business gap
even smaller. I look forward to a future with more European -
American integration which will help to build a more international
community.
Thilo von Debschitz, Wiesbaden, Germany

IA Around the World
It's tough to figure out where IA really stands in different
countries.

IA stands nowhere in Europe as a separate profession. Peter Bogaards
just started an IA company (BogieLand), but I was told that the talk
me and him gave was the first event in Belgium about IA!
Peter Van Dijck, a Belgian living in New York, USA

Even though the United States is home to most of the prominent
research and people in the field, IA is becoming very popular
worldwide. This signals the power of internationalization in the IA
world.
Lívia Labate, São Paulo, Brazil

Appendix II. The Polar Bear Overseas

I had hoped to compare international sales of our polar bear book in
Chinese, English, Italian, Korean, Polish and Russian, but
unfortunately O'Reilly doesn't have easy access to the foreign
language sales data. Still, the lifetime English language sales
figures are interesting.

Country Name % Lifetime Sales
Australia 1.99%
Brazil 0.06%
Canada 6.78%
Chile 0.01%
China 0.03%
France 0.36%
Germany 2.88%
Hong Kong 0.21%
India 04%
Israel 01%
Italy 0.04%
Japan 0.21%
Korea, Republic of (South) 0.43%
Netherlands 0.31%
Philippines 0.01%
Poland 0.04%
Russian Federation 0.04%
Saudi Arabia 0.01%
Singapore 1.04%
Sweden 0.02%
Switzerland 0.01%
Taiwan 0.26%
United Kingdom 15.77%
Uruguay 0.01%
USA 69.44%

Trust by Design (April 17, 2003)
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000011.php

---

I'm relaxing back into the pleasures of Ann Arbor life after several
weeks in the air and on the road.

Boston, MA. Southbury, CT. Corvallis, OR. Washington, DC. Portland,
OR. Torino, Italy.

A strange mix of conferences, consulting, and opportunistic tourism.

I visited IBM and the IMF, talked freedom and findability with
librarians, met Stewart Brand, explored Powell's City of Books,
wandered Torino with an itinerant Australian, and spoke at the
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Quite a trip!

On my mind, through all this travel, was the concept of trust.

Web Credibility

In recent months, I've become a big fan of the Stanford Persuasive
Technology Lab and the Web Credibility Project.

Their studies regarding how people evaluate a web site's credibility
show the critical importance of information design and structure.
Users trust sites that are well-designed and well-organized. Poor
navigation is the key element that decreases earned web credibility.

This is a huge validation for visual designers and information
architects. Our work can tip the scales between belief and doubt. As
any brand manager will tell you, earning trust has major ROI.

Of course, this also adds more complexity to design. Our solutions
must now be useful, usable, desirable, findable and credible. And
while today's web surfers are a bit naïve, you can bet tomorrow's
web natives will be more careful about where they place their trust.

Trust in Commerce

While traveling in Italy, I read The Lexus and the Olive Tree, a
colorful guide to globalization that underscores the necessity of
trust and transparency to international systems of finance and trade.

I relate this directly to my experience as a speaker. Invitations to
speak at conferences typically come in the form of email from
someone I've never met.

I visit the conference web site, check my schedule, consider their
offer, and make a decision. Based on informal agreement by email, I
buy plane tickets, book a hotel room, develop my presentation, and
show up in a specified location on a specified date.

So far, I've always been greeted by an audience (people who trusted
I would show up) and I've always been paid afterwards. Trust keeps
the friction in these transactions very low.

Trust in Organizations

The soft stuff is the hard stuff. This cheeky aphorism fits the
topic of trust to a T. Many managers have little understanding of
the variables that influence trust within their teams.

And yet, "an established body of research demonstrates the links
between trust and corporate performance."(1) One study in behavioral
integrity found that "no other single aspect of manager behavior
that we measured had as large an impact on profits."(2)

Building trust is difficult when your team is together. But as
Charles Handy asks and answers in Trust and the Virtual
Organization, how do you manage people whom you do not see?

"The simple answer is, By trusting them, but the apparent simplicity
disguises a turnaround in organizational thinking. The rules of
trust are both obvious and well established, but they do not sit
easily with a managerial tradition that believes efficiency and
control are closely linked and that you can't have one without a lot
of the other."

What's interesting to me are the ways this tension between
efficiency-oriented control and trust-building freedom play out in
the world of web-enabled applications for commerce and collaboration.

Give Trust to Gain Trust

As Lawrence Lessig eloquently argues in The Future of Ideas, the
original architecture of the Internet, which placed intelligence at
the edges of the network, created an out-of-control, innovation
commons that "fueled the greatest technological revolution our
culture has seen since the Industrial Revolution."

Lessig's discussions of open source, peer-to-peer, and the public
good suggest a confidence in the virtuous circle of reciprocal trust.

Amazon, Epinions, Yahoo, eBay, and Google have all displayed this
same confidence. By relaxing control and trusting their users to
write product reviews, evaluate peers, describe resources, trade
fairly, and link intelligently, these companies have reaped great
rewards.

Similarly, thousands of bloggers allow public comments on their
posts and articles, trusting the benefits of free discourse will
outweigh the negative impact of a few nasty comments.

The Wisdom of the Wiki

While dot-coms and blogs have hogged the spotlight, an intriguing
bit of software called Wiki actually deserves the gold medal for
best trust-building tool.

In a Wiki, anyone can edit (or delete) any page or create a new
page. This is the ultimate in decentralized content management.

I first encountered the wacky-world-of-wiki several years ago when
EricScheid launched the IAwiki. I checked it out and wrote it off as
too messy, too bottom-up, and too vulnerable to virtual vandalism.

However, the IAwiki has evolved into an amazing resource for the
community and a living experiment in emergence and socially
constructed navigation. Eric's trust led to creation of a public
good.

My second Wiki encounter came during the formative stages of AIfIA.
While some of us met briefly at the lovely refuge by the sea known
as Asilomar, most of the collaboration leading to creation of this
new organization happened via email and the AsilomarWiki.

In fact, we used the AsilomarWiki as a private fund-raising tool,
creating an IndividualCommitments page, where each of us could
pledge to donate money to cover the legal and accounting costs
associated with incorporation of a nonprofit organization.

It felt scary to manage money in such a fluid medium, and yet this
mutual openness and vulnerability led to a strong sense of shared
trust. We raised several thousand dollars in less than 24 hours, and
a few months later, AIfIA was born.

So, now that I've transformed from cranky skeptic to true believer,
I'd love to see more people discover the wisdom of the wiki. That's
why I was excited when Ed Vielmetti and some other smart people
formed a startup called Socialtext to help organizations take
advantage of wikis, weblogs, and other social software solutions.

I'm glad to see so much innovation in the realms of web credibility
and social software. There's lots to learn and lots to share. I hope
to be traveling on trust for many years to come.

The Definition of Information Architecture (November 14, 2002)
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000010.php

---

The recent unveiling of the Asilomar Institute for Information
Architecture provoked two predictable reactions:

Is this yet another attempt to define IA?
What is IA and why have I never heard of it?

These questions obviously come from two different audiences.

IA insiders, who have lived through a decade of definitional debates
and are tired of arguing over minutia.

IA outsiders, who constitute the vast majority of people on this
planet and have never heard of information architecture.

What's scary is how many IA outsiders exist inside IT. On
MetaFilter, a person with 20 years of large-scale IT systems
experience asks:

Why haven't I heard of this before? IA doesn't seem to be very well
plugged into the IT architecture community or the management
consulting community. What's IA's intellectual heritage, and where
does the community come from?

Is this widespread ignorance of IA our fault? Are we really such
lousy communicators? What's up?

Small Voices in a Big World

We've actually done a pretty good job explaining the substance and
value of IA. Collectively, we've made thousands of presentations in
public and private venues, authored hundreds of articles for print
and online publication, and written several books on the topic.

And a few thousand professional information architects prove their
value every day in the trenches by contributing to the design of
more useful, usable, and desirable systems and products.

We feel we're failing to spread the good word because we're living
in such a big world. 6 billion people. 3 billion URLs. Growth
outpaces our ability to count. The U.S. Library of Congress holds 18
million books. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recognizes 770
occupations. But the United States represents only 4.5% of the world
population.

A Megaphone for the IA Community

If nothing else, AIfIA presents an opportunity for us to join forces
and speak out. We must focus our message. We must carefully select
our target audiences. And then we must speak loudly and clearly.

But we hope to go much further than that. If we listen carefully to
people's reactions, if we involve outsiders in the discussion, if we
make connections to other communities and disciplines, then we can
learn how to improve the practice of information architecture.

Ultimately, our greatest challenge will be execution. Good
intentions will carry us only so far. In the coming months, to focus
our collective energy, we'll be developing a business plan for AIfIA.

We'll be speaking out. We'll be listening carefully. And we'll be
shaping a strategy and a plan for this new organization. Now is the
time to enter the conversation. Become a member, a partner, or a
volunteer. Or simply challenge us by asking difficult and
provocative questions.

We hope you'll add your voice to the growing numbers of people all
around the world who are defining the past, present and future of
information architecture.

Appendix I. Information Architecture Definitions

From the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture:

The structural design of shared information environments.

The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets,
online communities and software to support usability and
findability.

An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of
design and architecture to the digital landscape.

From Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (2nd Edition):

The combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes
within an information system.

The structural design of an information space to facilitate task
completion and intuitive access to content.

The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and
intranets to help people find and manage information.

For more definitions, see Defining the Damn Thing on Elegant Hack
and the IAwiki.

Appendix II. Five Facts About AIfIA

A week after going public, AIfIA has 163 charter members
representing 120 organizations in 13 countries.

AIfIA was born at Asilomar but incorporated in Ann Arbor.

According to our bylaws, we can add another 15 members to the AIfIA
Leadership Council.

Starting next year, our members will elect the Leadership Council
and the Leadership Council will elect the Board of Directors.

Currently, AIfIA is an all-volunteer organization with no paid
staff.

Appendix III. Potential Partners

We're collaborating with a few partners, and we're particularly
happy to be working with ASIS&T on the IA Leadership Seminar.

A number of organizations are on our radar as potential partners.
They include: ACM-SIGCHI, AIGA, Information Today, New Architect,
STC, and UPA.

But we know there are many more organizations around the world that
could be great partners. Please, tell us who they are.

Appendix IV. Quotable Quotes

Some memorable responses to the public launch of AIfIA:

Well, folks this is the who's who of IA. I would seriously urge all
IAs and those in tangential fields to consider getting involved.
This organization will do great things! Challis Hodge

My gut reaction says that within a year this will either die from
lack of interest, or be transformed into the classic management
consultancy song-and-dance completely decoupled from real results.
Fuzz on MetaFilter.

The inmates are running the asylum. Or at least they've gone and
built their own asylum, somewhere nice, by the sea. Matt Jones
I do however wonder from a graphic design standpoint whether they'll
address information graphics and interface design and how important
it is to architecture. Stan Chin on MetaFilter.

What's the difference between IA and Information Science as
practiced by librarians, records managers, and other professionals?
IshmaelGraves on MetaFilter.

I worry that AIfIA is good-intentioned, but the motivation will
wane. unless there's real money being thrown around, where the
people working with AIfIA have a salary imperative to keep things
going. Peter Merholz

Ever since the demise of the ACIA there has been no focus for
information architecture research and best practice. A year or so
ago...I suggested that what was needed was an Institute for
Information Architecture, and without any effort on my part this has
now been formed with the launch of AIfIA. The people behind the new
organisation are the leading authorities in the field. There is also
a distinguished Leadership Council, though somewhat biased towards
North America. Martin White

This initiative is probably the best thing happening to IA for a
long time. Consolidating IA is a key step towards making IA a well
respected and highly valued profession. Gunnar Langemark on SIGIA.

To learn who else is talking about AIfIA, see the AIfIA Referrer Log
or wade through the several hundred Google Hits.

Appendix V. Information Architecture Books

If you're still confused about the definition of information
architecture, buy a book:

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville.

Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web
by Christina Wodtke.

Practical Information Architecture by Eric L. Reiss.

Information Architecture: An Emerging 21st Century Profession by
Earl Morrogh.

Enemies of Usability (October 14, 2002)
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000009.php

---

see also: Google Needs People
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/10/11/morville.html

---

Pay no heed to the enemy propaganda. Things are not as bleak as they
may seem. Never surrender, especially not now!

Believe it or not, we are winning the war for a more usable universe
of products, software and systems.

Over the past decade, we've seen huge usability improvements, from
cell phones to accounting software to web sites.

But don't even think about relaxing. Now is the time to advance.

And, as we roll into hostile lands, it has never been more crucial
to know thy enemy.

Are We The Enemy?

In a recent interview, Don Norman casts us as our own worst enemies:

Why do we have so many unusable things when we know how to make them
usable? I think it has to do with the fact that the usability
advocates don't understand business.

I disagree. I know lots of usability advocates who speak the
language of business quite fluently. Could we get better? Sure. But
on the whole, we are the solution, not the problem. Let's not weaken
our ranks with friendly fire. We have plenty of real enemies to keep
us busy.

Bad for Business

Peter Merholz reveals one of these real enemies in the following
quote:

Oftentimes, what is *most* useful, usable, and meaningful to the end-
user is untenable from a business perspective, and the product,
while maybe popular, is a financial failure.

Why were VCRs so hard to use for so long? Why are we forced to spend
several hours of our lives scrubbing incredibly sticky labels and
glue residue off newly purchased toys and glassware? Why does it
seem like HMO web sites and phone systems are designed to prevent us
from finding people and getting answers?

Because, sometimes, investing in usability is bad for business.
Sometimes, the usability of a product doesn't affect customers'
purchasing decisions. Sometimes, understanding business means
ignoring or even purposefully crippling the usability of products,
software and systems.

Hand-to-hand combat is useless against this foe. No sensible manager
will invest in usability under such conditions.

The good news here is that conditions are changing. Online product
review systems, pioneered by folks like Epinions, Amazon and CNET,
enable customers to learn about product quality and usability before
making a purchasing decision, thereby shifting the playing field so
that usability becomes good for business.

Global markets and technology will gradually beat down this enemy.
As usability advocates, we should save our ammo.

Clueless Decision Makers

Perhaps we can identify a better target by focusing on the world of
web usability. Unfortunately, many of today's executives and
managers spent their formative years in a pre-Internet world. They
simply don't understand the medium well enough to make good
decisions about what to do and who to hire.

This has led to the proliferation of stupid Flash intros among small
company web sites and million dollar fiascos among large company web
sites and intranets, which in turn enable self-fulfilling prophecies
regarding the Internet's failings as a channel for collaboration and
commerce.

Some managers actively sustain their own ignorance of what works and
what doesn't by burying usage stats and user research data. I know
of one Fortune 500 company that hides all of its intranet usage data
on an almost inaccessible server in the Philippines.

However, not all of these folks are lost causes. If you can get
their attention, you may convince them to think twice about hiring
the consulting firm that offers "buy a Flash intro, get a taxonomy
for free."

It is worth fighting to save decision makers from the dark side.
Usability education and evangelism are our key weapons. The
alternative is to wait for today's web-surfing three year olds to
get their MBAs.

Xenophobia

It's easy for an individual to spot usability problems, but it's
often impossible for an individual to solve those problems. In fact,
in most organizations, the design of usable information systems
requires collaboration across teams, departments and disciplines.

These collaborations are notoriously messy. Perhaps our tribal
heritage underlies our fear of difference. Perhaps organizations
fail to align goals and incentives across groups. Perhaps we
secretly enjoy being difficult.

A guest speaker in my class told of her experience as the first
information architect in her organization. Not long after joining
the company, she was banned from creating wireframes. Apparently,
the software developers were afraid she was taking away their
creative control over the interface.

In the ensuing months, she managed to sneak wireframes into a few
under-the-radar projects. Eventually, the developers came to depend
on them. Wireframes are now a required deliverable and her usability-
enhancing skills are in great demand.

When it comes to establishing trust and respect, actions speak
louder than words. To beat this particular enemy, education and
evangelism won't suffice. A strange form of hand-to-hand combat that
involves doing good work and being friendly to people who are
different is required.

And always, as you grapple with the enemies of usability, remember
that we're winning the war, and don't be afraid to be sneaky!

Ambient Findability (August 28, 2002)
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000008.php

---

I have never been an early adopter of technology. I'm more of a
skeptical fast-following frugalist. So it's not surprising that I
only recently entered the promised land of the wireless web.

Equipped with a Dell Latitude C400, a Minolta Dimage X, and a
Motorola V60c, I can finally sit in my backyard, write an article,
check the polar bear's sales rank once a minute, email pictures of
my feet to friends, order pizza, and utilize pre-attentive
processing to make sure our three year old is looking after our baby
responsibly.

Having achieved this network nirvana, the question is inevitable:
what's next? For an information architect with library roots, the
answer is obvious: ambient findability.

I want to be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime.

What's surprising is how close we are to making this impossibly
strange dream a reality. Ambient interfaces, sensors and small tech
are about to intertwingle the physical and virtual worlds in
shocking ways that will make history of the Diamond Age.
Ambient Interfaces

At this year's Advance for Design in Las Vegas, David Rose brought
some cool toys to his show-and-sell session. David's company,
Ambient Devices, embeds information representation into everyday
objects, enabling lights, pens, watches, walls and wearables to tell
you when you've got email, when it's going to rain, when to take
your meds, how your stocks are doing, and how long you'll be stuck
in traffic today. While I'm not convinced we're about to undergo
a "paradigm shift to glance-ability," I do want an Ambient Orb and a
Talking Table.

Jeffrey Huang of Harvard University then told us about the
Swisshouse , a "radically new kind of consulate located both in
Boston and on the Internet." This prototype for convergent
architecture creates social spaces that seamlessly combine the
physical and the virtual, transforming places into portals and
putting the web on the wall.

Sensors and Small Tech

According to the experts, advances in MEMS and nanotechnology will
soon kick small tech into the big time. While smart dust and
personal fabricators are more exotic, sensors will drive change
faster and further in the near future.

In a Ten Year Forecast , Paul Saffo explains that we're about to add
eyes, ears and all sorts of other sensory organs to our devices and
networks. Sensors and small tech already make it possible to access
real-time traffic reports on the Web and to find your kids using a
GPS Personal Locator.

Before long we'll have sticky sensors and radiofrequency (RF) tags
the size of a postage stamp. You'll be able to stick them to the
back of your remote control, the inside of your purse and the bottom
of your spouse's shoe. Yes, our ability to track the location of
everything all the time will raise some privacy concerns, but
privacy is history anyway.

Designing for Ambient Findability

So how will the convergence of ambient interfaces, sensors and small
tech change the work of information architecture and design?

In short, it won't.

Consider the following bold predictions:

     * Keyword Searching Reigns Supreme. Ten years from now, users
will still enter one or two keywords into a search query box, and
they'll still be frustrated by the results. Hopefully we'll have
some algorithmic advances that take us beyond Google, but ultimately
we won't escape the ambiguity of language.

     * Metadata Goes Mainstream. We're going to create an explosion
of metadata. In order to identify all of the people and objects we
want to be able to find, we'll need to tag them with metadata. This
will usher in the era of personal information architecture that
Jakob Nielsen predicts in our book's foreword.

Your Predictions

Okay, so you're disappointed by my predictions. Well, what did you
expect from a skeptical fast-following frugalist who's multi-tasking
in his backyard? Please, tell me your predictions.

In an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, I've written an
article for Boxes & Arrows, which will also appear in a week as a
Semantics article, but there's not much reason for you to wait for
that version.

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/002595.php

Please comment!  And please have patience with my erratic publishing
schedule.  We're deep into crunch time on the 2nd edition of our
polar bear IA book.

Cheers!

Social Network Analysis (February 21, 2002)
http://www.semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/sna.html

---

How do knowledge workers learn? How do they decide what to learn
next? What motivates them to share?

These questions are central to the challenges of knowledge
management, and yet most corporate portals and online communities are
designed in ignorance of their answers.

The truth lies within the social fabric that connects people to
people and people to content. Relationships, trust and serendipity
play key roles.

To illustrate, let me tell you a story about my recent foray into
social network analysis, a strange world filled with mavens and
connectors, structural holes, intensional networks, and socially
translucent systems.

The Tipping Point

My interest in the ties between people and content isn't new. In
1995, I helped design an information architecture strategy for Dow
Chemical that placed the employee directory at the center of a rich
web of relationships between authors and documents.

And two years ago, I invited Bonnie Nardi to speak at IA2K about her
fascinating work on information ecologies and social networks.

But it was two events last month that prompted my current enthusiasm.

First, I discovered The Tipping Point while browsing Borders
bookstore. The notion of Connectors (who know everyone) and Mavens
(experts who love to teach) as catalysts of social epidemics really
caught my attention.

Second, I had lunch with Lou Rosenfeld, who had just been talking
with Ed Vielmetti, who is now working with Valdis Krebs to distribute
software for "social network analysis."

[Interactive Story Map of My SNA Learning Process]

This discussion sparked my interest and gave me names and keywords to
feed into Google, producing some great articles.

While traveling, I mentioned SNA to Jane Dysart and Mary Lee Kennedy.
Both pointed me to Dave Snowden who told me about Rob Cross.

In the period of a few weeks, I learned quite a bit about the people
and ideas surrounding social network analysis.

The ABCs of Network Analysis

Valdis Krebs states "organization charts prescribe that work and
information flow in a hierarchy, but network mapping reveals [they]
actually flow through a vast web of informal channels."

Social network analysis involves the mapping and measuring of these
normally invisible relationships between people, providing an
organizational X-ray for use by HR managers and consultants.

[Kite Network ideas developed by David Krackhardt and Valdis Krebs]

SNA tools such as InFlow help reveal densely connected clusters or
communities of practice, and support the three most popular metrics:

* Activity. Susan is a "connector" with 6 direct links to other
nodes.

* Betweenness. Claudia has only 3 connections but holds a powerful
position as the sole "boundary spanner" between different groups.

* Closeness. Sarah and Steven have the shortest paths to all others.
They have an excellent view of what's going on.

These tools and metrics can be applied at the level of individuals,
organizations and industries. They can also be used to analyze
computer networks (to optimize topology) and information systems
(imagine a visual representation of Google's link analysis).

Human Surrogates

What ties information architecture, knowledge management and social
network analysis more closely together is the reciprocal relationship
between people and content.

[We use people to find content.  We use content to find people.]

Success in the former requires we know what other people know and who
other people know. Success in the latter demands good search,
navigation and content management systems.

In information retrieval, we often use document surrogates such as
abstracts to represent the knowledge contained within that content.

We might also think of the documents themselves as "human
surrogates," representing the knowledge and interests of authors.

And of course, we humans also serve as surrogates for one another.

In the context of enterprise KM, this suggests a need for metadata
schema, tools, staff directories and incentives to enable and
encourage explicit connections between documents and authors.

Socially Translucent Systems

My SNA research eventually led me to socially translucent systems and
an instant messenger on steroids named Babble.

Built upon the rationale that "visibility yields awareness yields
accountability," Babble makes people aware of one another's presence
and activity in both real-time and asynchronous modes.

[Screenshot of IBM's Babble]

Notice the "marbles" in the Commons Area? These "social proxies"
indicate the relative activity levels of users, whether they're
speaking or just listening to the conversation. Yes, even lurkers are
exposed to the light of day.

Babble motivates by enabling people to build social capital and
manages contribution quality through peer pressure and social
feedback. Put simply, nobody wants to lose their marbles.

Beyond Babble

The concepts of network analysis and socially translucent systems are
applicable far beyond the confines of text-based chat.

In fact, these concepts are critical to the creation of truly useful
knowledge economies and online communities.

The seeds of innovation are lying all around us, from Google's
Backward Links to AOL's Buddy Lists to Amazon's Purchase Circles to
the incestuous source links of Blogdex.

We humans are very social animals. It's about time more of us started
recognizing this in the systems we design.

Innovation Architecture (January 22, 2002)
http://www.semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/innovation.html

In the future of ideas, Lawrence Lessig warns us of the grave threat
to innovation posed by mostly unseen changes to the legal and
technical frameworks of cyberspace.

As the original end-to-end architecture of the Internet is
increasingly compromised, and as copyright and patent law expand
their reach, the commons of code, content and creativity that
launched the World Wide Web is being quietly smothered.

While Lessig focuses on technology and the law, his dark prophecies
are relevant to the practice of information architecture.

The Portal and the Pendulum

The design of corporate web sites and intranets is riddled with
tensions between central control and distributed freedom.

As a vocal proponent of hierarchical classification schemes and
controlled vocabularies, I've been accused of favoring structure over
flexibility. And indeed, I do believe most sites have much to gain
from the ordered approaches of library and information science.

However, I'm afraid that as companies rush to adopt enterprise
portals, content management systems and corporate taxonomies, the
pendulum is swinging too far towards centralization.

We should learn from the software community by embracing both the
Cathedral and the Bazaar. We need to remember that control is not the
goal.

We can't tap the distributed creativity of our customers, employees
and partners without building some trust and freedom into our online
communities and marketplaces.

Perhaps what we need is a new model for thinking about the practice
of information architecture and the systems that we design.

Complex Adaptive Systems

In Out of Control, Kevin Kelly defines persistent disequilibrium
as "a continuous state of surfing forever on the edge between never
stopping and never falling."

It is this characteristic that enables complex adaptive systems to
evolve and survive within a rapidly changing environment.

He argues convincingly that this balancing act between chaos and
control is inherent, not only in all living organisms and ecosystems,
but increasingly in the social, economic and technological systems of
the modern world.

And he proposes some design principles, including:

Distribute being. "All the mysteries we find most interesting - life,
intelligence, evolution - are found in the soil of large, distributed
systems."

Control from the bottom up. "A mob can steer itself, and in the
territory of rapid, massive, and heterogeneous change, only a mob can
steer."

Cultivate increasing returns. "Each time you use an idea, a language,
or a skill you strengthen it, reinforce it, and make it more likely
to be used again. That's known as positive feedback or snowballing."

As information architects, it's worth exploring how we can apply
these principles to the design of those complex adaptive systems
currently known as web sites and intranets.

Post-Modern IA

For the past decade, most of us have practiced classical information
architecture. Our centralized teams and top-down methods have been
aimed at the creation of stable structures.

As we embrace the lessons of complex adaptive systems, we must
explore the territory of post-modern innovation architecture, using
bottom-up methods to incubate online ecologies and economies that
exhibit the capacity to learn and evolve over time.

Sound like science fiction? Well, as William Gibson himself once
said, "The future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed."

Artifacts from the Future

As I've said before, information architecture is nearly invisible.
You have to look very closely (and sometimes behind the scenes) to
understand what's really going on. But seek and ye shall find. Here
are just a few examples of innovation architecture today.

Collaborative Filtering. Drawing upon the collective navigation and
purchasing behavior of users creates a highly distributed, adaptive
solution. Amazon is the reigning champion, featuring People who
bought this item also bought and Purchase Circles. Other examples
include Microsoft's Top Downloads and mp3.com's Weekly Bottom 40.

Reputation Management. If you want useful contributions from a
distributed community, you must establish the right incentives and
promote trust. Epinions, Ebay, Slashdot and Amazon all foster trust
through double reputation managers (review the products AND review
the reviewers). And they motivate contributors with Top Reviewer
Lists and Personal Profiles. Rule #1 of the Attention Economy? We all
want some!

Citation Analysis. For decades, researchers in library science have
mined the wealth of information residing in the citations (or links)
between one academic paper and another. With their PageRank
technology, Google has demonstrated this approach can be hugely
valuable in the Web environment.

Cooperative Cataloging. For over 30 years, organizations like OCLC
have tapped the distributed intelligence of thousands of librarians
through cooperative cataloging. Yahoo has made this work on the
public Web. Many companies are now implementing this model on their
corporate web sites and intranets by using Content Management Systems
to enable distributed metadata tagging.

CMS. Companies are increasingly using Content Management Systems to
strike a balance between centralized standards and distributed
content authorship. Some online communities are experimenting with
the extreme decentralization of Wiki (e.g., IAwiki).

As far as examples of innovation architecture go, this is indubitably
just the tip of the iceberg. Let me know what I've missed.

Emergent IA

Kevin Kelly explains, "the only way to make a complex system that
works is to begin with a simple system that works."

A flock of birds, a school of fish and the Game of Life all show how
systems composed of many elements following simple rules can exhibit
emergence or spontaneous self-organization.

Can we combine simple elements of innovation architecture to create
self-organizing web sites and intranets? Perhaps. But only if we
relax control and encourage experimentation.

Bob Metcalfe says "Invention is a flower, innovation is a weed." As
we cultivate our field of information architecture, let's leave room
for a few weeds. You never know. Something wonderful may emerge.

In Defense of Search (December 7, 2001)
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/search.html

Jared Spool loves to slander search.

He says "searching stinks." He proclaims it's "worse than nothing."
He exhorts web designers to "keep users from using search."

And he backs up these defamatory accusations with $3,000,000 worth of
user research data.

Is Jared right? Do his research results tell the whole truth and
nothing but the truth? Is browsing better than searching?

No, No, and No!

Gross Generalizations

My quarrel is not with Jared's results but with his conclusions. I
too have seen users fail miserably in their attempts to find content
using web site and intranet search engines. There's no doubt that the
implementation of search on many sites actually does stink.

But to draw the general conclusion that search is an ineffective tool
from these specific observations of existing e-commerce web sites is
like eating a frozen egg roll and declaring that all Chinese food is
bad.

Injurious Impact

What I'm most concerned about is the impact of Jared's proclamations.
He urges designers to focus attention on improving the site's
category links. This is a good thing and I'm glad his research
illuminates the critical importance of information architecture
design to overall usability!

However, to encourage taxonomy design at the expense of search system
design is a bad message to be sending in today's web environment.

Investment in search system design is already absurdly low. In my
consulting engagements, I see organizations of all shapes and sizes
investing heavily in taxonomy design while giving almost no thought
to the search system.

Why? Because taxonomy design is the current rage. Because many people
don't understand how search can be improved. Because search engine
configuration is often "owned" by the IT group rather than by the
folks responsible for design, usability and information architecture.
And because Jared keeps slamming search.

The pendulum needs to swing back the other way. Many web sites and
intranets can benefit most dramatically and immediately from
enhancements to the search system. We're talking major ROI here. Lots
of return with relatively little investment.

Search is Essential

It's simply a matter of size. Small sites don't need search. Big ones
do. An e-commerce site with 100 products may be able to get by
without search. A large, complex web site or intranet with 10,000 or
100,000 documents and applications will require search for a
significant percentage of users and tasks.

A taxonomy can only do so much. Any hierarchy is ultimately subject
to the depth/breadth tradeoff, the ambiguity of language, and the
limits of human cognition.

So unless you're running a tiny web site or intranet, you have no
choice in the matter. You must buy a search engine and your users
will use it.

Search is a System

But a search engine is not enough! Designers need to take a systemic
approach that recognizes the roles played by the search interface,
the content and the results presentation.

[IMAGE]

If your site is bloated with ROT (Redundant, Outdated or Trivial
content), search results will suffer. If your ranking algorithm
buries the most relevant results, users will fail to find them. Like
many other complex systems, search is only as good as its weakest
link.

And we need to design for the iterative, interactive nature of users'
information seeking behavior, recognizing that people need to move
fluidly between searching, browsing and asking modes.

Search is Multifarious

How can Jared universally castigate search when there are so many
unique approaches ranging from the mundane to the exotic?

By matching search interface design with faceted classification, we
can support parametric searching.

By studying search logs and identifying business priorities, we can
feature best bets in our results display.

By developing controlled vocabularies, we can manage the synonym
problem.

By combining natural language parsing and human-created knowledge-
bases we can provide interactive agents.

By tracking link references or user behavior we can tap into the
adaptive power of collaborative filtering.

By leveraging category structures, we can provide results in context.

These are just some of the tools and techniques we need to explore
and evaluate before deep-sixing search.

Search Sucks

But not in a bad way! Search sucks tremendously valuable data about
your users into your organization. The smartest companies are
aggressively mining their search logs, learning what their customers
want and how they describe these needs in their own words.

Web groups have been using this data for years to inform taxonomy
design, controlled vocabulary development and the selection of "best
bets." Increasingly, other groups such as marketing and research are
beginning to recognize it as a timely source of information about
customer preferences and industry trends.

Long Live Search

I really don't have anything against Jared Spool and I don't own a
bunch of stock in a search engine vendor. I simply see search as a
hugely under-developed component of many web sites and intranets.

Yes, search has been pathetically implemented on countless sites.
Yes, search is an easy target. But that's exactly why I wish Jared
would stop kicking this poor, shivering underdog.

It may look ugly right now. It may even have a few fleas. But it's
got great potential. Long live search!

The Speed of Information Architecture (November 14, 2001 )
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/speed.html

"Information architects need to slow down!"

Spoken at the legendary ASIS Summit 2000, these words of caution
surrounding time and responsibility were perhaps directed towards
myself as much as my audience.

In those heady days before the bubble burst, the velocity of growth
and change had become frightening. We skimmed the surface, creating
designs, forming strategies, making decisions with no time for
reflection. A crash seemed at once inevitable yet unimaginable.

Fast-forward to the present, and life has slowed down for many of us.
While the experience has been far from frictionless, there is a
silver lining. We have been granted the gift of time.

Time to spend with our families. Time to read, relax, and generally
recreate. And of course, most importantly, time to reflect deeply
about the speed of information architecture.

The Infinite Loop of Destructive Creation

What bothers me most about web and intranet redesign projects is the
widespread practice of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The site development process moves from strategy to design to
implementation. Then, after a period of maintenance often measured in
months not years, someone decides a redesign is required.

Perhaps there's a new CEO who wants a "fresh look" or the IT
department purchases a Content Management System. Maybe the User
Experience team just gets bored with maintenance.

Whatever the justification, someone commits to a take-no-prisoners
redesign that obliterates all elements of the prior site. In the
worst cases, an entirely new team is assigned to "do the job right
this time," assuring no organizational learning whatsoever.

I'm optimistic we can break out of this infinite loop, changing focus
from project to program, but first we must better understand and
disentangle the currently interwoven layers of information
architecture, content and interface.

Fast and Slow Layers

In The Clock of the Long Now, Stewart Brand introduced the notion
that society is a construct of several layers, each with a unique and
suitable rate of change.

The slow layers provide stability. The fast layers drive innovation.
The independence of speed between layers is a natural and healthy
result of societal evolution.

Imagine the alternative. How about commerce moving at the pace of
Federal bureaucracy? Remember the Soviet Union? Enough said.

This recognition of independently dynamic layers holds great promise
within the narrower domain of information architecture.

By isolating enduring IA from adaptive IA, we can invest sensibly in
long-term infrastructure while creating flexibility where it's
needed. Sounds easy, right? So what's been stopping us?

I Blame Yahoo!

Yahoo is one of the great success stories of the Web. And we
librarians have been eager to proudly note it was built through
manual classification using a taxonomy designed by humans. A high-
profile exemplar that software can't do it all.

And yet, Yahoo's success is a root cause of the infinite loop of
creative destruction. Portal vendors and managers have become devout
worshippers in Yahoo's Church of the Taxonomy.

Builders of web sites and intranets have been seduced by the dream of
a single enterprise Taxonomy that provides quick, intuitive access to
all content and services.

It's scary how pervasive the Taxonomy (with a capital "T") has
become. I know some corporate librarians who literally cringe when
they hear the word.

So What's Wrong With Taxonomies

Size
Following in the footsteps of the Dewey Decimal System, Yahoo took a
highly pre-coordinate approach, attempting to create controlled
vocabulary terms (i.e., names of categories) for every imaginable
subject. The result? An informal count suggests more than 67,000
categories in Yahoo with roughly 4 to 8 levels of hierarchy between
the main page and actual content. That's a lot of vocabulary to
manage. Portals that take this approach wind up growing an enormous
category structure that constrains their ability to adapt.

Simplicity
The siren song of simplicity suggests you can create one organization
scheme to serve all audiences, tasks and information needs. Even
better, with the Taxonomy model, your classification scheme is your
user interface. What you see is what you get. It is this inherent
simplicity that creates a problem. The Taxonomy model joins
information architecture, content and user interface, making it
difficult conceptually and practically to recognize and leverage
separate layers with unique rates of change.

The Future is Faceted

Faceted classification serves up multiple "pure" classification
schemes rather than a single "motley" Taxonomy.

Because each facet is focused on a specific, limited dimension of the
information space, its hierarchy can be much smaller and flatter.
Even with several facet hierarchies, you're dealing with relatively
few controlled vocabulary terms. However, through the power of post-
coordination, you're able to create a huge number of combinations.

Consider the following (rough) numbers for wine.com

Facet # of Vocabulary Terms
Type 46
Region 16
Winery 750
Price 6
Ratings 6
Total Terms 824
Total Combinations 1,656,824

With only 824 controlled vocabulary terms, users of wine.com can
define 1.6 million discrete facet combinations. They can ask for a
Merlot (Type) from France (Region) under $20 (Price) or a Top Rated
wine (Ratings) from Cakebread Cellars (Winery).

And users can seek what they want using integrated searching and
browsing interfaces that are both powerful and flexible.

You see, with this post-coordinate approach, the classification
scheme is not the user interface.

Nowhere on the site does wine.com force users to interact with the
full set of unadulterated facet hierarchies. Instead, wine.com's
interaction designers have made careful decisions about how to expose
users to facets.

Only 3 facets are featured on the main shopping page.

The other facets provide support on the results page as options for a
user-defined sort order. And finally, all facets are accessible from
the search interface.

The key here is the separation of classification scheme and user
interface. The user interface can be modified quite significantly
over time to address usability problems or changing business goals,
without touching the underlying classification schemes.

Information Architecture Layers

This brings me back to the quest for a layered model that helps us
understand and leverage the unique qualities of various information
architecture components.

Consider the following figure an early (and probably flawed) attempt
to identify these layers.

Lowest and slowest are facets and their hierarchies. These constitute
the foundation of the enterprise IA infrastructure.

Next, the embedded navigation system composed of browsable
taxonomies, indexes, and the search system defines at a fundamental
level how users are able to search and browse.

These two bottom layers should be stable. They become intertwined
with content, technology and process. They become core to users'
mental models. Change at the bottom is painful and expensive.

You also don't want to frequently switch enabling technologies such
as content management systems, search engines, and portal software
because they too become enmeshed with content and process.

Moving to the faster layers, controlled vocabulary terms will evolve
with product and service offerings and with the broader language of
business and technology. Adaptive finding tools such as project-
specific guides, indexes, and collaborative filtering devices may
benefit from continuous adaptation. And, finally, the site's content
and services may change on a regular basis, along with tweaks to the
user interface.

The Long Now of Information Architecture

Perhaps slowest moving of all is our communal understanding of how to
practice information architecture effectively.

It's so easy to move fast and learn little.

As we slow down, hopefully we can leverage the concepts of facets and
layers to break the infinite loop of destructive creation, designing
information architectures that are both enduring and adaptive at the
same time.

Pandora's Portal (November 1, 2001)
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/portal.html
---

It begins with a seductive whisper into the ear of an IT manager.

Wouldn't you like to control the chaos that is your intranet? Haven't
you dreamed of providing unified access to all corporate knowledge?
Come with me. I have the answer. Right here in this tiny box.

Power. Knowledge. Groovy Gadgets. How could any mortal resist this
techno-utopia? Maybe just a peek. A pilot project. What harm could it
possibly do?

So, they sign the portal vendor's contract, open their new box of
software, and sure enough, release all the evils of mankind...

THE EVILS OF MANKIND

To be fair, there were already a few evils floating around before the
portal vendors showed up. But for the unsuspecting IT manager, the
corporate portal becomes a gateway into a whole new world of pain.
The portal forces very difficult questions, attracts the attention
and participation of a broader mix of players, and calls for skills
not traditionally housed within IT (or anywhere else in many cases).

In the true spirit of vicarious curiosity, let's focus on the three
most interesting evils befalling the portal-peeking IT manager.

1. Definition
2. Knowledge Management
3. Information Architecture

DEFINING A PORTAL

What is a portal? This seemingly innocent question stirs up a
hornets' nest of opinion, as idea people (i.e., those who do not have
to implement) blithely throw out portal-defining sound bytes:

* the operating system for the organization
* the global corporate knowledge repository
* the new personalized desktop for every employee
* a card catalog for all corporate information

Arguments often tend to revolve around the following issues:

Dominant Metaphor
Is the portal a task-oriented platform for applications, e-services
and cross-functional business process integration or a tool for
enterprise-wide knowledge management? Is it a bottom-up enabler of
communication and collaboration or a top-down channel for
broadcasting official corporate propaganda? Inevitable consensus
answer? It's all of these things and more, and the IT folks better be
ready to support this exciting new paradigm!

Audience(s)
The IT manager thought he was buying a tool for employees. But now,
analysts, pundits, and vendors say the real payoff comes from linking
employees with customers, partners and suppliers. Are you someone who
thinks big or thinks small? Just deal with those niggling security
issues and let's get this show on the road.

Source(s)
You thought providing unified access to all internal content was
ambitious. But now, users are demanding seamless access to external
3rd party databases, executives are raving about the ASP model, and
there's a rumor floating around that your portal team will soon be
merged with the corporate library staff.

In the long run, these expansive definitions of the portal will be a
good thing, leading towards improved communication, collaboration and
productivity throughout and beyond the enterprise.

In the short term, the IT manager is in for the fight of her life, as
expectations run on Internet time while implementation is chained to
reality. Only the strongest of managers will be able to secure
sufficient time and resources to build a solid, scalable, enduring
foundation. For others, the multi-faceted portal will become their
own personal Rock of Hades.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Portals often begin their lives as centralized, top-down software
development and publishing efforts to provide employees with a core
set of e-services (e.g., benefit forms, timecards, expense
reimbursement) and instant access to company news.

At best, this can be a good way to jump-start use of the portal, by
leveraging the intranet environment to provide improved employee
services at lower costs.

At worst, the following indictment from the Cluetrain Manifesto is
right on target: "Companies typically install intranets top-down to
distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers
are doing their best to ignore."

Either way, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Believe it or not,
employees are actually interested in learning from each other. While
senior managers may proclaim their top-down portal addresses 80% of
employee needs, the search logs tell a very different story.

Our analysis of portal search logs shows that 80% of queries in a
given week are unique. Employees are not all looking for the same
thing. They're looking for tens of thousands of different things. In
other words, they're looking beyond the portal, deep into the untamed
intranet environment. They're looking for stuff produced by their
peers.

And it will not be enough for IT to slap full-text search on top of
this mess and call it a day. They will need to embark on a journey
that begins in familiar territory with the purchase of content
management software but soon leads into the unchartered, murky waters
of knowledge management. They'll need to grapple with all aspects of
the content creation process, ultimately striving to encourage a
healthy knowledge economy throughout the enterprise.

This will be an uncomfortable journey, where control and authority
are low but responsibility and anxiety remain high.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Speaking of anxiety, let's not forget the 3rd evil befalling our poor
IT manager. With a broad definition and a huge array of content and
services, the combination of a taxonomy and full-text search is no
longer sufficient. The cry from employees is long and loud.

We Can't Find Anything!

And it turns out that it's not very easy to solve this problem. You
need to understand how to define metadata schemes and develop
controlled vocabularies and thesauri. You need to create new
interfaces that leverage faceted classification with integrated
search/browse capabilities.

In other words, you need to hire a professional information
architect, who has the education, expertise and experience to
successfully tackle these challenges.

Unfortunately, many IT managers don't realize the complexity of this
work until it's too late. Only after a year or two of suffering do
they call in the experts, and by that point they've got a weak
foundation and frustrated users. It will inevitably take significant
time and effort to repair this damage.

WHAT LIES AHEAD?

The good news is that the vision articulated by some of the leading
portal vendors actually does make sense. We're headed in the right
direction. The bad news is that it will be a longer, more difficult
odyssey than most IT managers realized when they naively opened up
that tiny box and grasped for those groovy gadgets.

As you embark on this perilous journey, remember that in the original
Greek myth, Pandora's jar contained one good thing.

"Impelled by her natural curiosity, Pandora opened the jar, and all
evil contained escaped and spread over the earth. She hastened to
close the lid, but the whole contents of the jar had escaped, except
for one thing which lay at the bottom, and that was Hope."