November 7:  Who Says IAs Don't have a Sense of Humor?


Check out this poster which uses the metaphor of dating to explain
information architecture.  Ah, if only it was so simple.  Dating, that is...

The poster accompanies a paper presented at CHI 2003, "Dating Example for
Information Architecture," presented by Ray Henderson, TaRan Wilson, and
Miyuki Shimbo.

Thanks to noted UX humorist Dean Karavite for the pointer!


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000221.html

LINKS MENTIONED
IA and dating poster ::
http://www.miyukishimbo.com/documents/dating_poster.pdf (617Kb PDF)
CHI 2003 paper :: http://www.interactionary.com/files/IADating.pdf (284Kb
PDF)
Miyuki Shimbo's site :: http://www.miyukishimbo.com/shell/index.html

November 11:  Search Log Analysis Tools


On November 19 I'll be giving a short talk on search log analysis at the
Southeastern Michigan UPA meeting here in Ann Arbor.  (It'll be followed by
an AIfIA F2F meeting; come to both!)

I'm usually pretty surprised at how few UX people are aware of search log
analysis, so I'll introduce it as a user research technique and will run
attendees through an exercise.  If you want to come, it's free for members,
$8 for non-members; 6:30pm at Soar Technology (3600 Green Court, Suite 600);
RSVP to uid@....

I'm pretty ignorant about what are considered the best tools for generating
search log reports.  I've asked the opinion of one of the world's leading
experts, Avi Rappoport of SearchTools.com, but she's pretty frustrated by
what's out there, which makes me pessimistic.

But before we send up the white flag, it'd be nice to ask around a bit more.
I'd love for people to comment on what reporting tools (remember, for
*search* log analysis) they love, like, or tolerate; perhaps we can collect
some communal knowledge.  I'll also be poking around, and will share what I
find here.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000222.html

LINKS MENTIONED
AIfIA F2F meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan ::
http://aifia.org/calendar/000259.php
SearchTools.com :: http://www.searchtools.com/

November 15:  Interaction Design Coalescence


At the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy, Molly Steenson has been
hard at work developing The Hub, a resource and discussion site on
interaction design.  Looks like a great resource!  It's ambitious, and
scalability will be tough, but Molly invites participation in the Hub's
blog; perhaps that will help feed the useful collection of resources on
interaction design and related fields, like information architecture.
Hmmm... except that there's no section on IA.  Hey Molly, what gives?

Speaking of interaction design, a group of Very Smart People led by Challis
Hodge have started an interaction design exploratory group.  This grew out
of Bruce Tognazzini's recent wakeup call for some sort of coalescing among
interaction designers.  The group is still trying to determine whether it
should stand alone as an organization, a la AIfIA, or join forces with an
existing organization.  Whichever route they go, I wish them the best
success.  I've always felt that interaction design and IA are distinct and
quite complementary, so it's great to see a similar coalescence among the
interaction designers.

Apparently there is even more coalescence going on.  According to their
recent press release, "The International Council of Graphic Design
Associations (referred to as Icograda) and the International Council of
Societies of Industrial Designers (referred to as ICSID) are pleased to
announce the formation of the International Design Alliance IDA.  In a major
step for the global design community, Icograda and ICSID have committed
themselves to forming 'one powerful voice' for all disciplines of design
through the creation of IDA."

Sounds like a good thing, though it's also a little frustrating to see so
few *design* disciplines actually represented in this partnership.  Aren't
there other types of design besides graphic and industrial?  I'm hopeful
that IDA will see this "major step" as a first one.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000223.html


LINKS MENTIONED
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea ::
http://www.interaction-ivrea.it/en/index.asp
The Hub at Ivrea :: http://hub.interaction-ivrea.it
Interaction design exploratory group :: http://www.interactiondesigners.com/
Tog's call :: http://www.asktog.com/columns/057ItsTimeWeGotRespect.html
AIfIA :: http://www.aifia.org
Icograda press release ::
http://www.icograda.org/web/news-display.shtml?pfl=www/news-single-recent.pa
ram&op2.rf1=164

November 17, 2003:  New Online Card Sort Tool; Other Notes


Andy Edmonds, a human factors masters student at Clemson, is developing a
new online card sort tool.  uzCardSort (currently in v0.9) provides
exploratory data analysis and a rudimentary clustering algorithm.  It
"produces a tab-delimited similarity matrix," and v1.0 will support "a full
hierarchical analysis and hopefully a Flash based dendogram."  Check out the
site; Andy has some sample screen shots to give you a good sense of how
uzCardSort works.

Great to see the emergence of these tools to support IA and similar work; I
just wish search log analysis tools would catch up...

Other notes:  Abe Crystal and Paula Land were kind enough to assemble a trip
report from the Dublin Core 2003 "Metadata and Search" pre-conference
workshop.  It was an excellent, informative workshop; kudos to organizers
Joseph Busch and Michael Crandall.  I'd been wondering why the heck I was
going to DC2003, but after the day was done, I was glad I'd participated;
you might consider attending DC2004 if you can make it to Shanghai...

Oh, and the Polar Bear now speaks Polish (go to my site for a cover image if
you're so inclined).



BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000224.html

LINKS MENTIONED
uzCardSort :: http://uzilla.mozdev.org/cardsort.html
Search log analysis tools discussion ::
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000222.html
Metadata and Search DC2003 workshop notes ::
http://dublincore.org/groups/corporate/Seattle/
Metadata and Search DC2003 workshop ::
http://dc2003.ischool.washington.edu/preconference-corporate.html

November 21:  Let's Have a Content Management Party!


What if we threw a party for content management community, but didn't invite
the CMS vendors?  Who would show up?  And what would they talk about while
tucking into the crudités, Doritos, and cheese balls?

I've been a fly on the wall for many conversations about content management..
Invariably, people are vexed by Vignette, irked by Interwoven, dissed by
Documentum.  Although these are gripe sessions, the griping is all about
products.  CMS vendors have been so successful at setting the agenda for the
content management world that they dominate practitioners' discussions, and
even though perceptions of CMS are often negative, all publicity is
ultimately good publicity.

But there's clearly more to content management than CMS technologies.
Content managers have to figure out all sorts of non-technical stuff, like:
* Adapting to and modifying content workflow and publishing processes
* Metadata development
* Content modeling
* Content integration
* Marketing and acceptance
* Staff training and documentation
* Cultural and political issues
* Relationships to other areas such as authoring, information architecture,
interaction design, visual design, usability, change management, business
modeling...

These issues generally can't be addressed by CMS technologies.  They require
human expertise and a high degree of local customization.  Some CMS vendors
offer some professional services in some of these areas.  But these services
are expensive and simply can't scale to meet the needs of the many
organizations implementing CMSs.  So the responsibility falls to some poor
in-house souls who try their darnedest to tackle the dirty work of solving
internal content management problems.

If you're one of the unfortunate, where do you find the expertise you need?
There are some wonderful books on the market from folks like Boiko, Rockley,
and Hackos.  There are a few great sites like CMSWatch, not to mention a
smattering of content management-related conferences.  But there seems to be
no communal venue for sharing expertise, war stories, techniques, and good
ideas.  That's because content management is not a community or a field,
it's an industry.  And it's an industry because vendors dominate the agenda,
and unintentionally squash the wisdom that only a community can accumulate.

So a modest proposal:  what if everyone involved in content management--the
publications, the web sites, the meetings and conferences--banned CMS
vendors for, say, one quarter?  No vendor exhibitions at meetings, no
product mentions on discussion lists, no purchases, no nothing.  Just
discussion about all there is to content management *besides* the
technologies.

At the end of this very exclusive three-month long party, I'll bet dollars
to donuts that many of the nastier content management issues will be a
little less nasty, if not solved altogether.  And practitioners will be a
lot better at selecting and deriving value from their CMSs.  Which wouldn't
exactly be so terrible for the vendors in the long run, would it?

Hey CMS vendors, are you listening?  How about taking a vacation for a few
months?  Really, it's ok; we'll be fine on our own for a little while.
Cancun is nice this time of year, and you can get special deals on long-term
stays, so don't worry about us; we'll be just fine.

Ah, well, wishing is free...


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000225.html

LINKS MENTIONED
CMSWatch :: http://www.cmswatch.com

Hi folks, this is a long-ish rant about ontologies, metadata, and the
Semantic Web.  Too long for an email message, so I'll just leave you with
the URL:

   http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000226.html

It does include a link to a new diagram (in PDF form) on enterprise
metadata.  As many of you seem to be big diagram fans, I thought I'd point
this out.  You'll find the link toward the bottom of the page.

cheers


Louis Rosenfeld :: information architecture
      consulting :: http://www.louisrosenfeld.com
     2nd edition :: http://www.ora.com/catalog/infotecture2/
    EIA seminars :: http://louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/seminars/eia/

December 3, 2003:  AIfIA News

AIfIA's new Event Sponsorship Program has its first partner:  the Danish
Research Library Association, which is producing the Forum for Information
Architecture (DF-IA) conference in Korsoer, Denmark, March 9th - 10th, 2004.
This is the first IA conference to take place in Scandinavia, and AIfIA is
proud to be helping make it happen.  Nice discounts for AIfIA members, by
the way.

Speaking of AIfIA members:  AIfIA's new membership fee plan has deep student
and group discounts, and fees that correspond with what part of the world
you live in.  Check it out and consider joining; it's a great deal.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000227.html

LINKS MENTIONED
AIfIA Event Sponsorship Program :: http://aifia.org/news/000250.php
DF-IA Conference :: http://aifia.org/news/000263.php
AIfIA's new membership pricing :: http://aifia.org/news/000257.php

December 5:  Weekend Reading and Whatnot


Hanan Cohen tipped me off to "On  Search," XML guru Tim Bray's
"irregularly-published series of essays on the construction, deployment and
use of search technology".  Looks extremely useful and practical; wonder if
this will soon make it into print?

More good free content:  Wilshire's 2003 Enterprise Data Forum trip notes.
Always interesting to get a glimpse of another community's take on
enterprise and metadata issues.

UKOLN will be organizing ECDL 2004, "the 8th in the series of European
Digital Library Conferences.  ECDL has become the major European forum
focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, organisational and
social issues."  Definitely a venue where IA will get discussed, implicitly
if nothing else.  And I'll bet Bath is a nice place to hang out in September
(or any time of year, for that matter), so consider submitting a paper.
Thanks to Livia Labate for the pointer.

And this looks interesting:  http://www.controlledvocabulary.com


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000228.html

LINKS MENTIONED
Tim Bray's "On Search, the Series" ::
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/30/OnSearchTOC
Wilshire's 2003 EDF notes ::
http://www.wilshireconferences.com/EDF2003/tripreport.htm
UKOLN :: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL) 2004 ::
http://www.ecdl2004.org
ControlledVocabulary.com :: http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/index.html

December 12, 2003:  Spring 2004 Seminar Schedule


Hi all; time to announce my seminar schedule for Spring 2004:

   * April 1, 2004:  St. Paul, Minnesota
   * May 7, 2004:  Washington, DC
   * May 27, 2004:  Seattle, Washington

My day-long seminar on Enterprise Information Architecture will help you
convert a disjointed collection of content silos into a unified,
user-centered web site or intranet.  To that end, I provide a combination of
design recommendations, political advice, and research methods that work in
the highly political and often nasty environment known as the enterprise.
The day includes a balance of lecture, discussion, and group exercises,
plenty of handouts and a polar bear book, all washed down with a lively
happy hour at the end of the day.

And once again, I'll be pairing up with usability god Steve Krug of "Don't
Make Me Think!" fame.  After you attend my seminar, plan to attend Steve's
day-long workshop based on (and going beyond) his excellent book.  Same
venues, day after my seminar.  Discounts if you register for both seminars,
and bring your colleagues:  there are volume discounts as well.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000229.html

LINKS MENTIONED
Lou's Enterprise IA Seminar ::
http://louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/seminars/eia/
The Polar Bear book ::
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596000359/qid%3D1028719544/sr%3D1-2/
ref%3Dsr%5F1%5F2/102-2966431-7000163
"Don't Make Me Think!"--the book :: http://www.sensible.com/buythebook.html
"Don't Make Me Think!"--the workshop ::
http://www.sensible.com/workshops.html

December 16, 2003:  Today Denmark, Tomorrow Chile


More news on the AIfIA front:  we're helping to sponsor one of the first
IA-related events in Chile, happening this Friday, December 19, in lovely
Santiago.

AIfIA also recently announced its sponsorship of a similar event in Korsoer,
Denmark, happening in March.  It's a blast to see the field getting so much
traction internationally.  AIfIA will be sponsoring more international
IA-related events; I'll keep you posted.

One more AIfIA note:  CMSWatch has joined AIfIA as a partner.  Read the news
release for complete details.

Other miscellaneous tidbits:
* My pal Ed Vielmetti is a partner in SocialText, a provider of "enterprise
social software".  Kudos to Ed and gang; their Workspace product just won
the PC Magazine Editor's Choice award in the wiki services category.
* MJ and I are about to launch our own new venture.  The baby (our first) is
due any day now, so Bloug may be a bit quieter during the upcoming days.  Or
months.  We'll see.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000230.html

LINKS MENTIONED
AIfIA :: http://www.aifia.org
IA Event in Chile :: http://aifia.org/news/000271.php
IA Event in Denmark :: http://aifia.org/news/000263.php
CMSWatch :: http://www.cmswatch.com
AIfIA/CMSWatch Partnership :: http://aifia.org/news/000269.php
SocialText announcement ::
http://www.socialtext.com/weblog/031205pcmagaward.html
PC Magazine Editor's Choice award announcement ::
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1402872,00.asp

December 21, 2003:  Enterprise IA as Intellectual Property


A while back, HP's Deb Seys and I were emailing back and forth about my
entrepreneurial model for an enterprise IA team.  Deb said:

"...things like a company wide metadata standard or a controlled vocabulary
belong to the company as a whole, they are intellectual property (IP) that
must be owned and managed by some group with a top down sanction.  How would
an entrepreneurial group get traction in setting an enterprise wide standard
when they have no real authority to do so?"

Interesting question, but I'm more fascinated by Deb's extremely astute
observation:  she points out the existence of something I've not heard
anyone discuss before, at least not in the IA world:  enterprise information
architecture intellectual property.  A horrid term; let's give it the
absolutely horrid acronym "EIAIP".

What might constitute EIAIP?  It's the aspects of the information
architecture that help unify a site across business unit silos.  Because it
pertains to the entire enterprise's web presence, EIAIP is something that no
one business unit should ever own, as their own perspectives will bias its
design and application.

More concretely, what might count as EIAIP?  Here are a few ideas:
* Metadata standards (both structural, such as schemas, and semantic, such
as controlled vocabularies)
* Determining appropriate algorithms for relevance ranking of search results
* The logic for selecting and ordering best bet results
* The selection of guide pages linked from a site's main page
* The logic for determining how to link objects in a content model (a.k.a.
an ontology or a semantic web)

Getting back to Deb's question:  how would an entrepreneurial team get the
chance to own EIAIP without the authority to do so?  The more I think about
this, the more this question seems moot.  The issue isn't so much whether a
team using an entrepreneurial business model could pull it off, or where
they got their authority from.  Truth be told, the people who could grant
such authority are pretty much in the dark about the existence of enterprise
IA issues, much less the intellectual property aspects of enterprise IA.

Look over the list above, and then ask yourself if decision-makers in your
enterprise would understand what these are about and why they would have
enterprise implications.  Most managers wouldn't, and by default, ownership
of EIAIP would fall to those who are most conscious of enterprise IA issues.
That would be a centralized team, regardless of what business model they
adopted.

In the more enlightened enterprises where such IA concepts would be
understood, my gut is that an entrepreneurial enterprise IA team would be
more successful in making the case for EIAIP ownership than one using a
different business model.  Such a team would naturally engage in ongoing
conversations with its "client" business units around the enterprise,
gathering the market research to build a case to managers for ownership of
EIAIP.

And down the road, we might start seeing enterprises take their information
architecture a bit more seriously, seeking to establish it as intellectual
property treated in much the same way as products and services.  I'm kind of
looking forward to the day that the business logic that drives selection of
a site's related links might be patented.  As soon as the lawyers get
involved, you'll know that IA has arrived.

OK, enough enterprise this and that for 2003, and back to nesting...  Happy
holidays all!


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000231.html

December 28, 2003:  Do you know JODI?


I'm probably the worst-read information architect on the planet (give me
fiction any day), but I might have to squeeze the Journal of Digital
Information onto my teensy regular reading list.  They just keep coming up
with great stuff, peer-reviewed to boot. Here's their latest batch of
articles:

   * D. Deniman, T. Sumner, L. Davis, S. Bhushan, J. Fox:  "Merging Metadata
and Content-Based Retrieval"

   * Y. Jacobs Reimer, S. Douglas:  "Implementation Challenges Associated
with Developing a Web-based E-notebook"

   * R. Lempel, E. Amitay, D. Carmel, A. Darlow, A. Soffer:  "The
Connectivity Sonar: Detecting Site Functionality by Structural Patterns"

You can sign up to have JODI email you new issue alerts.  Kudos to the
British Computer Society and Oxford University Press for making this content
available!


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000232.html

LINKS MENTIONED
JODI :: http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
JODI alerts :: http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/register.php3

January 7, 2004:  Content Management for Information Architects (and Others)


Most of you already know that the fifth edition of the ASIS&T IA Summit will
be taking place in fabulous Austin, Texas, where the weather is pretty nice
in late February (2/28-29).  Each Summit has been a don't-miss event, and
yet they manage to get better every year.

What you may not know is that AIfIA is sponsoring a day-long pre-conference
workshop on Content Management for Information Architects on Friday,
February 27.  The excellent speaker line-up features such luminaries as Bob
Boiko, Joseph Busch, Tony Byrne, and Ann Rockley.  It's a critical topic, as
so many of us find ourselves perched at the intersection of IA and CM.  And
it's a great deal:  US$500 through January 24, US$575 thereafter.

Please register soon, as space is limited.  And keep in mind that the money
goes to some good, non-profit causes (AIfIA and ASIS&T).  Hope I'll see you
there (if baby Iris lets me make the trip)!


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000234.html

LINKS MENTIONED
5th IA Summit :: http://www.iasummit.org/
AIfIA :: http://www.aifia.org
AIfIA's Content Management workshop :: http://www.iasummit.org/aifia.html
Registration :: https://www.asis.org/Conferences/IA04/ia04registration.shtml
ASIS&T :: http://www.asis.org

January 22, 2004:  InfoDesign Relaunch


Peter Bogaards' incredible InfoDesign web site/news service, along with ia/,
keeps many of us in the know when it comes to user experience stuff.  It's
one of those incredibly useful sites that's too good to be true, so of
course I'm always fretting that it might suddenly vanish.  Who knows?  It'd
be easy to imagine how InfoDesign's maintenance could burn Peter out.  Or
worse, Peter might get distracted by something silly, like discovering a new
love, futzing with a new iPod, or launching a new solo consulting business.

Well, I'm both surprised and thrilled to find that InfoDesign is healthier
than ever.  Dirk Knemeyer, Karel van der Waarde, and some other good folks
have redesigned and improved the site, and, I'm sure, by doing so have made
Peter's life easier.  Even if you're just remotely interested in user
experience, experience design, or just plain design of any flavor, go check
out the redesigned InfoDesign site and sign up for the announcements list.

And while we're on the subject of UX, feast your eyes on Javier Cañada's
lovely map of the User Experience Cosmos.  Javier has plotted UX people,
products, professional groups, and resources along two axes--analog/digital
and subjective/objective.  It's exceedingly difficult to conceive a
meta-field like UX; not only is Javier's distillation elegant, but it could
be helpful in communicating the essence of UX, especially to the
visually-oriented.  Thanks to Javier for his work and Dirk Knemeyer for the
pointer.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000235.html

LINKS MENTIONED
Redesigned InfoDesign site :: http://www.informationdesign.org
ia/ :: http://www.iaslash.org
Peter Bogaards' new solo consulting business :: http://www.bogieland.com/
Javier Cañada's User Experience Cosmos :: http://terremoto.net/uxcosmos/

February 2, 2004:  New Book:  IA With XML


Spotted Peter Brown's "Information Architecture With XML: A Management
Strategy" in the latest Rockley Bulletin.  Rockley provides a review that
makes the book sound like a non-technical take on XML, which certainly is
welcome:  tools like XML are essentially worthless unless the "whys" are
addressed sufficiently for management's benefit.

But is or isn't this an IA book?  Some interesting discussion to that effect
on the AIfIA-members (only) discussion list.  Jesse James Garrett, for one,
isn't too keen on this as an IA title:  "The book seems to be about
technical details of enterprise information management with an eye toward
systems interoperability. Issues of structural design appear to be, at best,
only touched upon."

Not so sure I agree with Jesse, but then again, neither of us has read it.
So I'm casting about to see if any Bloug readers are familiar with Brown's
book.  If so, care to contribute a book report?


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000237.html

LINKS MENTIONED
Brown's book ::
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471486795/ref=lpr_g_1/102-296
6431-7000163?v=glance&s=ebooks
Rockley's review ::
http://rockleybulletin.com/requiredreading_comments.php?id=32_0_5_0_C

February 5, 2004:  The Center Cannot Hold


Social networks guru Valdis Krebs recently updated his network map of
political book purchases.  The blue cluster (co-purchased lefty books) and
the red cluster (righty books) remind me of "blue states" and "red states"
so well-known from the 2000 US presidential election electoral map.

It'd be interesting to see if these book purchases really do correlate with
recent political geography.  If such analysis was possible, perhaps we could
also learn where those "swing" voters live.  So maybe Jeff Bezos could start
selling yet another product:  data analysis for political campaigns.  (Hmmm,
what on earth would we be a good label for *that* Amazon tab?)

Of course, as Valdis points out, there aren't many books that transcend both
clusters, appealing to both sets of readers.  Each book is apparently
preaching to the converted.  If that's true, Valdis' work would reinforce
what many pundits are saying right now:  energize your base, and ignore the
swing voters, because there just aren't many to worry about right now.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000239.html


LINKS MENTIONED
Valdis Krebs' book purchase network map :: http://orgnet.com/divided.html
Blue States & Red States ::
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sara/html/mapping/election/map.html

February 8, 2004:  Hillary Clinton, Information Architect?


Speaking recently at the World Health Care Congress, the Dems' presumptive
2008 presidential nominee offered her vision for improved health care.
Senator Clinton wants to "build an information technology infrastructure
that puts the right information in the hands of the right people at the
right time."  Mmmm, good, sounds very IA-ish.

Even better:  she said that national government leadership should "ensure
interoperability and the use of common standards and terminology."  Like XML
schema and MeSH headings?  Harry and Louise commercials aside, was this what
was missing back in 1993?

Cool; maybe Hilary or someone else will get it right next time by hiring
scads of information architects.  Anyway, many thanks to Socialtext's Ed
Vielmetti for the tip.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000241.html

LINKS MENTIONED
World Health Care Congress :: http://www.worldcongress.com/
Socialtext's Notes on Clinton's Talk ::
http://www.socialtext.net/worldcongress2004/index.cgi?hillary_clinton

February 20, 2004:  Content Management Lists Gone Wild


With the CMS-list (http://www.cms-list.org/about ) apparently gone defunct,
Bob Doyle has gone gonzo on filling the void.  He's set up the following
lists that will hopefully engender a bit more community in the content
management arena:

* CMS - a general mailing list for content management systems.
http://mailman.skybuilders.com/mailman/listinfo/cms

* CMS-Forum - for announcements of activity at cms-forum.org.
http://mailman.skybuilders.com/mailman/listinfo/cms-forum

* CMS-PR - press releases and marketing announcements from vendors and
open-source developer communities.
http://mailman.skybuilders.com/mailman/listinfo/cms-pr

* CMS-Develop - to assist those building their own CMS.
http://mailman.skybuilders.com/mailman/listinfo/cms-develop

* CMS-OT - off-topic conversations of tangential interest to those in
the CMS industry.
http://mailman.skybuilders.com/mailman/listinfo/cms-ot

* CMS-Meta - for discussions on how these lists should operate.
http://mailman.skybuilders.com/mailman/listinfo/cms-meta

* For more info, see the proposed Netiquette FAQ -
http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html

Kudos to Bob for doing his best to help content management morph from
industry to community...



BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000243.html

March 16, 2004:  Enterprise Blogging

Michael Angeles has posted his PowerPoint presentation "Supporting
enterprise knowledge management with weblogs:  A weblog services roadmap".
Michael has mapped out an extremely useful grass roots path that contrasts
well with traditional top-down knowledge management approaches.  The roadmap
in Michael's words:

"In the near term I suggested first steps towards supporting knowledge
creation with RSS. I suggested methods for providing access to aggregated
blog output as next steps. And as a far off goal, I discussed the
integration of output from sources such as blogs with other enterprise
information using social software and social network analysis."

Excellent Michael!  Now I guess I'll have to go update my own roadmap (for
enterprise IA).


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000245.html

LINKS MENTIONED
Michael's enterprise blogging roadmap ::
http://urlgreyhot.com/drupal/cil2004
Lou's enterprise IA roadmap ::
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000206.html

March 23, 2004:  Multilingual, Multinational Information Architecture Design


Have you worked on a multilingual, multinational web site's information
architecture?  If so, there's a future for you; designing such architectures
is one of the two frontiers of IA design, along with (naturally) enterprise
IA.

And if you've worked on multilingual, multinational, enterprise
architectures, well then, hats off to you.  You've not only come up with
ways to make those enterprise silos work together as one information
environment, but you've made it happen with content owners and user
audiences that literally don't speak the same language.

I'm working with a Fortune 500 client that's already gotten off to an
excellent start on cracking the enterprise nut.  But they operate in dozens
of countries and do business in enough languages to make the folks at
Berlitz drool.  I've been charged with kicking off the research on what's
been variously called internationalization, globalization, and localization.
(Or should it be localisation?)

I'm hoping we can gather some collective notes on developing a multilingual,
multinational enterprise information architecture right here on Bloug.  It'd
be wonderful to compile a list of the issues and challenges involved in
designing such an architecture; I've started one below.  Care to add to it?

Also, if anyone has any pointers to ideas on what might constitute variant
models of international information architectures, might as well list them
here too.

OK, here goes:  the start of a list of issues and challenges for
multilingual, multinational information architecture design:

* Languages and countries don't necessarily correspond one-to-one.  So an
architecture may have to concurrently support languages spoken in many
countries (e.g., Portuguese), one-to-one language/country pairs (e.g.,
Japan/Japanese), and languages spoken in a part of a country (e.g.,
Tagalog).  Conversely, an architecture may have to support countries which
speak multiple languages that are also spoken elsewhere (e.g., Switzerland,
Hong Kong).  These issues mean that an architecture may have to support a
heck of a lot of different combinations of language and country.

* Can you simply translate an information architecture?  Short English
navigation labels might be menu-busters when translated into German.  Even
if semantic translation works, structural problems may come up; for example,
alphabetized architectural components, like an A-Z index, may not make sense
when translated into a non-alphabetic language like Chinese.

* An organization may have varying degrees of presence in different
countries, ranging from selling its fullest array of its products and
services to no presence at all.  For example, FedEx maintains very different
sites for Canada and San Marino.  Can these different levels of presence be
sufficiently anticipated to support a few template-based designs that
accommodate all possibilities?

* Can we assume that users in all countries expect similar degrees of
service from their respective localized sites?  Face-to-face customer
service values surely vary substantially even regionally; I imagine
expectations regarding Web-based services vary similarly.  What kind of user
research should information architects conduct to establish and design for
these cultural differences?

* And can our budgets support the level of research necessary to design
these multilingual, multinational architectures?  For example, might we find
South Africans and Pakistanis to be search-dominant, while Turks and
Singaporeans prefer to browse?  Assuming it's a bit pricey to find stuff
like this out for 150-200 countries, can we hope to make reasonable guesses
without the data?

OK, that's a start.  What would you add?

And, um, it should go without saying that the answers to these questions are
very much of the "it depends" variety.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000246.html

LINKS MENTIONED
Lou's Enterprise IA seminar ::
http://louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/seminars/eia/
FedEx Canada:  http://fedex.com/ca_english/
FedEx San Marino:  http://fedex.com/sm/

March 26, 2004:  IA en Espanol


The AIfIA translation initiative is chugging along, this time with a new
batch of Spanish language content related to information architecture (some
translated, some originally written in Spanish):

* The Business Value of Web Standards (Jeffrey Veen)
http://aifia.org/es/translations/000321.html

* The Untimely Death of Yahoo (Louis Rosenfeld)
http://aifia.org/es/translations/000320.html

* Introduction to IA Brochures (Victor Lombardi and Dan Willis)
http://aifia.org/es/translations/000319.html

* Information Architecture and Business (Javier Velasco)
http://aifia.org/es/translations/000316.html

* Introduction to Information Architecture (Javier Velasco)
http://aifia.org/es/translations/000315.html

* A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and
interaction design (Jesse James Garrett)
http://aifia.org/es/translations/000314.html

* The Elements of User Experience (Jesse James Garrett)
http://aifia.org/es/translations/000313.html


Lots more already available from the AIfIA en Espanol page
(http://aifia.org/es).  Kudos to Javier Velasco, Jorge Vergara, Fernando
Siles, and Jorge Arango!


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000248.html

April 12, 2004:  Information Architecture By Locale


As part of my crash course in IA globalization, I recently read John
Yunker's excellent "Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies".  It's a
very useful introduction to the intersection of globalization and web
design.  Unfortunately, Yunker dances around the IA pool but never jumps in.
He does address content management, which is certainly relevant to IA, and
discusses gateways, which are as relevant to IA as a naked mud wrestling
match between Rick Wurman and Ed Tufte.  Even then, the discussion is
tantalizingly light, and so far I haven't found any other books that take on
globalized IA--if I'm missing some, please comment below.  And if someone's
itching to write a book on globalized IA, now's the time:  Livia Labate and
Peter van Dijck, are you listening?

One important point that Yunker makes is concept of locale.  Locales are the
intersection of geography and language, and may have little to do with
national borders.  For example, Quebec, the part of Canada that speaks
French, counts as a locale.  Japan, which is essentially  monolingual and
the only place where Japanese is a major language, is also a locale.  Latin
America, sans Brazil, could be treated as a locale, although some might wish
to break it into separate locales due to the variation is Spanish spoken in
Latin American nations.

Locales are quite useful to information architects grappling with
globalization.  They constitute something of a high-level building block
that can be classified, sorted and shifted around underneath a site's
initial gateway page.  While locales depend on geography and language, they
free us from the mindset of designing for specific languages or regions.  So
when your Senior VP asks whether the gateway should be classified by country
or language, you can smarmily answer "neither:  by locale instead".

Naturally, locales aren't perfect.  One must also consider other factors
when developing those building blocks, like pesky national borders and
character sets.  For example, although they speak essentially the same
language and just a decade or so ago were part of the same country, Serbia
and Croatia are by no means the same locale (if I asserted otherwise, I
might be assassinated).  And even if their uncomfortable proximity was,
well, more comfortable, they use different character sets (Cyrillic and
Latin respectively), and for that reason alone should be treated as separate
locales.

Perhaps an even more interesting consideration is the relationship between
locales and company's existing definitions of markets.  This is where things
start getting really tricky.  Corporations might define markets as
countries, locales, large regions (e.g., "the South Asian market"),
linguistic regions ("the Spanish-speaking market"), or, egads, all of the
above concurrently.  Beyond the fact that there is usually no one-to-one
relationship between markets and locales, oddly-defined markets may also be
quite ingrained into corporate thinking.  So information architects now have
to find a way to match or meld two different types of building
blocks--locales and corporately-defined markets.

This is really just one of globalized information architecture's
challenges--once we handle the top-down problem of determining the right
building blocks to link to from a gateway, we have lots more to work out
once the user reaches the area of the web site intended for him.  Here's
where bottom-up IA and search come in.

I hope to ramble on those topics some time down the road; in the meantime,
if you want more on globalized IA, check the wonderful reader comments
attached to my last posting on the topic.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000249.html

LINKS MENTIONED
"Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies" by John Yunker ::
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735712085/qid=1081723135/sr=1
-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-2966431-7000163?v=glance&s=books
My last posting on Globalized IA ::
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000246.html#comments

April 14, 2004:  KM Reinventing IA Reinventing KM


James Robertson's Column Two ("News and opinion on all things KM & CM") has
been thoroughly ensconced on my list of indispensible blogs for quite some
time.  In a recent entry, James states:

"Most knowledge management professionals are completely unaware of the work
being done in either the usability or information architecture (IA) fields."

Ahem.  Yes, I've found this true based on my totally unscientific sampling.
James goes on to rightfully caution KM folks not to reinvent the wheel.  But
as I read his posting, I kept wondering how true it would read if we swapped
"KM" and "IA".  Isn't the converse true?  Aren't information architects just
as ignorant of the achievements in KM?

For five or six years now, I've been wondering when these two fields would
collide.  Maybe at a conference like, say, the IA Summit or KM World, which
have plenty of overlap in attendance.

But, to my surprise, it just hasn't happened yet.  Maybe my error is in
assuming that KM is a field like IA, when perhaps it's really more an
industry, dominated by vendors, where practice is almost a dirty word.  Kind
of like content management (although the CM professionals are getting uppity
and organized).  Perhaps there is more synergy between fields (e.g., IA and
usability) than between a field of practice and an industry.

Woops.  I've likely just hoisted myself by my own petard, playing the
ignorant information architect who doesn't know that KM is indeed a field of
practice, like IA.  If I've peeved any KMistas, please point me to the books
and other KM resources that describe KM practice and methods, as well as the
community meetings that are independent of the questionable influence of KM
application vendors.

But more importantly, help me scratch this five-year old itch and explain
why there is so little interaction between IA and KM.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000250.html

LINKS MENTIONED
James Robertson's Column Two :: http://steptwo.com.au/columntwo/
My favorite blogs :: http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/about_bloug.html
James' Recent KM/IA/usability column ::
http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/001184.html
IA Summit :: http://www.iasummit.org/
KM World :: http://www.kmworld.com/kmw04/
My Recent CM Rant ::
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000225.html

April 18, 2004:  Has Librarianship Survived?


So, it's late on a Sunday night, I'm tired, and I'm wondering...

Ten years ago, when I was last involved in the library world, it seemed that
librarians got no respect.  The doctoral program I was about to flee--at the
University of Michigan School of Information--was in the process of tearing
out its own LIS (Librarianship and Information Science) core, a nasty act of
self-disembowelment if there ever was one.  Sadly, UM's actions were
mirrored at many other former library schools around the US, which climbed
over each other to essentially become HCI programs with a gloss of business
and engineering stuff.

Meanwhile, libraries in just about every sector--public, academic, and even
corporate--were undergoing budget cuts, told to do more with less.  Salaries
and self-esteem were never especially high in the grand old profession, and
things seemed to be only getting worse.

The only ray of hope?  The growth of Internet content; LIS skills *should*
have been pretty important in an age of both information explosion and ROT:
the transformation of formerly useful content to a Redundant, Outdated, or
Trivial state.

I remember hearing a newly-minted dean of a remade LIS program offhandedly
mention what he called the "L word" in a cheerfully ominous manner.  Did he
mean that Libraries were headed for the dust bin, or Librarianship itself
was about to take a great big face plant into the muddy sod of history?  I
like to think that even if rooms full of books are no longer the most
important sources of information, at least the principles of Librarianship
are growing in importance, value, and respect.

So, back to wondering:  is the LIS profession saved?  I'd love to hear from
you folks who work in traditional library settings, as well as any odd
observers of the field.  If it has, what saved it?  The Internet?  The Web?
The information explosion?  Search suddenly becoming cool?  Or--egads, can
you believe it:  metadata becoming cool?  Was it the Shifted Librarian?
Harriet Klausner, retired librarian and #1 Amazon book reviewer?  Or Nancy
Pearl, the Librarian Action Figure?

Ok, off to bed...


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000253.html

LINKS MENTIONED
U. Michigan School of Information :: http://si.umich.edu/
The Shifted Librarian :: http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/
Harriet Klausner ::
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/AFVQZQ8PW0L/ref=cm_
tr_trnav_mr_1/102-2966431-7000163
Librarian Action Figure :: http://www.mcphee.com/laf/

April 26, 2004:  Wanted:  Library Director


See, librarianship has survived!  Even AIfIA is hiring a librarian.  Um,
well, ok, so this isn't a paid position.  But the IA Library is a cool
project, and even if you can't manage the collection, you can help build it.
All the details are in the press release; kudos to the volunteers who have
pulled this together!


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000256.html

LINKS MENTIONED
Bloug on librarianship ::
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000253.html
AIfIA's new IA Library :: http://aifia.org/library/
IA Library press release :: http://aifia.org/news/000340.php

April 29, 2004:  Ask Tony


CMSWatch's Tony Byrne is a content management guru turned advice columnist.
Burning question about your CMS relationships?  Tony's got the answer:

   http://www.cmswatch.com/AskTony/

What a cool idea; maybe it's time for an IA advice column?


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000258.html

May 2, 2004:  Tools for Information Architects


The AIfIA Tools Initiative is slowly but steadily building an excellent
collection of tools and other resources that can help IAs work more
effectively and explain their work to others.  AIfIA's tools include:

* Graphical User Interface (GUI) Widgets
* Content Development Spreadsheets
* Wireframe Templates
* Introduction to IA Brochures
* Design Review Checksheets
* Design Review Process
* Design Scope
* Project Overview
* Creative Brief
* Project Definition and Scope
* Process Maps

Pretty cool!  All this free and available for anyone to use.  Naturally, if
you'd like to contribute some useful tools that have made your life easier,
bring'em on; just send email to iatools@... .


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000260.html

LINK MENTIONED
AIfIA Tools Collection :: http://aifia.org/tools/

May 10, 2004:  News Backlog


In a new article in EContent, Tony Byrne of CMS Watch asks "Why do
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) projects take so long to implement?  And
why do they fail with such alarming frequency?"  The answer, at least
according to those of us Tony talked with, often lies with poorly designed
enterprise information architectures.  In "Enterprise Information
Architecture: Don¹t Do ECM Without It," Tony provides an excellent status
report on the situation faced by many large organizations, and some thoughts
on potential solutions.

On the AIfIA front, our past and current presidents and a bevy of other
interesting folks were interviewed for a recent Wall Street Journal article
about the newly recognized design challenge known as the presidential daily
brief (PDB).  Glad to see major mainstream publications starting to show
interest in the strategic value of information architecture and information
design.

From Ann Rockley of "Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content
Strategy" fame, a new publication, aptly named The Rockley Report, will
provide "... original material related to content management, including its
goals, its implementation, the technology required to support it, and how it
affects organizations."  Sounds quite timely; the first issue is free, and
Ann and company are going to make a point of regularly covering the
intersection of content management and information architecture.

And yet more on content management:  Jeff Veen of Adaptive Path is teaching
his "Make CMS Work for You" workshop in Chicago on May 20.  "Why do so many
CMS projects fail?  ... because companies don¹t recognize that content
management is a process, not a technology, and as such, requires planning to
ensure success."  Amen, Jeff.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000261.html

LINKS MENTIONED
Tony Byrne's Econtent article ::
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=6439&PageNu
m=4 http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticlePrint.aspx?ArticleID=6439
WSJ Article on PDB Design ::
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB108362377214900784-INjgoNnlaB3mpuva
H2GaamCm4,00.html
The Rockley Report :: http://www.rockleyreport.com
Adaptive Path content management workshop ::
http://adaptivepath.com/events/2004/chicago/

May 12, 2004:  Tentative Fall Seminar Dates


Steve Krug and I are wrapping up our spring tour with a stop in Seattle, May
27-28 (and yes, there are still a few seats open).  Or you can wait until
the fall, when we'll be teaching in New York, Chicago, and San Jose:

Enterprise Information Architecture Seminar (with Lou Rosenfeld)
* New York:  9/23
* Chicago:  10/28
* San Jose:  11/8

Don't Make Me Think:  the Workshop (with Steve Krug)
* New York:  9/24
* Chicago:  10/29
* San Jose:  11/9

Registration isn't available yet for these *tentative* dates.  If you'd like
to receive an email once the dates are nailed down, just send me an email
(lou@...).


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000262.html


LINKS MENTIONED
Lou's seminars :: http://louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/seminars/eia/
Steve's seminars :: http://www.sensible.com/workshops.html

May 17, 2004:  Connecting Top-Down and Bottom-Up Visually


I was poking around, Googling "information discovery," and stumbled on a
simple but really useful diagram created by someone named Keith Stanger.
Who happens to be a librarian (same background as me).  Who works at Eastern
Michigan University in Ypsilanti (same county as me).  Who lists Bloug on
his blogroll.  Very cool.  Gotta love the serendipity of the Internet.

Anyway, the diagram is a hub-and-spoke network of "communications channels
and information discovery tools" for education.  (You'll find the diagram
here:  http://keithstanger.com/infodiscovery/ )  The major nodes echo
aspects of the common questions library patrons might have when they reach
the reference desk, such as "Are there dissertations that cover the topic
I'm considering for my own dissertation?" or "I'm looking for an
organization that sets rules for high school sports."  The leaves represent
where the answers are likely to be found.  Clearly this would be quite
useful to a reference librarian trainee.  I certainly could have used it
during my aborted career on the reference desk back in the late 20th
century.

The diagram would also be useful for designing the information architecture
of a library's public web site.  The major nodes, mapping to users'
information needs, serve as the "top-down" information architecture,
answering their common questions.  The "bottom up" nodes (or leaves) provide
the answers.  Of course, this architecture would only help you find out
*where* to look for the answers; you'd still have to grapple with Infomine
or Medline to find what you were looking for in the first place.  I describe
this process as the "IA two step dance":  first show users where to find the
answer, then help them find it there.  In the enterprise setting, the first
step might be directing users to the relevant content silos (often by way of
hierarchical navigation or guides), and then helping them find what they're
looking for within those silos (typically through search or contextual
navigation).

For some reason, I find Keith's hub-and-spoke approach much more compelling
than the typical Visio-style hierarchical site map which starts with the
main page at the top.  Maybe it's because Keith's diagram places the user
smack dab in the middle, rather than floating somewhere above the main page
box, offstage if you will.  It also seems to use page space more
efficiently.

For the early brainstorming stage, Keith's approach could prove especially
useful; later on, the diagrams could converted to traditional hierarchical
site maps.  Or maybe that old standby of cool mental mapping software
products, The Brain, would be helpful for generating formalized versions of
these diagrams (interestingly, their site now proclaims an enterprise
version).

Those of you who are working on enterprise information architectures:  are
you using similarly non-traditional approaches to diagramming large,
distributed information spaces?  At what point in the process are they most
useful?  And would you be willing to share them?  If so, they should be
added to the AIfIA IA Tools collection.


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000263.html

LINKS MENTIONED
Keith Stanger's diagram :: http://keithstanger.com/infodiscovery/
The Brain :: http://www.thebrain.com/
AIfIA IA Tools :: http://aifia.org/tools/