Reviews: Conference Reviews

An IA Summit 2006 Seminar: Presented by Peter Morville

Peter Morville, co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web with Lou Rosenfeld and author of Ambient Findability, presented a very informative day-long lecture on the subject of information architecture (IA). He discussed many basic concepts as well as best practices, so his presentation would appeal to both beginner and intermediate IAs. Read More

An IA Summit 2006 Workshop: Presented by Kevin Cheng and Jane Jao

I have a confession to make. I almost didn’t sign up for the Creating Conceptual Comics workshop. When I saw it listed in the IA Summit program, several questions came to mind.

• First, how could anyone fill a whole day with a topic like this?
• Second, with all the “serious” stuff in the same time slot, shouldn’t I do one of those workshops instead?
• And third, I don’t really know how to draw all that well; so what could I do with comics anyway?

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How long is your typical project? Are you working in 6-week agile sprints? Running monthly usability tests? Trying an A/B test for a week? Updating a Twitter stream hourly? The demands of Internet time keep us focused on shorter and shorter time intervals, with experiences measured in days, minutes, or even the first 50 milliseconds of exposure to a Web page, according to a team of researchers at Carleton University in Toronto led by Gitte Lindgaard. [1]

What happens if you turn that around and think in terms of months, years, or lifetimes? Longitudinal studies look at long-term user experience. Usually, that means over a few months or possibly a few years. But recently, at the European Survey Research Association Conference, I learned about some much longer-term studies that offer some lessons about how to conduct our rather shorter investigations. Read More