From the Dogbox

…that be me!

So much have changed since my last blog entry – I’m happy to report that usability tests on our 3D website went down well. Perfect? No, but we fixed some critical errors and concluded that our system was ready to go into production. I will post the live link up as soon as possible – the actual website went into production two weeks ago.

Now for the curve ball. I left the company (TBWA\TEQUILA) at the end of May.  I gave up the wonderful world of advertising for telecoms/banking. I joined a start-up business unit within one of the top four banks of South Africa – FNB (First National Bank).

I can’t write to0 much about the business unit yet but I’m super excited about the possibilities of applying and learning more about Information Architecture and Usability principles. One of the reasons I joined the team was their very dynamic and interesting guy by the name of Luis Simoes. Luis, and his team built the FNB Mobile Banking platform and Innovation is key with this team.

What drew me to the team was the fact that they had a dedicated UI team in place to look at and research usability scenarios.  FNB is by no means the most “User Friendly” banking system available but the fact they invest in teams dedicated to enhancing user experience had me sold from day one.
As Information Architect I have certain challenges waiting for me at FNB. I’m currently documenting a Navigational Taxonomy for a new web-portal and I’m tasked with some informal UI wire framing – I’ve never been great with wireframes. I’m basically a UX-team of one at the moment, it’s scary but quite a challenge and something I hope will give my career the necessary boost.

I’m also extremely excited about where they placed me within the organisation. I’m their first official Information Architect and they decided to slot me into the marketing section rather than the technical team. I was worried about this at first – but it seems to be a nice fit. I come from a marketing agency therefore the logic behind their decision.

My first boss, the then MD of TBWA\Digerati and a man I respect immensely, said “Werner, you’re not in IT! You’re in marketing…”
I read somewhere that an IA is suppose to find the link between Business objectives and User needs – from my “cubicle” in marketing I might just be able to get that right as long as I keep the user’s needs top of mind.

So what about this blog now? The marketing manager at FNB actioned some consumer research recently. I’ve been following a lot of podcasts and articles regarding the creation of Personas and think that this will be my next IA mission. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to derive at least three to four unique personas from the research we’re gathering.
I’ll be exploring that within the next few weeks.

I also have a collection of IA books next to me as well a new book from O’Reilly about Web 2.0 strategy. I hope to give feedback about those as soon I settle in a stop working nights to catch up with my new team.