I later found a little gem on the O’Reilly website – Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld. It’s brilliant book and should definitely form the part of any aspiring IA’s arsenal.

I’ve had the book for just over a year now and I’m only half way – I keep on reworking chapters’ over-and-over, whenever I get a chance. I even dragged my copy to Malaysia last year when I played in the Asian Paintball World Cup. Needless to say, I brought back my copy stained with orange paint and was forced to cover the book due to the water damage it suffered.

It’s NOT the end-all, be-all of IA but a great foundation. It’s like a real Uni-book in my opinion. You struggle through it at times not knowing how you’d ever apply or even remember some of the chapters but after reading it you find yourself applying the techniques without thinking.

Using it…

Information from the book formed the foundation of one of our new business acquisitions. We where pitching for the SBL-Unisa web site about a year ago. The SBL (School of Business Leadership) is an off-shoot of one of largest distance learning institutions in Africa. The business school wanted their own separate web identity and we successfully landed the business with the help of insights we gained from my paint-stained book.

The final project itself did not pan out as I hoped – it went live with many good intentions. The driving force behind the project, on the client side, left to pursue another career opportunity leaving the project to stagnate a bit.

It’s a South African thing

South Africa’s online community is definitely trying to keep up with the times. That said, I think some of the core problems we still face on a project-to-project basis is the fact that clients still find it hard to (1) assign proper budgets to the digital offerings and (2) assign dedicated resources to their web identities.

I don’t want to mention brands by name but one of our larger clients is in the process of introducing a new brand of pet food to the market. Hell, what a great opportunity to do something really groundbreaking. I did not spend much time on my initial re-search but the opportunity to disrupt the market and do something really ground-breaking in the digital sphere was obvious. One line in the strategy made me excited – ‘This audience is the internet capable’.

Competitors to the new brand made use of experts and practical guides to “prove” to users that their product really worked. I thought that we could get our friends from Cerebra/Brandsh (our social media experts) to help us set up a Blog and YouTube channel. We could then adopt a malnourished pet, and with the right attention and nutrition restore the animal to its cheerful self. Imagine showing users in real-time how your product works?

Alas, no money and we’re stuck with copying content from the international brand sites. Suggesting something with a little less impact, than my original idea, was also out of the question. Client wasn’t willing to invest resources into the digital and we have a 4 week deadline. We’re going to use the web to generate a large database of names and addresses that they could bombard with electronic marketing messages.

I tried to spark some thought around the marketing initiatives, but to no avail. I’m a little ashamed to say that I managed to extract myself from project – I could not face another arbitrary project.

I hate these new start-ups…

Something else I picked up is the introduction of new technologies and gimmicks to the market. I must disclaim myself a little before I continue. I love new technologies – the mere fact that I overlooked so many of them before they exploded into the main stream has made me very open minded. I’m not against introducing new concepts and ways of getting stuff done.

I have one issue with this though. To quote Jeff Parks (a Canadian IA and Consultant), “If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail”.

I’m working on projects were we’ve been forced to work with some database and mobile “experts”. There’s a total disregard for the Big Marketing Idea with some of them – these guys go off and build marketing strategies around their toolbox of technical competencies.  The sell client on each and every tool they have and are eager to get business through bullshitting clients with technical jargon. E-mail newsletters, e-zines and Mobile barcodes, MMS and SMS will work for every campaign in their minds – lets bombard the consumer with tons of annoying crap, it will work!

Where’s the disruption and innovation? What happened to offering you client/user a ‘brand’ experience?

* Wow! I started off trying to post some feedback from a recent on-line course I did on Controlled Vocabularies – It just turned into a full-on rant by itself. Check my next update for the short overview on my new thesauri and skillz…

I recently sent an e-mail to the Information Architecture Institute (Mailing List). I’ve been working on a pro-active project exploring alternative ways to prototype web projects. To quote Tom Wales (Yahoo) – half the documentation we do is “Bullshit”. Bill Buxton (Microsoft) mentioned that we tend to do project documentation just to convince client that the money they are spending on projects are justified by serving up a document that they can’t understand or relate to i.e. “I don’t understand a word!!! These guys must know what they’re talking about”.

I interested in using alternative ways to explain projects to client and internal teams. I want to relay “concept” rather than dictate design or confuse with complicated specifications.

BTW – I took me some time to muster up the courage to send my prototype to the IAI group. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge. I’m happy to report that I received some really helpful feedback from the list and I feel even more motivated to explore this further.

Check out my communication to IAI and my prototype video – I think it explains all.
Designers in the agency I work for tend to get nervous when I attempt to scamp up wireframe models. They perceive what I’m doing as inhibiting their creative license – BUT creativity and pushing the boundaries is something we encourage in our agency all the time.

I’ve been racking my brain about this…

I listened to a podcast with Bill Buxton recently. Just to “disclaim” myself – I have not had a chance to get my hands on his book and might have totally misinterpreted his message. After that I ran across two more podcasts, one with Tom Wales and the later Kevin Cheng, both from Yahoo. I interpreted the shows in my own way based on their inspiring words. Kevin and Tom focus more on the concept side while Bill had a more practical and functional solution BUT the core message from both sides were…. Start DRAWING!

Just a little background…

In my team concept and the BIG idea drive a project. I work closely with the design team and we tend to find and build solutions without the need for wireframes. I will build the relevant taxonomies and work on the strategic elements after that a designer will mock up a look-and-feel based on my verbal brief and the documentation – this is then presented to client.

Designers will mock up all the pages as soon a client sign off on the project specification (and go through several reverts if needed). The mock-ups and a functional specification will then end up on the developers’ desk.

The problem with the initial mock-up stage (1) is that client end up looking at the pretty pictures ignoring all the IA and strategic solutions, and (2) client can’t understand why we take so long to develop our projects especially after we showed them a real-life mock-up of the site in the strategic phase.

So I started drawing…

I’m trying to convince my team manger that we must use Google Maps to serve content for a large development group and thought I’ll explain how I see the mini-project rolling out using my new found drawing skillz.

I put pen-to-paper, snapped the drawings with my little digital camera and popped them into Flash. I’m still working on a mini-document to support the flash component but you’re welcome to check out the result of my experimentation…

Just a few additional observations.

The exercise highlighted some unexpected things like:

• I picked up some logical errors in the process – which I would have completely missed before.
• I had to think about the simple things like when do the user see the “pointer” or the “hand”.

The only negative about using flash was that I had to plan the sequence carefully (maybe that’s actually a positive?). If I had to update the sequence or add elements in the middle of the sequence that might be a headache. I don’t think it’s the platforms’ fault though. I built the sequence directly on the timeline – maybe I could find a more intelligent way to build it.

I love the idea of making the system more interactive, triggering the different elements through user intervention. That’s easy enough, depending on how you implement it.

I don’t want to spend too much time on this process i.e. if it takes longer than the traditional wireframe and documentation process then this concept has lost its appeal.

I can’t believe that I’m actually writing a blog entry – It was never something that I wanted to do. But hey! Here I am…

I first started exploring blogs when I gave up my position as Senior Web-Developer at TBWA\Tequila in Johannesburg. My boss offered me the opportunity to make a career shift and I have been working, exploring and researching my way into an Information Architect (IA) role.

A lot of what I found myself doing back then (as a web developer) paralleled with that of Information Architect’s day-to-day tasks due to a shortage of resources. I had to refine those skills and actually figure out what my core deliverables where. Blogs and mailing lists became a valuable source of information about my new-found profession.

I’m a very practical guy and will try to use this space to echo my learnings. Please note that most of my posts are basically derived from what I read and my interpretation thereof – I’d love to engage with like minded people and debate these topics.

I have a few initiatives on the go at the moment and will report on them as I go along –

Concept Prototypes

I read a wide variety of articles and listened to podcasts about a “new” way of prototyping of new projects. The thinking is that you convey a basic concept to your client rather than a super-realistic mock-up of your proposed web application. In short, throw away your Photoshop scamps and put pencil to paper – Let’s start drawing!

I studied fine arts for three years and found the proposal of drawing out my ideas and concepts extremely appealing. I’ve been working on a little sideline project and hope to have it posted here soon.

Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies

I managed to worm my way into an online course, Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies at Simmons College (Massachusetts). I’m sharing the e-class with some very experienced Library Science types. I can’t comment on the content of the course and the fact that it’s a self-help online learning experience yet. I’m only starting this weekend but I will make a point of posting my assignments and feedback.

The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web

I’ve been poaching everything I could find on the Jesse James Garrett’s (Adaptive Path) website – http://blog.jjg.net/ – I started to feel bad though. I thought I’d alleviate my guilty conscience by buying Jesse’s book The Elements of User Experience. Seriously, I’ve heard tons of good things about this book. I’m currently making my way through the contents (really cool) and will post a few comments as I go along.

Here’s to my first ever blog-entry!