Sessions at IA Summit 2011 on Thursday 31st March

This full day workshop will provide you with a thorough overview and understanding of information architecture theory & practice. It will cover a wide range of IA issues, including an understanding of how it fits into a project, fundamental skills & knowledge required for IA work and current IA issues. It will be theoretical and practical and allow you to immediately apply ideas to your projects.

The original Agile Manifesto laid out four inspirational values and twelve specific principles. People quickly began to try and deliver against these using Scrum, Kanban, XP and other agile “frameworks”, and increasingly the practices of IAs, Interaction Designers and Creatives are expected to fall in-line.

Scrum has some great ideas but the strict time boxing can be problematic for creative discovery. Kanban is great for tactical work-flow management towards the end of a project, but estimating and reporting can be tough.

Both of us work in agile environments, but there’s a permanent question at the back of our heads. If we started from the same place, but with a UX perspective instead of a Developer perspective – would we come to the same end-game?

We will discuss the original four values and work to create and agree a set of UX specific principles to explore how well we really align with the mindset of the original signatories. As we do so, we’ll provide an environment for learning a bit more about Agile, sharing experiences and harness the wisdom of the crowd for the benefit of the wider community.

This workshop steps away from the assumption that we already have the right answer and uses a combination of democratic voting, group discussion and breakout brainstorming to attempt to arrive at some conclusions.

It starts by checking that everyone agrees with the original Manifesto’s values through voting on them in a plenary session. Dissent is handled by giving those individuals a chance to put their case and then re-voting. A declared majority (we decided on 10/14 last time) carries the proposal.

We then break out into smaller groups to facilitate brainstorming, discussion and inclusiveness (as well as reinforcing contribution and sharing) to define principles.

After a time period we collate the groups suggestions, cluster and combine them, and vote / discuss their validity as something to move forward with.

Ever wish you could get out in the field more?

This workshop is about sharing techniques for observing user experiences and synthesizing those field observations into a strategy for improvement. The workshop will involve a hands-on observation project: observing the 2011 IA Summit conference experience. Workshop participants will perform field observations, website assessments, share findings, and work together to create topline statements and actionable recommendations for the 2012 IA Summit conference planners.

This is a general workshop open to professionals of all levels of experience. Beginners in field observations are invited to participate in a real project that will teach techniques, allow you to practice them, and have a real deliverable as the outcome. Experts in field observations are invited to participate as the workshop will be a fun way to practice known techniques and share knowledge and experiences with other practitioners. Also, anyone interested in contributing to the profession by means of providing structured and productive feedback about the conference is encouraged to participate.

The workshop will consist of 5 basic activities:

1. Guided pre-workshop preparation
2. Presentation of techniques and sharing of field wisdom
3. Field observation activity
4. Ideation/synthesis group activity
5. Group discussion of findings and creation of action items

ou listen to all the stakeholders’ needs, consider the various priorities, and come up with a set of requirements for a product to address these needs. Then you work with the engineers to iterate and build the product, ensuring that it’s the best product possible. Does that sound like what you do? Then maybe you’re a product manager.

The role of a designer or information architect is remarkably similar to product management. So why does it always seem like one is the Dark Side of the other? Why does it feel like we can’t get a seat at the table when it comes to strategy decisions, and how come the two sides seem to always be in conflict?

This half-day workshop will help you understand what’s it’s like to be in product management, from the perspective of a designer. Based on my personal experiences of transitioning over the years from programmer to designer to product manager, I hope to bridge the gap between the two camps, and perhaps even help those who want to cross the bridge.

The workshop will be a mix of presentation and exercises which will teach you:

• Some key differences between UX and product management, and maybe discover whether it’s really something you want to do.
• What skills transfer over to product management.
• How to use your skills to your advantage and be a better product manager.
• What a day-to-day role of a product manager is.
• The different types of product management roles.
• A better understanding of a PM’s goals so you can work more effectively with one