Sessions at IA Summit 2011 with slides

Friday 1st April 2011

• The Stories We Construct

  by Stephen Anderson

  What do fountain pens, football and photographs have in common? Everything we experience in life is filtered through some story. The things we buy, the decisions we make, how we spend our time— stories govern all these actions. But how are these stories constructed? Specifically, what have we learned about how our brains make sense of and integrate new information? And how can we use these insights to sharpen our design skills? Between lively anecdotes, speaker Stephen P. Anderson will share fascinating insights from psychology, neuroscience and learning theories to help explain why things have meaning in our lives. You’ll learn about symbols, stories and motivation, and the science behind the old adage “perception is reality.”

  • Neuroscience
  • Psychology

  At 4:00pm to 4:45pm, Friday 1st April

  Coverage slide deck

• Unmoderated Remote Usability Testing: Good or Evil?

  by Kyle Soucy

  Recently, there has been a surge in the number of tools that are available to conduct unmoderated (“automated” or “asynchronous”) remote usability testing. This surge is changing the user experience industry and it forces us, whether we want to or not, to take a closer look at what the benefits and drawbacks are of unmoderated testing and whether or not we should incorporate it into our usability toolbox.

  In this session we will cover: what you can learn from unmoderated testing, how actionable the data is, how it’s conducted, when it should be conducted, benefits and drawbacks, and an overview of some unmoderated testing tools that are currently available. An excellent hand out will be given out listing all the available tools with descriptions and pricing information — truly a great resource to have at your fingertips!

  At 4:00pm to 4:45pm, Friday 1st April

  Coverage slide deck

Saturday 2nd April 2011

• DIY Mobile Usability Testing

  by Bernard Tyers and belenpena

  Usability testing is an information architect’s bread and butter, but applying it to the study of mobile applications and websites brings considerable challenges. Which device should we use for testing? Can we use an emulator? How do we prototype for mobile? Can we just recycle the tasks we use for desktop software tests? Do we test in the lab or in the wild? How do we record screen, inputs and facial expressions? We don’t intend to address all the above in a single session: that would be madness! We’ll focus instead on the last question.

  Follow us in our quest to set up a mobile usability testing environment on a tight budget. We’ll show you how others do it. We’ll roam around London searching for brackets and webcams. We’ll put our DIY skills to the test trying to build our mobile recording device. We’ll scour the Internet for free software. And we’ll finish it off by running a usability test in front of your eyes.

  If we can do it, so can you! You’ll come out of this session knowing exactly what you need to do to record usability tests with mobile devices.

  At 3:45am to 4:30am, Saturday 2nd April

  Coverage audio clip write-up write-up write-up write-up write-up write-up write-up write-up slide deck write-up

• We Love Change? Change is Scary!

  by johanna kollmann

  At 10:15am to 11:00am, Saturday 2nd April

  Coverage slide deck

• I’m a UX Designer – and I’m an SEO: Working Together to Heal the Rift Between Customers and the Marketers Who Love Them

  by Erin Hawk and Jonathon D. Colman

  By reimagining the classic “I’m a Mac… and I’m a PC” commercials, this presentation helps attendees learn how two individual disciplines – User Experience design (UX) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – can work together to help customers succeed in their goals and, in so doing, redevelop their relationship while growing their business.

  Using real-world examples, lots of humor, and group collaboration with the audience, this presentation will “Make It Better” by helping these two disciplines re-focus their strengths, approaches, and goals to support not only one another, but the customer as well.

  • Search Engine Optimization
  • User Experience
  • User Experience Design

  At 11:15am to 12:00pm, Saturday 2nd April

  Coverage slide deck link photo photo

Sunday 3rd April 2011

• Beyond the Polar Bear

  by Michael Smethurst and Mike Atherton

  The BBC’s new Food site (bbc.co.uk/food) is completely rebuilt using principles of domain and data modeling. Domain-driven design breaks down complex subjects into the things people usually think about. With food, it’s stuff like ‘dishes’, ‘ingredients’ and ‘chefs’. The parts of the model inter-relate far more organically than a traditional top-down hierarchy.

  A logical domain model makes site navigation mirror the way people explore knowledge. By intersecting across subjects, links themselves become facts, allowing humans and machines to learn through undirected user journeys. This paradigm shift from labeling boxes to taming rich data is a vital skill for the modern IA.

  We will show you how to design for a semantic ‘web of data’, using case studies from the BBC’s Food and Natural History products. You’ll learn to unlock the potential of your content, create scalable navigation patterns, achieve simply fabulous SEO and step confidently into the world of open linked data.

  We’ll reference Rosenfeld and Morville’s seminal IA tome and discuss what still holds true and what needs new thinking. The next web is here. Stop worrying about the perfect taxonomy, and start worrying about making your content findable, pointable, searchable and sharable.

  • BBC
  • Information Architecture
  • Practice Development
  • Semantic Web
  • Taxonomy

  At 8:30am to 9:00am, Sunday 3rd April

  Coverage slide deck