This year I was honoured to be given the opportunity to speak at OZ-IA 2009.  I will also be speaking at the Edge of the Web 2009 in November for the first time, right after the keynote, talk about pressure!

The following is my initial transcript of my presentation at OZ-IA 2009, The Art of Skywriting  – The Demise of the Tag Cloud.

Now it’s not going to be word for word the same as the audio recording, but you’ll get the idea.  As usual it’s also available on Slideshare along with all my other presentations, distributed under creative commons license.  Soon as I have the audio I will sync it with the slides to make it easier to understand – promise.

Tag clouds have been a part of our community for a while now, we have come to love them, we have embraced them, welcomed them into our households. They have become part of our teams, an ever-present design or navigational component.

Or so we thought.  I don’t know if you have noticed but over the last few years Tag Clouds have been disappearing from web sites at an alarming rate.  In the dead of night they have been ripped from their home page, tossed aside, unwanted to die a lonely death on the curb side.  It’s as if no-one really cares.   I know I care!  What has been happening to our Tag Clouds!

I feel it’s time we got some real answers, answers from some fellow professionals, so I have called in a few favours the managed to get the SUXU team “Special UX Unit” on the case.

Now at last we can surely find out if some heinous crime has been committed and finally learn the true fate of the Tag Clouds.

The Investigation

To understand what has happen to Tag Clouds we really have to understand their history.

Tag Clouds first came onto the scene in a big way in 2006 when Stewart Butterfield (the designer at Flickr at the time) leveraged of the work of Jim Flanagan’s Search Referral Zeitgeist.   So for better or worst Flickr saw an opportunity to try something new and find a use for all those community tags.  Mind you Tag Clouds in theory have been around since 2002 in an online implementation and as theory way back to 1995.   It’s just in 2006 Flickr pushed them out into the limeslight.

Over the following year Technorati and Delicious would both implement Tag Clouds onto their home pages, shooting the status and popularity of Tag Clouds into that of a mega-rockstar.   Everyone wanted to have a Tag Cloud on their website, from blogs, to tech media sites.   It was even suggested that Tag clouds could replace the trusted menu navigation system.

By 2007, even the conservative end on town, in the form of the retail sector was looking at Tag Clouds. As the fringe of the retail sector began to implement Tag Clouds to allow customers an easier method to connect with their popular product lines.

Still what are Tag Clouds really like?   Just like we profile the suspects, so too the crack team at SUXU have profiled the major 3 types of  Tag Cloud

1. Mr Popular (the Elmo)

   With this tag cloud the word size represents the number of times a tag is applied to the single item.   These Tag Clouds are usually generated of audience contributions, like in the case of Last.fm.

2. The Streetwalker

   For this Tag Cloud the word size represents the number of items that to which the tag as been applied (or used).  As in the case of Deep Search, the large keywords have more search items applied to them.   There is no real freewill here, it’s just a case of take what you find.

3. Mr All you Can Eat

   This final Tag Cloud is used for representation of content categorisation. The bigger the words, indicates the more items in that category.   This type of Tag Cloud is very popular in blogs.   It is rarely generated from data that is provided by a global community.

Just a reminder that tag clouds in theory allow for a number of key visualisation techniques:

• As we all know Tag Clouds allow for a visualisation of the presented word frequencies, we can see in this case that Swine-flu and flu are prominent when Japan is not.
• They allow for a community or audience to contribute the tags and determine the direction of the Tag Cloud
• Tag Clouds can present an alternative navigation aid, allowing for easy discovery of the required or new content.
• And they can also present the visualisation of a semantic categorisaton, where the related items of information can be presented in close spatial approximation in the Tag Cloud. In this case Science, Politics and Religion are related, and so is Science Fiction, Sci-Fi, Sex and Zombies.   It gets stranger with Star Wars, Star Trek and Toilet – what are people saying here.

By the end of 2007, early 2008 Tag Clouds had really made it, even the Microformats community was now looking for a model to implement tag clouds. They where considering that there were enough instances “in the wild” as they like to say, to warrant a Tag Cloud Microformat.

Also the IA community stepped forward and deemed that Tag Clouds were now a useful technique for any designer’s toolbox and so they went and produced a design pattern for Tag Clouds.

However we did note and under-current, that like the Tech fringe of computer geeks, Tag Clouds seem too only appealing to a fringe community.   Like with Iggy Pop, the general public just didn’t embrace Tag Clouds.

Also like Rick Sanford, lead vocals, percussion and… flute, time had passed maybe, no longer was the white sexy neck tie, bare chest and mullet in vogue. Sorry Rick and prog rock, time to move aside.

It’s at this point in our investigations that we found unsolved cold case after cold case, hundreds of instances of the innocent Tag Clouds that have been brutally slain.   Clearly justice needs to be served.  We now had our suspects.

The Case for the Prosecution

Geeks and Geeklettes of the jury, we all know about Tag Clouds and their history now.  It’s is clear as has been presented by the members of the SUXU that their has been a heinous crime of murder committed here on a monumental level.

Suspect One

But did you know that by 2006 when the tag cloud population was at its peak that only 7% of the Internet community was in fact tagging [1].   Hence only 7% of the community was providing the tags for Tag Clouds.  This later increase to 12% as the Tag Cloud population waned.  Still with the beloved blogs being the home of the Tag Cloud. The number of bloggers on the web is only about 10-15%.   This means only 10-15% of the web community is supporting Tag Clouds.   Surely these people, the controlling fringe elements of the web community are a suspect.   Hence I give you suspect number one.

Suspect Two

We all know as professionals in the UX field that words do not always have the same meaning from society to society from one cultural group to another. For example I’m just looking for a wholesome “Family Guy” and I get this.   Err No. That’s not what I wanted.  Tag Clouds don’t help this matter.  But it’s not their fault.   Words and their differences are to blame.   So we have suspect two – our differences in meaning.

Suspect Three

The death of so may Tag Clouds can be lain at the feet of users.   They just don’t get them at all.   According to research people often just didn’t get that those items where links they could click on, or that they in fact lead to more information, or that they presented a visualisation of the information of the site.  Tag Clouds didn’t come in most cases with a manual.  But frankly realistically who would have read it if they had.  So the pesky users are suspect number three.

Suspect Four

You know what, people didn’t even realise that the big items in a Tag Cloud where big for a reason.   They considered that is was like that because the designers just wanted it that way.  If it was red or green in colour it was just a design element, and that was all.    Hence maybe the designers are a little to blame here in their presentation of Tag Clouds. So I give you the designers are suspect number four.

Suspect Five

People with accessibility issues are a pain in the arse.   They really made life hard for Tag Clouds.  Constantly complaining about, font resizing issues, colour-blindness, motor coordination issues on small sized words, lack of weighting and semantic spatial relationships for visually impaired users.   So much so that really we do have to consider these members of our community as suspect number five.

Suspect Six

Finally search engines are our last suspects.  The search engines and their bully gang have been lurking in the back alleys of the web. We know they have been secretly a little jealous of the Tag Clouds; especially the in-house search engine.   I put it to you that the in-house search engines with their brothers have been a contributing fact to the demise of the Tag Cloud.

However it does stop their ladies and gentlemen of the jury.  The 6 accused have marginalised Tag Clouds. To the point that they have become little more than noise or window dressing on a page.   And in the harsh commercial reality of the Internet anything that is noise on a commercial site of any nature is bound to be “remove”.  It just makes sense.

Designers started to list Tag Clouds in a warped mangled alphabetical order, but this was just another attempt to destroy them, as we will see.

Tag Clouds and User Research

Research has indicated that with Tag Clouds:

• Large tags attract more attention from users
• People don’t read a tag cloud, they scan for the word
• The centre based tags of a cloud will attract attention
• The upper left Quadrant of a tag cloud get more attention on average
• And that Tag Clouds are just not suited to supporting the search for information

I put it to you that these 6 suspects are guilty of the crime of murder of the Tag Clouds by conspiring to present Tag Clouds in their worst light.

The Case for the Defence

There has been no murder here at all.  Let’s be fair, these suspects are guilty only of marginalising the tag clouds, not of wholesale murder.

The Tag Clouds are just alive and well, hidden in plain sight.

Sure the Tag Clouds have disappeared from the home pages of Technorati and Delicious. Yes they are not easy to find on these sites, yes you have to login and be a member of the community to find them now.   But they are still around. Protected from the thugs of society.

You can still find Tag Clouds, alive and well in the lower reaches on articles on media sites.  Have a look; below the last adverts in the side bar, they will be living out their lives there.   Admittedly it’s not the best of places, but they are alive.

Tag Clouds are still in the mainstream; Governments are using them, as shown here. Also they are being used by MIT (not the Melbourne mob) and by the Creative Commons people.   Now I wouldn’t be calling these sites fringe, would you?   I would say more the conservative end of the community spectrum.

Anyone can now make or implement a Tag Cloud, there are now Tag Cloud Generators such as Wordle and also  a formula for the weighting on a Tag Cloud.   If anything we are promoting and cementing maturing Tag Clouds into our community.   So now Tag Clouds are here for everyone.

The Maturing of The Clouds

We can see that Tag Clouds have grown and matured, which the prosecution has failed to acknowledge in their haste to find a suspect.

Some Tag Clouds have become Index Clouds, where the information is presented in a alphabetic index like fashion.

Others have become Button Clouds, overcoming the issue of the user not knowing if it is link, by making it like a button with a little weighing for good measure.

Search Engines aren’t the enemy of the Tag Cloud – they are the Tag Cloud’s friends. They are not some back street gang of thugs to be avoided.

Many Eyes and Deeper Web have both been leveraging the power on the Search Engines to provide them with the best of both worlds.   With a situation that the results of the Search allow for an extended result set by using the semantic comparative nature of the tag cloud.

Text Clouds

This can be extend further with the use of Text Clouds, here the we feed the output of the search engine (the shark) to the goldfish (the tag cloud)  such that:

• The popular keyword search terms become the items in the tag cloud
• It still has all the display and usability issues of a traditional Tag Cloud.
• However the information base is a lot larger than a Tag Cloud, allowing for a better distribution over the terms.
• One issue with Text Clouds is that they are open to trending as the keyword search terms of a search engine are.

Topical Grouping

Luckily for us Tag Clouds have changed for the better via the use of Topical Grouping:

With Topical Grouping you take a topic of interest:

• Then you display in a Tag Cloud for that topic all the related topics and sub topics.
• This presents a drill down and sideways effect on topic examination.
• Topical grouping does allow for an increase in findability for a moderately small population of tags
• As you would expect using Topical Grouping with a Tag Cloud increases the rate of a serendipitous find.

Was there a murder? No good people there was not. It is just Tag Clouds have matured and the prosecution failed to see this. .

The Verdict

You have heard the case for the Prosecution and the Defence.   In this case we have 6 suspects

• The Community
• The Designers
• The Users
• The Search Engines
• People with Disabilities
• Or our Differences

Which of them is really guilty?

If you really consider it the UI designer, the IA is to blame, that’s us, and we are the guilty part here.  We have never give the Tag Cloud a chance, never allowed it to mature and grow.

Lucky for us they have not died but have just matured out of sight and are still in use on the fringes of the web communities.

References

[1] 28% of Online Americans Have Used the Internet to Tag Content (PDF)

[2] Improving Tag-Clouds as Visual Information Retrieval Interfaces (PDF)

So on with the summary of the second day for OZIA 2008. Okay this is a few days late, but better late than never, eh. Day two sees the return of three minute massages, juice bar, real coffee and great speakers after the official and alternative (late) dinners. As with day one I’m not going to summarise it all, but just go over  few highlights I had.

Website to Webapp – designing for workflow – Shane Morris

Shane Morris looked at the problem of using tools and techniques developed for the old school web of the document view to the newer application based web site.  And how they just don’t apply anymore and how there are alternatives like screen flow (in various forms) and functional mapping techniques could be used instead.

How many seconds does it take to order a burrito? – Zafer Bilda

This was an incredibility interesting talk on the application of Information Architecture techniques onto the improvement of sales and procedures for a small food chain.  It was especially enlightening to see so many user research and navigation tools being used in what is traditionally a marketing area.

Contextual Enquiries – the who, how, why, and when – Lisa Herrod

Despite some minor technical issues, Lisa Herrod delivery a  good presentation on contextual enquiries.   It was really just an overview of some of the pain points and ways around them for people wanting to move into this area of contextual research.    I found myself agreeing with many of the points she was making.  Of particular importance was the classic do’s and don’ts.  This will be one talk to rewatch on the video.

The Pleasure and Pain of UX freestylin’ – Donna Spencer, Gary Barber

I have no idea what this session was like, as I was presenting it, feedback is always welcome.

If you missed, maybe the slide deck will help, yes it does contain ‘that’ slide.  Hopefully the podcast and video will follow.  Sorry no transcript at this point in time.

So now it’s day two of OZIA 08, after having Japanese food thrown at us last night at dinner, it’s now time to review the highlights of yesterday.

Where is Square 1?  -  James Hunter.

James gave us a good perspective of the problems people have getting into the IA industry and how hard it can be to in fact cross train and become an IA.  The problems of lack of mentoring, local internships and general training.  He raises the question, where are the junior IA positions.   He has a very good point, we are just not fostering junior IA development in Australia.

Automated tree testing – faster, better, smarter?  – Sam Ng.

The thing I really liked about Sam’s presentation (besides the kerning on the font) was that he was talking about testing methods that I have been using for years, with my own home grown term.   This makes me think how many tools and techniques do we as IxD use that we all call different things, when in fact they are the same.

UX Strategy: defining and executing strategies for your projects and teams  – Steve Baty.

Steve’s presentation for me hit the nail on the head in terms of building a UX strategy.  But the thing that really got me was he focus of bringing together teams for strategy development.   This is something that I have not really considered in the past, however this resonated so well with my freelance work.

Search and sensibility: Four tales of search  – Louisa Cameron, Angus Fraser, Scott Bryant, Chris Khalil.

The one thing that came solidly out of the New Digital Media presentation was that search is king.  Search has to work, and work well.   Search is critical it must work or the site will fail.  It was very interesting to see the different types of search methods used and the implementation and testing methods used.  In fact a lot of the sessions this year seem to be focusing on search.

The Venue

Okay visually the venue is outstanding, 5 star nd beyond, the attention to detail is amazing.  But frankly the Stamford Plaza Double Bay staff are just not used to having the interaction and requirements of a 100 or so delegates of a conference.   I would say that they are just used to set and forget types of events like weddings and dinners.   Now this is no reflection on the organisers, but the venue management.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that it is now conference season here in Australia. Over the next two weeks or so you are going to be getting nothing but posts on conference related activities. Sorry if this isn’t not what you were expecting.

Presently I’m in the belly of a 737-700 just crossing the eastern side of the Great Australian Bight on my way to Sydney for Oz-IA 2008 and Web Directions South 2008. This year there is yet again another special event, besides the traditional Port80 meetup on the eve before Web Directions South (proper). Yes its WebJam time again, that crazy time when 18 or so web peeps take to the stage and delivery what can only be described as a roller coaster of information in 3 minutes or less.

The WebJam crew (Lachlan Hardy, Lisa Herrod and Tim Lucas) have yet again puled out all the stops. This year its on Thursday 25th Sept, starting at around 7:30pm to late, upstairs in the Bar Broadway, Corner of Regent Street and Broadway, Opposite UTS tower .

But remember you have to RSVP to attend. I would be sitting around about RSVPing either, there is a limit to how many people the venue can handle. So go on get over there and register.

What makes it very cooler, is AWIA and the conference Edge of the Web are sponsoring WebJam as well. So this means we that Edge of the Web supporting peeps demonstrating the Edge of the Web. Awesome.

So if you are at any of these events come up and say hi. I don’t bite.

It’s on again, OZ-IA, the Sydney based Information Architecture conference, now in its third year (Sept 20-21st). Yet again I’ll be lobbing into Sydney for this event, and looking forward to catching up with all my IA and UX colleagues.  Over the last two years I have always met new people in the field or learn a fair few new things at this conference, from the formal sessions and corridor talk.

Now OZ-IA may seem like a lay back conference, I’ll tell you it isn’t, in some respects, some of the topics can be a little full on.  But that said the social aspect in previous years has been spontaneous yet entertaining.

As usual it’s the prelude to  Web Directions South, this year it has got bigger and better with two days of optional workshops (18 -19 Sept) and 2 days of the conference proper. Eric has certainly gone out of his way this year.

The workshops look pretty good too, from IA Research Methods, WCAG 2.0 Accessible Forms to Flash Prototyping, 8 in all.   Then we have the conference sessions from the best in the Information Architecture fields around Australia and New Zealand.  With topics ranging from several case studies. discussions on tools and techniques to IA and UX Strategy.

This year for me personally it’s a little different in that I’m stepping up with fellow IA freelancer Donna Spencer to present The Pleasure and Pain of UX freestylin’. I must say it is a bit of an honour to be presenting with Donna.

So if you are planning on going and you use the discount code “GB0250” you can save yourself a few dollars, like $110.

Last Sunday I was sitting in the belly of a 737 at 12km’s up, hurtling across the Nullarbor Plain at 748 kmph from Sydney to Perth, with part of the Perth Posse. Hundreds of people in web community from around Australasia were then returning back to their respective towns and cities to family and loved ones. The compressed web geek week of OzIA, Web Directions South and WebJam is now over for another year. This year was enjoyable, but less intense from the previous years, which was good.

Okay this post is a little late, but still should be told. First off, a big thankyou must go to the organisers of the these events. You guys rock our worlds in ways that you just can’t comprehend. Eric Scheid for OzIA, Max Sherrin and John Allsopp for Web Directions and Lachlan Hardy and Lisa Herrod for Webjam. Over all this week of events has been a rollercoaster of gathering of the web industry tribes.

It was good to catch up with old friends again this year, it was also good to find new friends from around Australia and New Zealand. This years has been the year of the SNS. The intense use of various SNS within the web industry this years has made it such that we all in someway felt as it we had been in constant contact all year round, it was a strange feeling having a distinct point of reference with a people you had not seen for a year or so.

Now that a week near has passed and I can reflect clearly on the events of this mad week, let’s review the events in the cold light of day when all the emotional rollercoaster has been stripped away.

OZIA

This conference is in its second year. It’s primarily aimed at Information Architects. It tends to attract freelancers to corporate, government people, with around 120 attendees. This year OzIA stepped up a level in it’s degree of professionalism. In general the speakers where of a reasonable standard. Some could have done with a bit of the quiet word about the level of new material and fluff of their presentations. But others where really value for money. Overall its was good technical conference with a great deal of information that I could personally take away from this conference and use immediately.

Things just worked well at this conference, the wifi was good and usable, this helped enhance the social aspect of the conference as well.

Personal highlights where:

• Analysing Quantitative Data – Steve Baty
• Semantic analysis in IA – Matthew Hodgson
• Get out your pinking shears, it’s time to cut a few patterns – Sharon Varley
• Fast, cheap & somewhat in control – 10 lessons from the design of SlideShare – Rashmi Sinha

Web Directions South

Web Directions is now in its fifth year in various guises having morphed from the Web Essentials series. Web Directions is focused on new directions in the web. This year Web Directions stepped up a level as well, into the larger corporate area with around 600 attendees.

With a new venue and a corporate focused stream. Did this weaken or change the Web Directions I have been raving about. Yes and no. There was the expected core of the web industry, but this year as well the conference attracted the Nine to Fivers. These are the people that don’t have the passion for the web. They don’t live and breath the web. From them the web is just a job. For the most part these people where there because their employer paid for them to go, and it was a few days off work. That said a lot of these people I talked to where totally surprised by the quality of the presentations and the general passion, it was as if we where converting them into the passionate core of the web industry, it was a joy to observe.

The expo for some was not a welcome addition, for me personally it was okay, I was exposed to a few new products and services I would not have normally encountered, so it was all good. I wouldn’t have expanded it anymore than a few stands in the breakout area as it was, it’s about quality not quantity in this area.

Some things didn’t work for me. The lack of free wifi in the conference rooms, whilst a blessing in one way, in that you are forced to concentrate on the speaker. It was also socially a downer, the conference social application Meet Weaver just didn’t take off this year, there was just no interaction between people on this application. However at OzIA there has an explosive use of Twitter, FaceBook and the like as a group of social interaction tools. These did enhance the OzIA conference as it was like you where chatting amongst your friends as the conference was presented. The live presentation in-jokes of the previous year at Web Directions where just not possible. If there was one thing I would change it would be that.

Could I take a lot away from this conference, yes. But in the main it was not about technical knowledge but about being inspired by the speakers. In the large part I didn’t learn anything major, more confirmation. But I did find overall a new way or direction to look at the way I work on the web. Will I be back next year, yes one hundred percent. This is still the premier web event for the year.

Personal highlights where:

• Andy Clarke – Think like a Mountain
• John Allsopp – Trends and predictions in web technology
• Lisa Herrod – Usability: more than skin deep
• Mark Pesce – Mob rules

WebJam

In comparison to the two conferences WebJam was just a small one evening event. But it was really the final emotional after party. As usual it rocked, Lachlan and Lisa again maintained the high level of organisation and coordinated the madness of the 18 people in a jam with an air of uncanny ease. I didn’t present this time, but just got to take in the Webjam madness, and maybe get a little bit of camera envy at the lens set Ruth Ellison used on the night. Congradulations to the winners Dmitry Baranovskiy for his kick arse microformats tool – Optimus – the Microformats Transformer, Myles Eftos with his amazing browser based ruby debugger and third place to Digital Eskimo.

Overall this week was for me personally a turning point in the way I work and operate radharc. There will be some major changes in the way we do business in the following months.

Now we have all the events out the way we can return to our regular program, eh.

Technorati Tags: OZIA07, webjam, wds07, conference, sydney, web+directions

Post lunch at OZIA, we are now on the downhill run after a really passionate morning filled with outstanding presenters. First of there was a little problem with a connection to the projector system (powerpoint on the Mac). But soon we were rocking into the afternoon. One thing I am missing however is good strong coffee.

User Research in virtual worlds – Gary Bunker & Gabriele Hermansson

Is there a business use for Second Life. The web will become a fully interactive user experience not the islands of virtual worlds (like second life). Found that it is idea for usability interviews/workshops and training within Second Life. Made the space like it was offline, so its like the normal world. They had recruitment facility to allow user submission forms that allowed them to leave details to be test subjects. Focus group allowed for presentation of pages of the site for evaluation by the group concerned. They paid the test subjects $10,000 linden (approx AU$60). Recording was via the chat logger and a Media Cam (video of the session). Attempted an online group and offline group working with fake web site (brand removed).

Issued with viewing the testers and the screen being viewed. Online had a lack of collaboration, mostly they where short and to the point, the delay in conversation was a collaboration was restricting the conversation flow. But still captured feedback, they were comfortable. Internationalisation of testing was easy to do, relatively. The overall results where the same. But it did take more time (1.5 more time), multiple conversation threads. Better to have a small number of tester, with at least two facilitators. Payment must be immediate. Qualification of the testers is required with blind Questionnaire. Recording is important, use of fast typers is important, use of IRC communication methods.

Use Metaplace embedding VR in the websites. Connected worlds is a being looked at. One avatar for allow VR worlds.

Information Architecture of Wikis -James Matheson

James Matheson asks What is a wiki, what do they use it for: knowledge base, collaborative working. A wiki is social, its social media. Low entry barrier. There are different ways to browse a Wiki, structure browsing, narrative browsing, search, recent changes.

A successful wiki is more than good IA. Teams work faster, less restrictions, but they will fail if they don’t attract the collaborative work ethic. The feeling of exposer, any small thing can put them off, having to login, the wrong design, the wrong software. If you have anything wrong people maybe not get on board with the wiki. You have to be very aware that you don’t remove social features or the key functionality. Must be aware of culture of the organisation and maintain or extending the culture into collaborative work ethic.

The IA of the site changes every day. You need to be there in the long term, by helping with wiki gardening.

Open your mind – map it! – James Breeze

James Breeze presented using a mindmap. There is no repetition, Forced brevity, its fast to use and very flexible. Allows for brainstorming, just put it out there, no judgement. Good for right brain thinking. easy to use offline or online (eg mindmeister). Easy to use for problem solving and decision making, alternative solutions. In IA ideal for note taking and strategies, project planning, time reduction, easy for site documenting, can even drop raw content under headers within the mind mapping applications like Mind Manager. Much of this presentation as standard minding techniques and methods.

And now off to the pub!

Technorati Tags: OZIA, OZIA2007, conference, IA, Information+architecture

Wasn’t that much of a late night from IABeers, but it was good fun. More food, more beers, more good company. Okay the meal was a little loaded with MSG. Why is it I come to Sydney and I end up not sleeping well due to the a MSG overload. Later morning start this morning (thankyou Eric). Will be interesting to see who fronts for the first session. So on with the live blogging:

Get out your pinking shears, it’s time to cut a few patterns – Sharon Varley

Patterns – optional solution to a common design problem. Refer to the generic patterns on Designing Interfaces and the Yahoo Developer Network (based on Yahoo development work). Applied on large project (10,000 pages, 650 wirefames in 60 days). Discovered needed to look at best practice as base line of pattern definition. Version called or word document, needed a Wiki. This stuns me. Installing a wiki is very easy, as easy as installing wordpress, a matter of ten to twenty minutes of work. They then have the problem do we need a Wiki or a web site. From use cases and the requirement document they produced the functional list of patterns. Then examined the online pattern libraries for a common easy to reuse patterns.

Writing a pattern:

• Name
• Problem
• Use When
• Solution
• Related Patterns
• Example
• Rationale
• Accessibility

There is an IA Pattern community and a patterns library wiki. They reduce time in design phase, reuse of user tested patterns. Consistency in the user experience. Reduced time to market.

Exploring multidimensional tagging frameworks – Scott Parsons

Scott Parsons shoots from the start with the problems with tags, tag soup, different definitions, synonyms, language and culture bias. Tagging is only usable for popularity. But then again within the tag for minority social groups are finding their own grouping. People are considering limitation of tagging with central control. Flickr has started to use clusters. Use a auto suggest system. Or tagging within content, always need an user overide. Allow the user to say NOT tag, its not this object. Tagging frameworks have potential. Tags have to be easy to use, create and edit. Scott has a lot of good point with this and it spurred a passionate debate. There bit and pieces that are start of user generated recommendations. This really comes down at the degree of separation being extended and number crunching for the the search formula.

Semantic Analysis in IA – Matthew Hodgson

Matthew Hodgson looked at analysis on content via a content audit is a mind-numbingly detailed odyssey. This becomes a personalised category of the codification of the content. Had to get the general text into a categorisation and codify the problem with the use of language. Subject,verb,object (SVO) languages. Sentences start with a noun end in a verb. After the analysis it was possible to build language structure trees. Semantic trees of the patterns of the language in use. Use Visio. demonstration of automated tree structure generation. Needed to build a prototype to codify the content. Used Axure to build prototype (note windows only, tsk!).

Interestingly google and other search tools use semantic analysis so its very important. Basically content it king, but consider the quality. This moves into the area of SEO content analysis, interesting the way that this type content streamlining is very close to SEO content optiumisation. And of course this rolls into content patterning. Layers on layers.

Ethical issues and information architecture – Donna Maurer

Donna Maurer takes a personalised view on designing in an ethical way. This was an good lesson in talk organisation. The microphone battery failed. Bit like Donna meets spinal tap. With designing we need to cause no harm, that is doesn’t cause them stress, physical harm, frustration and the like. Accessibility need to be about allowing for the access to ALL the people all the time, just good work for real people. Not just about the blind, its about people with keyboards only, slow connections.

We need to make good design decisions, good reasoning for the decisions, being objective, deconstructing the design, work out why we do this the way it was done. Exclusion of people through categorisation can be frustrating if you are excluded or not been considered. This tends to alienate the people visiting this type of web site. Donna talked on the deliberate burying of information and hiding it in plain view, typical of government and large corporations.

You need to consider the consequences of our design decisions. You need inform that the end of line decision makers can understand and make the right decision. Just because others are doing it one way does not mean that its the right way. Consider the conditions that the functionality and content is going to used and the user base accessing it.

Working the team to make the right design decisions. Donna admits not right all the time, you have to consider that you may not have the right view point. You should focus on achieving you best for the team project goal. You need to keep this central and focused in your mindset.

You have to really maintain the professional standards all the time and really promote the professional standard on any web design profession. The people you are helping, mentoring are important they still people, don’t treat the people in a negative manner.

Understand your own moral standards, and stick to them. We can use IA for evil, its up to us to personally make that choice.

Now time for Lunch!

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Post lunch, you know how it is, you just want to a have a little nap. But onward and upward, into the afternoon.

ROI in Information Design: where IA figures in ID – David Sless

Information design (ID) is about making information findable, accessibility, usability making it easy to access the information that is usable at an acceptable level. Information design is also about art, design (well I know that!). Can it ID be used to improved public communication, can you set standards for this, hence can you institutionalise good communication practice? Research tended to indicated that this is possible. Good ID has no technical barrier. User testing is new, huge change, but only at testing and refining not in the early stages on development cycle. A skilled designer using benchmarking will have less iterations of the design process. 50% of time in the design process is politics. If you don’t measure you don’t know. We in IA are still using ritualistic methods not diagnostic testing. So I better get a goat to sacrifice before we draw the wireframes (only joking people).

Love in an elevator – selling the value of IA to business – Stephen Collins

Stephen Collins states User Experience (UX) should be strategic, but we are seen as creative, not right brained. We have to play the corporate game. Do the Corporate non technical terms. They see UX as a roadblock for the project, this is because UX work is not holistic, and it is done as a separate. It should touch all aspects of the business. It’s more than just a few reports. Have user needs been tested and determined, does it meet the business strategy. Does the client have a business strategy, a business goal. Is the design and business strategy one. Later the problem is solved in a project life cycle the higher the cost, solve the UX early or it will cost the project dearly. The UX must be done early, allow small steps are a major changes on the final product. Become the agent of change, ensure you are focusing on the relationship, on the users. The slides are available on SlideShare.

Rise to Play a Greater Part – Delivering Specs in the Bigger Picture – Faruk Avdi

Faruk Avdi discusses the detailing and finishing a real specifications in the real world is critical. Questions for the client and the practitioner, deep questions and strategic questions. Need to know relationship of client to you and other people. The scoped job is often smaller than the real job that is in reality is a lot bigger than is really specified. This is because the client is really asking for more than the specification is detailing. These risks can be alleviated by the manner that the relationship is started. This is critical to the business relationship. Ideally it should be in small steps towards the final client goal. Need a path where providers can make a profit, and yet the client will not loose money on the project. Need to be proactive in scoping the design and UX requirement before the client knows that they need the product/service. Now I think that’s a massive crystal ball gazing exercise. Mind you this is a never ending problem.

“There’s no I in team” – a case study in collaborative information architecture – Patrick Kennedy

The fore front of this project was the mentoring of the design and IA team. User research was a big part of the project, that included qualitative and site analytics to determine who the auidence was. It was validated by the quantitative statistical analysis. The mentor process when from broad concepts to narrow focus. starting with training workshops, to teaching aids using several books (The User is Always Right, Don’t Make Me Think, Communicating Design), then it was a matter of build methodology around these books, as a familiar crux. Team consistency was a problem. It was a slow progression in the understand who the audience is and how the audience was determine. The team learning the new skills for the project was a hurdle, but they took to the challenge and worked well. And all this remotely. Now that bit has just stunned me. Patrick would have had a hard time with the team being remote, mentoring is usually done face to face. Good to see someone else mentoring like I do. Good on you Patrick.

Fast, cheap & somewhat in control – 10 lessons from the design of SlideShare – Rashmi Sinha

Rashmi Sinha asks do we need IA in web 2.0. Can we just use the ultimate in agile development, just get out there and do it! First users on slideshare where sermons and pr0n, go figure. Then at one the morning they got techcrunched, they it was all over they got thousands of private beta invite requests. They did no market research. They didn’t need it. If it fails, what was the problem, who was the competitors. If there is no-one really, why bother. Understand your users and their requirement, harness the passion of the early adopter users of this type of SNS, they are the ready research. Just put it out there, and refine it later! Using just in time design, using PowerPoint as the design prototyping tool. Don’t have the time to make the site totally pixel perfect and refined. This can allow users have sense of ownership. Keep it technically simple, unless it really is core business, eg Slidecasting. It’s about designing for crowds! What marketing did they do, none, nothing, zip. The key is the direction of slideshare now is very user centric is not the intended direction they first had. They are only making money from Google adverts.

Point to note this is just not going down well with a lot of hard core IA people as it’s just against the usual specification, documentation methodology they are used to. Slideshare now has slidecasting, with audio, when did that happen!

So that wraps it up for this day, now for IABeers.

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And so OZIA 2007 starts after an evening of beer and thai food with Ruth, Nick, Stephen and Ajay. After a few pubs, we descended on Spice I am. This place is to die for. If you are in Sydney for Web Directions 2007 of OZIA 2007 or anything else go check this place out. Be warned it’s cash only and no booking. But its worth it, trust me.

So after much coffee we go headlong into OZIA:

Designing sites people love – balancing emotion with business reality – Elizabeth Pek & Andy Coffey

Discussed UI and design business challengers with the balance of real business value. This was refreshing to see the application of real business application of redesign and the application of the user experience and user centred approach. Elizabeth demonstrated the application of the content areas verses the user profile types. Andy presented the overall design methodology with a good demonstration of the use of a grid within the design. It was also refreshing to see the use of a typography matrix. The key of the redesign came down to “white space is your friend” use it to break up the content, allow it and good type to make the site content more readable.

Is length still an issue? – Iain Barker

Well I don’t think the fold exists, you are know that. So Iain Barker presented a series of statistics that detailed in general that people are reading to the bottom of the page. However this quantitative research, really doesn’t tell us what the content of the pages is. So this must be taken in context of the type of page, content and functionality. The question does come to light, whose fold, which fold, where is fold. Iain ask do these fold rules apply to home page. Eyetrack III research found people read the top part of the page first, they will work down to the content below the fold. Interestingly media sites tend to be around 3000-4000 pixels, with the exception of one at 10,000 pixels. It comes down to does the page meet the requirements of the content presentation and the aim of the site, if so then page length shouldn’t be a problem. In fact it may help the home page to a act as the content gateway. Good home page design must present good information scents.

Landing Page Optimisation – Hurol Inan

Hurol Inan launched head long into landing page optimisation. There are a number of important statistics that you really should look at before optiumising a page. One of the key metrics is the bounce or exit rates. You really want to reduce this down below 20% for gateway pages. Ideally you want to turn the leakages into a call for action by the user to get them to engage with the website (ie contact us). He discussed the things we do right and wrong, with a damning honest list. All the basic stuff we all occasionally forget or clients force the issues on. People read circularly on menus and lists. Hurol is doing a bit of websledging (Nick what have you started!). I do think he has some good points, but the constant conflict of marketing department verses the Information Architect has not been addresses. Good points on the use of advanced search, people just don’t use them, they use filtering of the search content.

Analysing Quantitative Data – Steve Baty

Presented a straight down the line look at the use of quantitative data for the Information Architect, with humour. Steve looked at the methods of extending samples and the degree of confidence that the sample can be extended, is it truly random or just convenient and leading to a degree of bias. Of Course this needs to take into account the sample size and error rate etc. He looked at how the information is disturbed, and the measure of certainty by applying confidence intervals. Best way to do this is to use the function in Excel. You need to find these ranges for the confidence intervals it is really important. Interestingly this is a dry topic, but Steve is a good speaker, he presents it well.

Now for lunch!

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