What is my job?

My job title is officially ‘Information Architect’. That’s sounds fairly specific but the reality is much different which often leads me to really not knowing what my role on a project should be.

My interest and what (i thought) I was employed to do is User Centered Design; to ensure that what we build here at the agency where I work is as empathetic towards who will be using it as possible. I understand that there are often time and budget constraints that get in the way of all the research, testing and iterative design you would like to do. It’s annoying but you get on with it and try and impart as much knowledge of the users as you can from previous experiences.

However I find it strange when you recieve actual user flows and basic layouts from a client based on there own assumptions about what a user might want to do and then ask you to implement that in the site. Then when you take their ideas on board, but adapt to work in a way that you think is better and then explain this to them, they can’t understand why you’ve changed their masterpiece. I think much of the issue here is with the project management and properly educating the client, but the problem is once a project has started off and a process is a assumed, I, the humble Information Architect don’t have too much say in the process.

The question is how do I tackle this issue, when is it being helpful by challenging processes like this and when is it just becoming a spanner in the works?

I’m back!

I’ve got a blog, i’ve got a blog… I ‘ve got a rutey tutey blog blog blog. Ok, well I’ve had one for ages, just with starting my new job at the beginning of the year I have had no time to post anything. However due to a combination of the huge amount of user experience / design / IA based issues I encounter each day and the need I have of somewhere to document these thoughts and also in prepartion of turning my main portfolio site into a blog style format, I thought I would resurrect this blog.

Plan is at least one post per week, initial topics to be based around issues of sketching and communicating ideas and the role that the tools and machines we use have in influencing what we design.

Cool, well now comes the hard part!

ITV… hmmm?

I thought it was funny that this tech-crunch article about a truly awful sounding service called Keystream that inserts ads in “unused” parts of streaming video is being tested by ITV. Sounds about right to me!

Keystream Unveils Smart ad – TC article

Wouldn’t it be nice…? At Somerset House

Really interesting exhibition focusing on conceptual products that that have the potential to enhance our lives in interesting, alternative, funny or just plain weird ways.

Alignment by Dunne & Raby:

I think their description says it all: “”A small pressure gauge indicates that it is operational. It could go off at any time. When the planets are in the appropriate configuration, the airbag is filled. An explosion of pinkness. It takes seconds, like an airbag in a car crash. Voluminous. Fantastic. A triclinic crystal: a form with no 90 degree angles. Perhaps no-one sees it, only the aftermath. A landscape of shocking florescent pink rip-stock fabric in sharp fractal forms, strewn across the living room floor. When the owner returns home, they decide what it means and what to do. It could be about love, money, or career.”

Exactly.

Seriously Brilliant Piece of Political Advertising

I hope this is true…

Paul Graham’s Startup Survival Guide For The Coming Nuclear Winter: Be a Cockroach

Androids

I just thought I’d post something about the HTC G1 release as I really do think its one of the most important milestones in the history of the web. I am obviously not alone in thinking this, there has been just a huge amount of articles in the media talking about the open source aspect of it, such as this article from the Guardian… democracy to the the mobile web and all.

This is all great and I whole heartedly agree with them, but I don’t think that these articles are going far enough in predicting what an open mobile web might mean in the future. I personally think the most exciting prospect of an open mobile web is that it might eventually lead to the irrelevance of the big network providers in our mobile services. The Vodaphones, T-Mobiles and Oranges of the world have held so much power over the industry and their focus on closed networks and hardware has really stiffled innovation within the development of mobile communications. As the mobile web becomes increasingly open I hope that communication via VoIP becomes a viable option for everyday calling which theoretically mean all we will need is an internet service provider for our mobiles and we’re done. So no more stupid orange adverts with dolphins and balloons… and annoying teenage girls. Hooray!!

myzeitguide.com

the cultural scene in the city will never be the same again… watch this space!!

Information Architecture for Social Networks

Is really hard, it seems. Not only is a basic site map vast but there is not really a path through the site that suits every user as it kind of depends what you are doing on the site. To solve this I am trying to place different areas of the site into clouds and then linking them in the various possible ways… just seems to bring up another 100 problems though… hmmm fun fun fun.

To what extent is the relationship between innovation in academia and industry preventng Anthony Dunne’s “post-optimal object” from entering the mainstream of consumer culture?

was the title from my recently completed dissertation.

I was inspired to conduct this research after reading Hertzian Tales, a book by the acclaimed industrial designer Anthony Dunne in which he argues for an alternative future in the development of electronic products that is focused more on metaphysics, poetry and aesthetics than on performance or technical functionality. His argument stems from the lack of cultural speculation in the design of electronic products today.

presense, my major practical project from my masters in Interactive Media, a communication device for emotional communication, was inspired by this alternative reality that Dunne speaks of. Presense is just one part of a huge area of research done in academia over the past 20 years into so called “phatic technologies,” which are devices that allow people to communicate in more subtle or emotional means. They are born out of the concepts of ubiquitous computing, first realised by Mark Weiser in his seminal 1991 paper “The computer of the 21st Century” and phatic communication, which was first coined by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski who defined it as communication “whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to convey information”

Despite the abundance of research in academia into phatic technologies there is little evidence that this has crossed over into commercial development. I started my research with the assumption that there was a lack of communication or a divergence between the goals of innovation in academia and innovation in industry. I hoped to find out whether this was the cause for a lack of post-optimal products in the marketplace or if there were other factors at play.

I decided to focus my research on three phatic communication devices developed in both academia and industry. By analysing the motivations of the people behind them and the resulting impact they subsequently had, I hoped to gain an understanding of what is preventing these products from entering the mainstream of consumer culture and if and when this will change.

Please download the thesis here and send me your comments and thoughts…

Connectibles! developed by Jeevan Kalanithi at the MIT Media Lab

Emotion Communicators Developed by Philips Design

Social Mobiles Developed as a collaboration between IDEO and the artist Crispin Jones