Posted in IA/UX on Apr 8th, 2008 No Comments »
I’ve been realizing more and more that the crucial role user experience architects play in the software and web design process is that of a strategist. So I started reading up on strategy.
What I found is that, contrary to the paper-thin plots in movies, strategic planning does not happen in a subterranean room filled with [...]
Posted in IA/UX on Mar 24th, 2008 No Comments »
As a result of lessons learned the hard way throughout my career and in my personal life, I’ve learned to stop worrying about perfection. In the business world, perfectionism leads to “analysis paralysis” — the lack of action due to too much information. In everyday tasks, perfectionism is the precursor to procrastination. The fear of [...]
Posted in IA/UX on Mar 11th, 2008 No Comments »
At the IA Summit this year, an area of the conference will be devoted to showcasing project artifacts: The Wall of Deliverables. It’s a fantastic idea — I love the concept of hundreds of practitioners sharing their best work, learning from each other, and advancing the craft.
But there’s a dark side to the Wall of [...]
Posted in IA/UX on Mar 10th, 2008 No Comments »
Never underestimate the power of a well-designed, informative, visually-appealing document. I’ve learned that if there’s something needs to be communicated and evangelized across an organization, it helps to use a format that pleases the eye from any distance — across the room, at arm’s length, or up close. Provide a concise, at-a-glance summary, but pack [...]
Posted in IA/UX on Mar 7th, 2008 No Comments »
As a user experience architect, it’s always disappointing to see my wireframes implemented as graphic design with little more than a color treatment.
Such a site went live the other day. While I congratulate the client and their army of content editors on implementing the usability guidelines and content strategy that our team recommended, the visual [...]
Posted in IA/UX, Library Tech on Mar 30th, 2007 No Comments »
… is the library’s website.
So why is there only one person running it?
A certain large local public library system has that one poor systems librarian doing the work of 8 people:
managing the online public access catalog,
handling the integrated library system,
managing the web server,
managing the database vendors and databases,
developing web applications that interface with those databases,
coordinating [...]
Posted in IA/UX on Mar 28th, 2007 No Comments »
I’ve been pondering lately the apparent contradiction between collegial collaboration and corporate competition. This issue became all the more relevant when I attended the IA Summit this past week. Surrounded by my fellow user experience designers and information architects, many of whom work for my employer’s direct competitors, I suddenly felt the familiar twinge of [...]
Posted in IA/UX, Library Tech on Feb 26th, 2007 No Comments »
I throw my opinions in with five other fellow mid-30s Seattleites on the Confab podcast about the terrible customer experience of credit reporting companies, business plans that thrive off of bad usability, Vista, the Wii, dying businesses, and downloadable video.
Posted in IA/UX on Feb 26th, 2007 No Comments »
I’ve been appointed chair of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of ASIS&T for 2007. The chapter has been mostly inactive over the last two years, at least locally. However, the student chapter at the University of Washington has been the exact opposite.
The majority of the Pacific Northwest’s ASIS&T members are in the Seattle area, thanks to [...]
Posted in IA/UX, Library Tech on Apr 4th, 2005 No Comments »
[Yes, it's been almost 2 months. Yes, I know, I'm a terrible blogger. Work gets in the way.]
Pursuant to my previous post “On Systems Librarianship“, I will be moderating a session at the annual meeting of the ASIS&T PNC on the role of Systems Librarians and Information Architects in getting people to work together. You [...]