IAs are designers too

Tuesday, 4 February 14
BBC UX&D
From IA to UXA
What does a UXA do?
http://www.ickr.com/photos/timwilson/187032003/
Tuesday, 4 February 14
There is an elephant in the room.
I feel like I should start with a confession - Im not an information architect. I was. I am one of you. But o!cially Im a user experience architect. Now some people think that
names arent that important, but those kind of people are rarely IAs and theyre usually wrong. So when the name of the IA role changed at the BBC I took note. I was pleased. I
think as a discipline we su"er from more than our fair share of existential angst. Lots of people, and lots of IAs included arent 100% sure what an IA is. The BBC is no exception.
But by changing the name I think we took an important step to recognising a few of the characteristics that we hold most dear. The BBC is a big organisation, we got a range of
disciplines that touch on the sort of thing that an IA might do or be interested in. Weve got technical architects - aligned to individual products these are the men and women
responsible for the platforms and services that make the website work. Alongside these people weve got data architects. These are the people responsible for creating,
collating, structuring and describing data. And alongside these people you have people like me, UXAs - so what do we do?
BBC UX&D
Elements of the user experience
Strategy
User needs, site objectives
Scope
Functional specification, content requirement
Structure
Interaction design, Information architecture
Skeleton
Information, navigation, interface design
Surface
UXA
Tuesday, 4 February 14
Maybe its because Im an IA - but Ive always thought were the best, most important people in any team. Jesse James Garret has proposed these ve elements of the user
experience. And as look over them I cant help but think - thats my job. I can help there. The great thing about working at the BBC is that the role of IA is limited to the
structure stage - were expected to be supporting and shaping each of the layers. Thats why they changed the name, because Information architects are the type of designers
that can contribute to each of the ve elements.
So today I thought Id talk about one way that Ive been trying to do that, using service design thinking to inuence the way we develop products and services at the BBC. Im
going to talking about a specic project we completed recently looking into personalisation for our knowledge and learning content, and hopefully it will show how we work
across the BBC. Becuase I think IA-type people cna make projects better. Theres a specic craft to IA, which probably resides somewhere around here in the process - but I
think we can be more inuential.
Tuesday, 4 February 14
At the BBC I know we can.
We have a product development process which is very well defined. But the design comes here. in the middle.
Product definition and development.
It started with the idea that if we ensure UX and design thinking occurs as early as possible in the product development process, well probably end up with better products.
and service design thinking
Design sprints
1. Understand
2. Diverge
3. Converge
4. Prototype
5. Test
Tuesday, 4 February 14
Process.
But we do three things di"erently...
Personas
Our audience
Tuesday, 4 February 14
We have a much stronger focus on our users.
We use personas
User need and context
Lifecycles
Tuesday, 4 February 14
A lifecycle describes context and need - it allowed us to reconfigure those universal drivers and re-focuses on specific contexts.
Through the lifecycle we describe key stages in task or process based scenarios (blue), describe a possible role to the BBC at each stage (orange) and what the audience might be thinking, feeling
and doing at these moments (yellow).
Its like a content audit - but an audit of the users life, so you consider not just the content that they might be interested, but a broad variety of insights that can inform your product and your IA. You
begin to build up a picture of need and context. Some needs will span context, these can form the basis of your project - creating design principles. Others will be related to specific contexts or stages
in a relationship. For example, if you identify process driven elements, like ecommerce or other types of transactions youll be reminded that distractions at this point will break the experience. At other
times users are looking for inspiration.
Users changing need states - Scenarios along a journey will reflect the changing needs, need-states, modes and
emotions of users and the choice, order and linkage of scenarios
Blueprints
Unaddressed needs
Tuesday, 4 February 14
Into that context we start to project our service. A service blueprint is like another layer on a lifecycle, imagining how our designed service fits into the life of the audience.
Again, if we think of this in terms of a content or functionality audit, we can document what we have already got. This blueprint can be layered. For the design sprint process it should be related to the
audience facing propositions. but theres no reason you cant add layers to this - connecting internal tools and services, placing them on a blueprint and working to understand how they could xxx.
The combination of the lifecycle and the blueprint allow us to create user journeys...
User journeys are the information
architecture, the blueprints, that represent the re-organisation and re-intepretation of
data discovered through research and that act as the basis for design artifacts that
will emerge from the blueprints.
Understanding
Strategy
Users are people
Experiences, not transactions
Tuesday, 4 February 14
Building empathy.
Information architecture has never just been about the information - it should focus on the information in use. I think we need to focus not just on ontology and taxonomy, but
also utility.
Clicks and URLs are simple transaction - put in an address and get a resource. We want to build more complex and rewarding transactions for our audiences. So as well as
understanding the what and the how - we need to understand the why for our audiences. We started to use a lot more storytelling - creating plausable scenarios that develop
our understanding of the latent need within our audiences.
Need and use
Pages, chapters, books
Experience blueprint
The experience blueprint can provide a structure for personas needs at each phase of the experience (top line), to understand challenges from a customer perspective and to imagine solutions as holistic experiences.
Tuesday, 4 February 14
Imagine what users might feel, think and do at every stage of the journey. The aim of this activity is that the team familiarises themselves with each persona, based on real peoples needs, behaviours and motivations.
this tells you the area youre operating in - so you can use this as the basis for recruitment for testing.
Diverge
Creativity
All about the data
Reform and transform
Tuesday, 4 February 14
For me, information architecture is a hugely creative discipline.
We have formulas for success, just like any discipline - but I think it takes air to be a great IA.
Flair and discipline - we know our products and services. We know what is possible. Divergent thinking is about freeing yourself from some constraints, but sometimes the best
ideas are evolutionary. Our understanding of the overall shape of things helps us at this stage.
Converge
Scope and Structure
Pulling it together
Signature experiences
Casually dumb up
Tuesday, 4 February 14
Storytelling and string
A story based on the persona that connects different concepts into one journey. This way ideas are expanded as a holistic experience over time.
Prototype
Skeleton
Informed consent
Top of the graph
Tuesday, 4 February 14
We focus on choices and motivation
Plausibility
Connecting the dots
Tuesday, 4 February 14
Test
Surface and strategy
Even when I lie...
Connect the dots
Tuesday, 4 February 14
Reflect and refine
Keep, stop, start
Tuesday, 4 February 14
BBC UX&D
Being
Human-centred
Heartfelt by Nathan Sawaya
Tuesday, 4 February 14
And I guess this presentation is also about human centred information architecture.
hypnotised by complexity - its more complicated and we fetishise order and structure... but is that enough.
hus, in addition to serving the function of synthesis tool, user journeys also become
the map through which the life of the data can be traced back from nal designed
artifact to the original Discovery phase and problem-ecology. This traceability we
refer to as the Golden thread and it provides explicit evidence of the transformation
of data that allows the design process to be both validated and self-reective.
-Design principles rened and emerge.
IA forces you to put the what before the how - we understand before we ideate.
Understanding precedes making.
Whats the point?
IA-thinking makes the world better
Tuesday, 4 February 14
Design is typified by indeterminacy - there is no right answer... As IAs I think we need to embrace a bit of indeterminacy.
I think theres sometimes a frustration amongst IAs tht the discipline isnt well understood. People ask surely its not that complicated and just do the sitemap and forget about the process. And its easy to resort to the
question - why should we do it right... with just becuase, becuase its best practice. the way to do things. But we need to work harder, we need to understand why there is a right way to do things - why effort is rewarded. I
think its because it connects to the user. Experience design on the web aims to crafting meaningul and useful experiecnes through information spaces - thats why IA will make the world a better place, because if we can
use our skills and mindset to influence and augment the creativity of other disciplines - we can make things that are more meaningful and more useuful.
Every element of an experience can be designed
Stories reveal weaknesses and force us to be realistic and plausable.
We should be ambitious.
Nothing exists in a vacuum.
Thanks
Im Dan Ramsden.
Find me in the following places:
dan.ramsden@bbc.co.uk
@danramsden
www.danramsden.com
MediaCity UK, Salford
Im always happy
to answer questions.
Tuesday, 4 February 14