Pat’s Point of View

Hope everybody had a great Christmas today. I have spent quite a bit of the day playing with my Wii which my lovely wife bought me. I already have a Wiinjury from playing WiiSports:)

After a break for the whole family-Christmas-lunch thing I came home to discover/remember that the Wii has WiFi capabilities and spent a bit of time getting it to talk to my router (does anyone else feel that WEP/WPA just sux?).

It would be cool to get my Wii talking to my media server to get photos and music off it (and it would be cool if my new digital photo frame could do that too) but connecting to the internet is enough for one day’s tinkering.

Having heard so many usability and HCI people rave about the Wii for so long, I was contemplating buying one for myself (but Jenn beat me to it). And it’s easy to see why, it’s a lesson in usable interface, and using the Wiimote for gesturing is so natural. I think it’s great for kids; nice and simple yet fun to play. And if my efforts at boxing and tennis are anything to go by, it’s a pretty good workout too.

If you can recommend some games or wants to be my WiiFriend, just let me know :)

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Hot off the press is my latest article The Many Faces of Information Architecture. Here’s a taste:

A lot of confusion and misunderstanding surrounds the term ‘information architecture’. The multitude of activities that can be labelled with these two words span a vast variety of people, skills and situations. [...] A precise definition of each term would be difficult, as there is still much debate even among the professionals who practice in this field, and that is not the objective here.

What is needed is a primer to help ordinary humans weave their way through the various labels that might be used to describe work related to information architecture.

To engage consultants or contractors, it is useful to understand the variety of terminology and be able to identify the area (or areas) in which you need assistance.

I wrote this article because I found myself explaining to my clients, the different flavours of work that come under the banner of IA. Most people have either a highly specialised view—whereby I couldn’t do XYZ because my business card said ABC—or they took a very wide view that ignored any specialisation, assuming that an IA-ish person could do everything.

It was a fine line to tread, because on one hand I didn’t want to split hairs, for example if I design the way in which users interact with a web form it might be best described as Interaction Design but is it really a crime to call it Information Architecture instead? On the other hand, people do get into all sorts of trouble by using one term when they really mean something else. Which is why the article includes a bit of a cop out:

While this paper attempts to explain the different labels being used for areas of speciality in information architecture, the key to success will always involve explaining exactly what it is you expect to get from a potential information architecture professional.

It really is the best solution; spell out exactly what you want done (or what you do if you are a practitioner) so there is no misunderstanding. By all means you can use a label such as Information Architecture but make sure you back this up with a plain English description.

The other thing I wanted to explore was the overlapping nature of these terms and the activity they represent. Even if you could distinctly define Information Architecture, Information Design and User Experience Design, there would definitely be overlap. My attempt to illustrate this is the lovely circular orange diagram you see in the article :)

I am expecting this will be a fairly controversial, which really serves to highlight the ambiguity surrounding these terms, and the difficulty people have when they try to use these terms. But that’s OK. If you disagree with anything I’ve said in the article, please write a comment below. Hopefully this discussion will help educate non-practitioners, if nothing else.

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Have you ever noticed how in the movies smell is almost always overlooked?

I’ve noticed that in many scenes, a sense of smell would punch big holes in the plot. Imagine, our hero or heroine is being chased by the bad guy, they run into a cluttered warehouse and hide. The bad guy enters soon afterwards and creeps around searching for his prey. In real life, if you’ve been running around in fear of your life, you’re probably going to pong something fierce. The bad guy wouldn’t need to be a bloodhound to track you down.

One film I can recall, in which characters use their sense of smell, is The Last Starfighter. When the hero, Alex, is off fighting the forces of the Kodan armada, his android substitute is able to locate the Zan-Do-Zan (alien bounty-hunter sent to destroy Alex) by it’s bad odour. No fancy tracking device needed, just a nose.

Yes I know I have thought about this way too much, but I’m like that.

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Today is my wife’s birthday, and I want the world to know. I want the world to know how special Jenn is and how proud I am of her.

I want the world to know that Jenn is pregnant, coming up on 26 weeks, and is holding down a full time job. That in itself isn’t that unusual, but she decided to return to work after starting the pregnancy as a housewife (now how many people choose to do that?). She did this because she was bored, but mostly because she wanted to make sure “we’d be alright”. She’s great at what she does, earns as much as me and has a pretty stressful job to boot.

I want the world to know how caring Jenn is. She takes care of me, which she does usually without complaint, even after a hard day at work. On top of all this, each night last week she worked a fill-in shift as a restaurant manager. She did this because she is such a generous and genuinely selfless soul who puts those she cares about before herself.

I want the world to know how smart Jenn is. She manages all our finances and investments, and if it wasn’t for her I would be broke and destitute. When we met, I was earning roughly twice what most people my age were earning, but couldn’t rub two cents together because I’m hopeless with money. Now, we’re well on our way to financial freedom and it’s all because of Jenn. Despite this, I often have to remind her that book smarts ain’t nothin without street smarts. Some might say I’m intelligent, but I’m not smart (except for my decision to marry Jenn, she’s the smart one).

I want the world to know how tough Jenn is. Being pregnant is no walk in the park, mums-to-be are always uncomfortable, irritable and bloody tired. And this heat doesn’t help either. Yet my wife takes it all, without much complaint, she just buckles down and gets through it. (And you should hear the price she got on our new air-conditioning!)

I want the world to know how unforgettable Jenn is. The other day, she ran into an old work colleague from years ago. He said “You know the thing I remember about you from all those years ago? You used to always say ‘we’re not saving lives kids’!” (in reference to the utter lack of substance in advertising, but more importantly Jenn’s ability to keep a positive attitude and the big picture in mind). People who meet Jenn remember her, because she’s fun, dependable and doesn’t give in.

I want the world to know how beautiful Jenn is. Even when pregnant she gets whistles from passing cars. Since the first day I saw here I thought she was the cutest thing ever. We just recently had our second wedding anniversary and there’s nobody else I could imagine being with.

For these reasons, and more, I’m so proud of Jenn. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing short of the almighty Himself will stop her from achieving her goals. Except, that is, for her own self-doubt. So here’s to you honey, may you have a great day and may you realise how special you are to me, our child, and to everyone who knows you.

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Apparently there were a few sore heads this morning, but I was fine (yes it’s boring but safe). The second conference day got straight into it with plenty of paper presentations, including two by Floyd Mueller, who was without a doubt the most entertaining speaker of the conference.

There were some interesting topics presented today, but I did feel there was a lot of repetition in the choice of papers (is it just me or is everyone in HCI looking into gesture recognition?). In particular I liked the talk on stories with emotion and conflict by Georg Strøm, as this use of narrative is something I’ve been trying to include in my UX work for some time. Compared to use cases and other techniques typically used in software development, stories and narrative are much more useful—from my point of view anyway. I also thought the on-going discussion about the level of formality in diagrams was interesting, and this ran across several presentations, the common factor being Beryl Plimmer it would seem.

Then it was my turn. My quick 15 minutes on mentoring was well appreciated, judging by the feedback I got, but I found it really hard to keep to the time limit. And this was the case, even thought I cut the presentation down to focus on just one aspect of the paper, across about ten slides. Hopefully I was able to affect the audience somehow, and sell the idea of mentoring to those who might not have considered it. And of course I hope I didn’t bore anyone to sleep. My slides are, as always, up on SlideShare.

More on the usability side, I think discussions by Vince Bruno and Jessica Enders were interesting, and caused a fair bit of discussion. I found Vince’s talk, on his research into usability practitioners in Australia, interesting because he seemed so surprised by what he found. For example, of course we focus a lot on having users involved in research and design activities, it’s user-centred design! Practitioners I spoke to appreciated his honesty and the openness with which he approached his research.

Jessica’s talk on her research into the usability of ‘zebra striping’ in tabulated information was a great effort. Practitioners definitely need to get more involved in this kind of work, helping bridge the gap between academy and industry. This has inspired me to look at how I can do some research into a very practical problem such as Jessica has, and come up with some answers which will help the practice of user experience and related fields.

Overall it was a conference that possibly had less to offer me in terms of picking up new knowledge, but the chance to catch up with peers and stay connected with current academic research is always welcome. I’ll definitely aim to present again next year, hopefully something unique and thought-provoking.

However, from my point of view, it’s hard not to find fault with the conference. I said it last year, and I’ll say it again now, there’s a lot to be desired regarding presentations from academics. There is some really interesting material in the work they’ve done, but their presentations don’t expose this. In most cases, authors failed to engage their audience and didn’t effectively communicate the fruits of their hard work. They seemed to be following a rigid format (presumably the ‘traditional’ presentation adopted in academia) and in many cases did not structure the presentation for the allocated time. Granted, this was hard when you only have 15 or even 25 minutes, but presentations are not the place to discuss every single detail of your work, that’s what the papers are for. Trying to plumb the depths of the technical details behind your thesis, or present tables of data in this environment, does you no favours. If anything, you confuse the audience and dissuade them from reading the paper, but certainly you come off looking ill-prepared and it probably heightens your nerves.

I would like to see less presentations, each allocated a bit more time, and perhaps teaming up paper authors with practitioners or communications students, to put together an effective presentation. For all I know, this is what one should expect from an academic conference and this is what the bulk of the audience wants, but is that a good enough reason to continue?

See what people are blogging about: ozchi2007, Adelaide, CHI, paper presentations

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