Pat’s Point of View

I’m pleased to announce I’ll be running another pre-conference workshop, this time it’s Demystifying Information Architecture at OZCHI 2008 in sunny Cairns on the afternoon of December 9th.

There has been much confusion and misinformation regarding information architecture (IA) and its relationship with the longer established areas of user-centred design (UCD). Many experienced HCI people don’t feel well-equipped to take on the practical side of UCD in relation to web design. Likewise, web designers and developers are often in the dark regarding the principles behind what some “usability guy” tells them to do.

In this half-day tutorial, Patrick Kennedy will present the fundamentals of IA, which in essence is focussed on ensuring that information systems are structured in a way that makes sense to users. Specifically, the tutorial will be conducted in the context of organising and designing information systems such as websites, intranets and software applications.

This tutorial will introduce IA, explain the fundamental principles and teach some simple techniques. The aim is to give participants a heads-up on the subject and point them in the right direction so they can integrate IA into their own work or just better collaborate with those already practicing IA.

It will be short, sharp and focussed on just the essential bits of IA. So if you’re up that way in December, check it out.

The conference itself starts a few days later on the 10th of December. OZCHI is Australia’s leading forum for work in all areas of Human-Computer Interaction and CHISIG’s (www.chisig.org) annual non-profit conference. OZCHI attracts an international community of practitioners, researchers, academics and students from a wide range of disciplines including user experience designers, information architects, software engineers, human factors experts, information systems analysts, social scientists and managers. While OZCHI’08 represents aspects of the Australian Interaction Design community that have not been emphasized in recent conferences our organizing team is committed to serving the range of interests.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Conferences, IA, Speaking. If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to leave a comment or follow @patrickkennedy on Twitter.

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About the author

Patrick Kennedy is a user experience strategist and design researcher based in Sydney Australia. He leads research activities that improve the user experience of cross-channel products and services; helping both designers and business decision makers in bringing those products and services to fruition. Read more.