Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Michael Beavers

Michael Beavers — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 13:59:59 GMT

True, especially in the stakeholder interview stage. We’ve found that some clients like to be in the room so that the strategy team is not in a position where we have to say no to stakeholder requests that we already know users will find cluttersome and irrelevant.

We’ve softened that message by saying, “good sites are a balance between business metrics and user needs—and we strive to hit that as perfectly as we can—with as much deference to our users as possible.”

“Hmmm…perhaps it is worth exploring. Depending on the prototyping budget and overall research timeframe, we can test that concept with a refined user population and see if they accept it as part of their content and functional goals.”

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:58 GMT

What a great place for a review of Strunk & White! I used to use it all the time; it may be time to dust it off and bring it to my office.

For those interested in improving their writing, I highly recommend James J. Kilpatrick’s The Writer’s Art. He will unmangle your most tortured sentences and unmix your metaphors faster than greased lightening on a skateboard.

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:12 GMT

Shiv, an excellent high-level introduction. I’ve referenced it on our internal company blog.

One thing that I’ve been trying to get enculturated throughout my company is that Web 2.0 is not only characterized by collaboration and community, but that the technology developed around that is uniquely suited toward completion of cleaner “personalized” user tasks.

In short, collaboration architectures lead to…
...an accomodation of personal context for contributing collaborative content, which leads to…
...better-organized tools that enable a cleaner overall user experience that more efficiently assembles
...contextual, task- and user-oriented modalities and presents them only when they’re needed.

...which is a bunch of overcomplicated gobbledegook. Referencing live examples of Web 2.0 and getting us to think about how to compare with what we have in the enterprise is a far better and illustrative approach. Thanks much!

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:17 GMT

Amazing ideas here. My company always uses custom-scored music and frequently employs ambient background noise to evoke emotional response to an immersive, rich media environment. However, I don’t believe we’ve ever attempted to use sound and scoring as a navigational aid.

I also wonder if there aren’t significant implications for bringing a mixture of emotionally evocative qualities and usability through sound for disabled Web users. A sight-impared user, for example, is essentially what a Tokyo subway rider is if they never look up from their novel.

I appreciate your article…definitely thought-provoking.

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:23 GMT

I agree with Fred—and by extension, Steve Mulder. Personas can be a highly accurate starting point for fully assessing tasks and content needs through on behavioral research. There really should be some effort to validate the data by comparing what research respondents are saying within the framework of issue categorization with Web analytics and analysis of behavior in a lab or other settings appropriate for contextual inquiry.

As an example, I’m in the middle of evaluating the impact of AJAX and social/community architectures on a client’s particular industry and marketing landscape. We have performed a preliminary round of research in three cities and have established enough data to suggest 2 solid personas, 1 emerging persona type, and suggestions or mention of about 4 others. Taking the first solid persona types, it was very easy to see them represented on YouTube and blogs as self-publishing persona types directly impacting my client’s brand. However, my client has been able to present little to no meaningful Web analytic data for their current site.

The good news is that we have some observable persona behavior for validation out there on the Web, but Web analytics data from my client’s site would have helped us paint a more complete picture. Without them, our heuristic analyses are based more on opinion than quantifiable activity—and I suspect would have taken us further in validating our persona types and helped to reduce our overall research timeframe.

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:33 GMT

Very good—I’m glad there’s some interest here!

Let’s see if over the next couple of week more folks respond with additional ideas and suggestions and best practices that fit into this topic. I think the best approach would be for me to write the piece, incorporating ideas from other B&A users and I’ll cite their contributions accordingly.

Christina, obviously you should have final review and I assume that’s how it usually works. I’d love to have your opinion, too, Mr. Waryk, once it is complete and before we publish—assuming it meets with B&A’s approbation.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be quite busy—interestingly enough—consolidating and presenting findings to two different clients from their rounds of stakeholder interviews. These interview findings always provide a great deal of context to consumer research they can provide, or user research we build into the scope of a complete interactive strategy. I’m sure there will be plenty of feedback and grist for the article, of which I’ll plan on making a holiday project.

If anything, the challenge will be paring it down to a readable length!

Thanks for everyone’s comments so far.

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:40 GMT

Not me! It is simply moving too fast—makes my head swim!

Whoever does run with this should probably also cover HCI and IDT/new media masters-level tracks at schools like Georgia Tech and Carnegie-Mellon.

Some really good thought leaderhip is emerging from Univesity of Michigan’s (and others’) library science/information design programs, too. Plus, MFA programs are constantly updating their new media programs with curriculum in IA and ID—even expanding in to user research a bit.

One cannot ignore programs in instructional design and industrial design, too! We are, after all, developing products—not just interfaces.

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:41 GMT

This is a really interesting viewpoint for exploring roles and stratifications for “information” professions and a great follow-up to James Robertson’s earlier Boxes and Arrows article.

In larger enterprises, there tends to be more budget and infrastructure for lots of different people with different job titles, and more clearly defined roles and responsibilities. However, most organizations lack suffient resources to hire all these people, sometimes requiring, for example, IT professionals to also be information professionals in the IA sense.

You wrote that EIAs should probably not be seen or take responsibility for being change agents. However, you also wrote that ”...EIAs should not just be involved in the enterprise’s information architecture, but also involved in the information architecture of the enterprise. They should apply IA skills to understand, model, and support how information and knowledge flows within the enterprise.”

Is this not being an enterprise change agent with grand visions, or is it more reflective of an EIA pointing out simple matters of improved efficiency?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I believe that most companies, if they respect IA as a profession and the people they hire are really good at what they do, then EIAs will indeed be “change agents”—even at the enterprise level where budgets and resources are less limited than those of smaller organizations.

But, heck, that’s just a semantic distinction.

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:41 GMT

Articles like this is one of the reasons why I love B&A! Thanks for conducting interdisciplinary interviews. Retail/Environmental design, product design, physical space architecture, airport design, and urban planning all have inspriational bearing on, and teachings for, our work with interfaces and their structural underpinnings. More, please.

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:41 GMT

Yep, I’m with you. I just turned to the appropriate semantic relationships chapter in my Polar Bear copy and started thinking about IA and EIA as alternately inset circles. Focus is a good thing!

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:47 GMT

Very cool article, Liz. What captivated me was the concept that overburdening people with choices can actually limit decision-making.

At my agency, we operate in part on an experience theory called “directed choice”. Oversimplified, directed choice is a method of presenting brand benefits that takes some liberties with assumptive user tasks—much like a salesperson would engage a prospect.

The design paradox is that we intentionally limit the choices users can take, discard the traffic that isn’t really interested at that moment (or better yet keep them around to draw into a marketing database, viral tools) and then move warm prospects into buying or communicating with a real person. One of the more effective examples of this is freedomoftheseas.com.

This type of high-bandwidth interaction certainly does not work for all users, information-gathering, task scenarios, or decision-making styles, but limiting choices and encouraging exploration can often be highly effective for branding and selling interactions.

Keying off of Jonathan’s comments: one thing I would LOVE to try is some kind of combination of rich media directed choice and collaborative filtering like Amazon or Netflix. How cool would that be?

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:53 GMT

The timing of this article is really great, so thank you. Our company is growing and we are constantly bouncing between hiring managers from within and hiring outside people who have “chops” that their soon-to-be reports will respect and admire.

“You are still designing” is right…only what you design is shifting. For those of us who have the generalist’s curse, and know a little about a lot, rather than a lot about a focused area; sometimes management is the best path. A lot can be said for having a very candid conversation with an internal candidate about what gets them going every morning. Is it the design, or the design process? Is it the work, or the collaboration and your ability to inspire it? We’ve found that only by having these conversations can you create an environment where people feel like they’re advancing their skill focus or their skill breadth.

Thanks for this article. I’ll be sure to pass it along.

Michael Beavers — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:57:32 GMT

This is a nice in-depth review of Intuitect. I recommend that others read this past B&A article for more comparisons:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/visio_replaceme. After reading it, I’m pretty sure Scott is an iRise fan. I’m still hoping Omnigraffle will come out with a PC version—even though I’m not an IA.

Michael Beavers — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 13:25:48 GMT

I think that cash is really the best incentive for users in a lab setting—hands down ($75-$100 per lab hour, depending on the market). However, there is an intangible compensation with many respondent populations that I’m not sure how to get around: the need to share an opinion, be heard, and interact with people.

Regardless of the city or the screening demographic or behavior, one thing I’ve never been able to shake is the professional respondent. These are the people for whom part of their livlihood depends on being a research subject, or a primary outlet for social interaction. We also see that many respondents aren’t “heard” in other aspects of their lives, and it can be quite sad. I realize this post is not entirely related to your article, Cliff, but could make a good story idea if any researchers on B&A have found a good way around it—or if it is really necessary to find a way around it.

Michael Beavers — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 01:38:36 GMT

Liz, the link to his book site and Chapter 3 were a great bonus to a good article. What I like about Mulder is that he is from the camp of “reasonable persona” development that seems to recognize that companies have research cultures with varying appetites for qualitative versus quantitative methods.

Company marketing and customer insights departments have for so long relied almost exclusively on quantitative for critical business decisions, while qualitative research has been regarded dismissively as something that “marketing and advertising does with focus groups”. Within companies this has caused an enculturation of a limited world view of qualitative research.

Now that that the lines between mass-media marketing/advertising and product development are blurring, there is a wonderful opportunity for more holistic views of customers, the messaging to which they will be receptive, and what they will actually interact with. This is a very exciting time to be in research, design, strategy, and brand planning.