Boxes and Arrows: Stories by Christina Wodtke

Welcome to Boxes and Arrows

Christina Wodtke — Mon, 11 Mar 2002 12:00:03 GMT

Many months ago, an information architect named David Bloxsom came over for lunch. We both faced an idle post-crash afternoon, so a bottle of Trader Joe’s three-dollar pinot grigio was cracked. We talked about information architecture and trying to get the field to mature. We talked about how the ASIS journal was too academic, too complex for most folks to penetrate. We talked about Web Review, Site Point, and A List Apart and how they were just too basic for most IAs we knew. By the time the bottle was empty we had sunburns and a vision for a magazine. A magazine that would be plainspoken and smart, that would tackle the thorny issues that trying to design structure in new information spaces such as the web, software and wireless created. A journal for practitioners, for those everyday folks just trying to make their product better while ducking the layoff ax.

I hope this ’zine will make us all a bit smarter when we are through. And that is bigger than any tagline, bigger than our semantic antics, bigger than the politics and cross-company infighting.

Next (after a nap) I emailed around to create my dream team… all IAs, but all from different backgrounds. Former designers, programmers, writers and usability wonks that had stepped up and said, “This thing needs an architecture,” and proceeded to design something better. I wanted a journal that was by IAs for IAs. But I suppose this was a foolhardy assumption on my part—I considered them purely IAs because they did what I did and I was an IA. But they also considered themselves interaction designers, experience designers, user experience designers…well, you get the picture. Over the last several weeks, all the issues we’ve seen again and again on listservs and blogs rose up again among my carefully chosen staff. The best laid plans of mice and me… But it wasn’t a waste of time. Through all these arguments, we hit upon a shared struggle we all were engaged in—the fight to bring thoughtful design to the new digital medium. From all of this, we wrote our mission statement:

Boxes and Arrows is the definitive source for the complex task of bringing architecture and design to the digital landscape. There are various titles and professions associated with this undertaking—information architecture, information design, interaction design, interface design—but when we looked at the work that we were actually doing, we found a “community of practice” with similarities in outlook and approach that far outweighed our differences.
Boxes and Arrows is a peer-written journal dedicated to discussing, improving and promoting the work of this community, through the sharing of exemplary technique, innovation and informed opinion.
Boxes and Arrows strives to provoke thinking among our peers, to push the limits of the accepted boundaries of these practices and to challenge the status quo by teaching new or better techniques that translate into results for our companies, our clients and our comrades.

I’m not sure what I can tell you beyond that mission statement. It’s time for the web (and software, and portable apps) to grow up. It’s time for us to come to terms with our terms. It’s time to discover our best practices, our most effective techniques and tools. It’s time to learn from others in the field and stop navel gazing. And we need a place to do that. It is my very great hope that Boxes and Arrows can be that place. A place for designers—who think design is more than pretty font colors—to exchange ideas. A place for programmers—who realize the elegance of code means nothing if people can’t use your application—to learn to make their interface just as elegant. A place for marketers—who know that click-throughs are no good if people click away a second later—to sort out what really creates brand loyalty. A place for information architects, interaction designers, information designers and interface designers to come together with the UXs and EDs and HCIs and build a discipline that will make a difference. This is a place free of jargon. We aren’t messing around here: we want answers. That means we won’t hide our ignorance behind terminology. If we know it, we’ll say it. If we don’t get it, we hope you folks will use the comment feature to straighten us out, or better yet, submit an article or case study of your own. This is our journal—yours and ours, audience and authors and staff together. We’re tearing down the fences we so hastily built between our crafts, and we hope to build something better. I hope this ’zine will make us all a bit smarter when we are through. And that is bigger than any tagline, bigger than our semantic antics, bigger than the politics and cross-company infighting. It’s ambitious, I know. Welcome to Boxes and Arrows… Christina Wodtke Publisher, Producer and Fool Boxes and Arrows “architecting the damn thing”

Speaking in Tongues

Christina Wodtke — Mon, 01 Apr 2002 12:00:03 GMT

In last month’s welcome, I set out to describe Boxes and Arrows purpose and goals. On a line by itself I stated this is not a place for jargon. I felt that was important enough to call out. I certainly am being called to task for that.

Jargon is not using a fancy word appropriately, but it is jargon when the fancy word replaces a simpler correct word.

Perhaps I should have stated this will be a place free of jargon. Ridding our writing of jargon is a good goal, but a more complex task than one might think. That said, it’s important to define what jargon is and what jargon isn’t. Jargon is words used as a gating mechanism. We use jargon when we wish to keep out those who are not like “us” whomever “us” may be. Jargon is when we replace perfectly good accessible English with slang, acronyms and other mangled phraseology. “Monetize” was a dot-com jargon term. It meant, “find a way to make a profit from” and was used partially out of laziness and partially to make people using the word feel like insiders (and perhaps not morons who forgot they had to make a dime on their crazy schemes) 80-20 was a rule for profits—20 percent of your users provide 80 percent of your profit—that became a noun. “Well Joe, the way I see it, it’s an 80-20.“ Jargon is not using a fancy word appropriately, but it is jargon when the fancy word replaces a simpler correct word. Paradigm has often given me fits because it is a perfectly good word… it’s just been abused. People often use it when “model” is probably a better choice. Utilize frequently replaces use when use is the right word. But there is an appropriate time to use utilize… when one means use for profit. We may even choose to utilize jargon if it will serve our sinister purposes in undermining the current design paradigm—but not if there is a better way—a clear, simple ordinary language way. And jargon is not using a big word that you have to look up. Sometimes when we seek to be precise, we use big words. It happens. A dictionary is a good investment. Acronyms happen. We have to stay alert for them. One man’s A List Apart is another woman’s American Library Association. ALA means different things depending on what crowd you run with. New words are born when no word existed previously. It wasn’t that long ago that there was no such thing as an internet, or a CPU, or a handheld. To refuse to use these terms because they might be perceived as jargon would be foolishly handicapping ourselves in the service of communicating. Finally our authors deserve to be allowed to be eloquent. Adam Greenfield’s style is not Jess McMullin’s, and neither writes like Nathan Shedroff. Nor would we want them to: Boxes and Arrows is composed of people, with a myriad of different voices and different word choices. We will edit to keep their writing accessible, but we will endeavor not to kill the poetry of their language. Writing is a scary and vulnerable activity. An author deserves to have his or her words respected, and editing should enhance and not squash. So with all these challenges, why try? We try because Boxes and Arrows seeks to be inclusive, not exclusive. We want to cross lines to learn and communicate, and jargon is, as I said, a gating mechanism. So I’ll stick with my earlier statement, though I’ll modify it somewhat: We will seek to keep this place free of jargon. We will enlist you, the reader to keep us honest. Every article has a discuss link, call us out on the carpet when we say LIS-IA, or directing eyeballs. Definitely bust us when we complain ED is not as good as UX because the CHI’ers are more user-centric in their dev-cycles because of the x-mod they do, while ED is all amusement parks and des9. In return we’ll do our level best to talk straight. Christina Wodtke Publisher

Unraveling the Mysteries of metadata and taxonomies

Christina Wodtke — Tue, 09 Apr 2002 12:00:02 GMT

Christina Wodtke of Boxes and Arrows interviews Samantha Bailey (former Argonaut and current lead IA for Wachovia Corporation's Wachovia.com website) about Information Architecture, her dream process and the mysteries of metadata and taxonomies. B&A: Let's get meta - you come from the Argus LIS-flavored school of IA. What is your definition of Information Architecture? SB: I'm going to pull this answer directly from an article I just wrote: "While it is unlikely that any two practicing information architects will give identical definitions of the term, there is consensus that information architecture has organization at its root. Basing my understanding on Morville and Rosenfeld's approach, I define information architecture as: "the art and science of organizing information so that it is findable, manageable, and useful." This definition is a "I think good IAs (like many good librarians) are often generalists at heart-people who have a love of learning and a tendency to be interested in practically anything that comes their way."content-intensive interpretation, indicating my bias that information architecture skills are most critical in content rich environments. It also draws on the information retrieval roots of library science, emphasizing the importance of being able to find that which one seeks, whether known or unknown. Finally, information architecture is a user-centered discipline, understanding that usability is at the heart of a successful information based interaction." B&A What skills does one need to become a good IA? SB: On an ongoing basis and in terms of basic personality traits, good IAs need to be inquisitive, problem/solution oriented, and dedicated to continual learning. The field is so new that there isn't a set body of knowledge that you can learn in full and then have "mastered." I think there is certainly a body of knowledge that an IA needs to pursue and absorb, which lays a foundation upon which to build. In terms of the fields that I think most profoundly influence IA and are the best fodder for ongoing learning: Library and information science (my bias, obviously), HCI, cognitive psychology, ethnography and linguistics are among those I consider most critical. Additionally, all of us need sales/marketing skills so that we can promote the field and continue inserting information architecture practices into processes that have been around long enough and are well established enough that it can take some work to make room for the IA piece. B&A If someone wrote you having just gotten their BA-perhaps in English or philosophy-and wanted to become an IA, what would you tell them? SB: I actually have a BA in philosophy, so it doesn't appear to get in the way of pursuing IA too much. I guess I'd recommend reading as much as possible; there's such a rich reading list now, and so many people with great insights. When I first became interested in IA, Lou [Rosenfeld] & Peter [Morville] hadn't written their book yet, and IA was more nebulous. The ambiguity was appealing to me, as I was attracted to being part of something that was in the process of being formed. At times it also felt somewhat insubstantial; we were making it up, and sometimes there was a lurking sense that it lacked legitimacy for the very reason that it hadn't been codified. In addition to the reading, join the SIGIA listserv, find a discussion group, look for a mentor. And of course there is working on actual information architectures: your own site, volunteer projects, student projects. I wasn't clear about what I wanted to do, career-wise, immediately after college, so I worked for several years. I'm really glad about that, as it made it easier to be confident and to be taken more seriously. After I got my master's degree and my first "real" IA position, I had real world life and work experience. While it's important to have rather specific skills in classification and user-centered design methodology, I think good IAs (like many good librarians) are often generalists at heart-people who have a love of learning and a tendency to be interested in practically anything that comes their way. I recommend throwing yourself in the way of whatever learning opportunities strike you as even remotely relevant.

B&A You recently joined a large financial institution. What are some of the differences you've seen between being a consultant and being an employee? SB: There are both similarities and differences. Perhaps the biggest surprise has been in the area of sales/business development. As a consultant, I was never fond of the part of my job that involved business development (e.g., marketing the company, bringing in business via sales calls, structuring projects to enhance future business opportunities, etc). But I knew it was a critical part of my role as a consultant and, more particularly, as a consultant in a small start-up. So, when I joined a very specific department in a large company, I thought my bus dev days were behind me. And, indeed, I no longer have direct sales responsibilities. There aren't calls to sit in on, RFPs to respond to, proposals to defend, etc., but my sales/marketing role remains a critical part of my new job. In this role, I'm selling something a bit different. Instead of selling a specific company/group of individuals, or a specific methodology or "secret recipe," I'm now selling information architecture as a discipline that is critical to successful web design and that can be successfully fit into the company's existing processes without too much pain. So, I'm changing my attitude about business development; from something that consultants or folks in small companies do to something that everyone has to do, in some way or another, all the time. There is also, of course, the innie vs. outtie issue, that has been discussed on SIGIA. As a consultant, you see the pros and cons of being an outtie depending on the nature of the project- e.g., it can be a benefit to be removed because you're not bogged down and swayed by existing politics, and yet it can also be a negative, as you may not fully understand the complexity of the environment and can put your foot in your mouth past the ankle before you even realize you've goofed. As an innie, there are pros and cons as well, and they're often of an opposite nature-you have your finger on the pulse of the politics but you may not command the respect that a consultant's "outsider" status conveys. The biggest thing I miss about being a consultant is being able to "go home" both in the course of the project and at the end of the project. It was fascinating to be able to see, and sometimes even be part of, radically different organizations, as a consultant, knowing that in the end I was associated with my own, comparatively comfortable and particularly well-loved company. It could be bittersweet at the end of long, successful projects, but I've made great contacts and friends from those projects, and it was always fantastic to be able to finish up a project where the personalities hadn't meshed as well and sink back into my own "family" of colleagues. The thing that I'm most looking forward to, as an "innie," is the issue of ownership and follow-through. As a consultant, I frequently left a project after the design phase and before implementation. That impacted the sense of pride and ownership of the final design, as well as the opportunity to influence the implementation process (in essence "eating our own dog food" when design elements that seemed strong on paper or in concept prove weak in action). B&A What are some of the unique challenges financial sites offer? SB: There are several. Security and issues of trust exist on virtually all sites, especially e-commerce sites, but with an online banking environment issues of security are paramount, and security needs that impinge upon the technological back-end supercede other drivers. Another challenge I'm facing is the extremely complex nature of this site due to the fact that Wachovia is the nation's 4th largest bank. We have both "retail" (the personal finance related banking you and I do) and "wholesale" (complex corporate and institutional banking) elements. In addition, Wachovia Securities is our brokerage arm, so from both wholesale and retail perspectives there are brokerage-related issues beyond traditional banking services. For example, our site is supporting both the features you'd find in an online bank and the features you'd find at a site like Schwab or Vanguard. This size and complexity issue leads to a number of impacts. The two most pressing are 1) it is quite hard to accurately define our users and narrow them into discrete personas and 2) it is very challenging to navigate the internal features of the bank (e.g. wanting to default to the bank's organizational structure as the site's organizational structure before gaining clarity as to what the bank's organizational structure is and how it functions). B&A What's the relationship between knowledge management and IA? (if any?) SB: It depends. One thing it depends on is how you define knowledge management. I define knowledge management pretty loosely, first as the pursuit of maximizing your organization's functionality by enhancing communication "Modern" methods of taxonomic classification are attributed to Linnaeus, who introduced his methodology in the 1700's. Linneaus was a botanist, and taxonomy is generally associated with biology and systematics."about and sharing of both tacit and implicit knowledge and second as the process of codifying this into a system/repository. The communication and capture piece may be the most critical aspect of KM, and I don't know how much of a role IA can play in this aspect of KM. When it comes to codifying knowledge into a system, of course, IA will play a critical role in creating an information system that functions as well as it can. B&A Can you tell me the difference between metadata and keywords? SB: Metadata, at its broadest, is descriptive information about information. In the traditional library world, metadata is most commonly thought of as the big 3 from the traditional card (now online) catalog: Author, Title, Subject. But there are other fields as well-year published, publisher, shelf list number (administrative info for the library). In the online world, we use metadata for administrative purposes (to know when a document is "stale" and needs to be updated or deleted or to know the nature of a file so we know if we have the correct software to open it) and for retrieval purposes (the subject or keyword). There are roughly 3 kinds of ways to think about, or classify, metadata:

Intrinsic - information that can be extracted directly from an object (e.g., file name, size)
Administrative/Management - information used to manage the document (e.g., author, date created, date to be reviewed)
Descriptive - information that describes the object (e.g. title, subject, audience)

So, metadata can be quite varied-it may support retrieval (author, title, subject), it may support administration (call number, stale date), or both. As you can see, these categories are not mutually exclusive-administrative data could be used for retrieval purposes (if the system supported that usage) and we could debate as to whether "author" was administrative, descriptive or possibly even intrinsic, as with a piece of artwork. That leaves us with keywords-what are they? Well, they're a kind of descriptive metadata, generally describing the nature of the information. Keywords may be extracted directly from the text or they may be extrapolated-selected because they describe the text (subject, topic). The context in which keywords are selected and used is important for this reason. Keywords are by their nature fairly granular-a specific word applied to a specific item, often a narrow subset of a document (like a page or a paragraph), but even this granularity can vary in specificity (e.g., does the keyword describe the element in question specifically or generally?). Keywords are typically used for retrieval, as opposed to for administration. When keywords are applied to html pages-which is generally done for descriptive and retrieval purposes-they are typically applied via a metatag. This may be what has led to some confusion around the difference between metadata and keywords. The metatag fields in HTML were meant to capture all sorts of metadata; and some are used to capture quite a wide array of information. Keyword seems to be the most commonly used/known of the meta field tags. B&A How about the difference between taxonomies and hierarchies? SB: Ah, taxonomies vs. hierarchies. Near and dear to my heart - I've just written an article on the uses (and misuses) of the term "taxonomy." You probably know this, but just in case I'll give a brief history lesson. Taxonomies have been around for a long time - they are hierarchical schemes for classifying things. Aristotle developed a system of classification in 300 BC. "Modern" methods of taxonomic classification are attributed to Linnaeus, who introduced his methodology in the 1700's. Linneaus was a botanist, and taxonomy is generally associated with biology and systematics. Other disciplines have borrowed the term taxonomy from the hard sciences to describe their classification systems, so it wasn't a completely novel act when folks working on the Internet stumbled upon it as a good term for describing what they were doing online. I first encountered the term in 1999 while doing some work with Ernst & Young.Management consulting seems to have been enamored of the term in this context early on- and was completely baffled, as I had only been familiar with the term from my biology courses and had never encountered it in my library science/information science work or reading. Doing more exploration, I concluded that when people were talking about taxonomy on the web they were often talking about the traditional LIS definitions for classification schemes, controlled vocabularies, or thesauri. (I went on a brief mission to convince the Argonauts that we should educate our clients about the LIS terms, but it was more or less a failure, so around 2000 I caved and began using the term taxonomy myself. Now, the terms has become so used, I think it has genuine validity of its own on the web.) On the web, we tend to play fast and loose with terminology, and that's true here as well. A strict interpretation of the definition of taxonomy would demand that the scheme be a pure hierarchy with one to one relationships. (Items can be in one place and one place only in the scheme-think of the animal kingdom or a family tree - but I've met people who are very comfortable with the concept of polyhierarchical taxonomy. Polyhierarchy being the concept that something can "live" in more than one place in a hierarchy. The most common example of this is "piano" in a scheme of musical instruments; it is both a stringed instrument and a percussion instrument. Here are a couple definitions: Traditional definition:

"Taxonomy, a sub-field of biology concerned with the classification of organisms according to their differences and similarities, still uses many of Linnaeus' original categories. Today the major categories are kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species." (http://www.ensc.sfu.ca/people/grad/brassard/personal/THESIS/node19.html)

Taxonomy on the web:

"A correlation of the different functional languages used by the enterprise to support a mechanism for navigating and gaining access to the intellectual capital of the enterprise." (One of the more carefully justified definitions of taxonomy comes from research done by Alan Gilchrist and Peter Kibbey of TFPL, a leading taxonomy consulting firm. The definition can be found in the executive summary of the report "Taxonomies for Business: Access and Connectedness in a Wired World." (http://www.tfpl.com/consultancy/taxonomies/_report_/taxonomy_report.html)

B&A What about categories, where do they fit in? SB: Categories are groupings of like elements (often by subject, but also by other criteria, like form). The groupings that make up taxonomies and classification schemes are categories. B&A So where does the thesaurus come in? "Right now it's a very thrilling time - we have a new medium and a new discipline, and a lot of work ahead of us teasing apart what it all means." SB: You won't be surprised to find that I have a classic IA's answer to this question: it depends. :) A thesaurus is an information retrieval tool that excels at making connections between concepts. Information retrieval thesauri are almost the opposite of the way we think of the thesauruses we were introduced to in elementary school. Those thesauri took a word and exploded in outward, so that when we got absolutely sick of writing "brown" we learned that we could substitute the more exotic "sienna." An information retrieval thesaurus at its most basic relationship brings concepts together, grouping and clumping like terms. Subsequently the document that mentions the brown crayon and the separate document that discusses the sienna Crayola are both pulled together in the information system that has a thesaurus applied to it. There are 3 primary relationships that thesauri clarify: equivalent relationships (synonyms, variations; as with brown/sienna above), hierarchical relationships (broader and narrower-or more general and more specific), and associative relationships (related terms). In the classical sense, you only had a thesaurus if all 3 relationships were explicated, but on the Web people have been open to using the word thesaurus when they're talking about just one or two of the relationships. B&A Can you get all these things to work together in some way? SB: Yes! There are a variety of different ways (some of this may be semantic, of course, depending on how strictly you want to interpret the terminology). Here's an example: you might have a site that employed a high level taxonomy or classification scheme (think Yahoo!). If the taxonomy is polyhierarchical, thesaural relationships could be employed as part of the taxonomy (e.g. Movies: see Film). The thesaurus might also be used to show associated relationships for individual records (e.g., Final Fantasy, see also: Japanese anime). A thesaurus could also be used behind the scenes to enhance the search technology-for example, the taxonomy might only display movies and film but the search engine might use the thesaurus to tell the user who searches for "movie" that the results returned were based on documents indexed by the preferred term "film." Conversely, the search engine might also use the thesaurus to create search zones-returning results for searches of "8mm" from the documents indexed as relating to film before the other documents. B&A Does every site need all this stuff? SB: No, definitely not all this stuff. These are concepts that can be leveraged as tools to support classification and retrieval. It's basically the same as with search-not all sites need a search engine, for example. Barring the religious war between Jared & Jakob there is the reality that some sites seem to work quite well without search engines (e.g., Gap.com) while other sites are greatly enhanced by them (e.g., Amazon). But every site needs some of this stuff, perhaps. It's very difficult to have a functional site that doesn't have some kind of approach to organization-usually in the form of a classification scheme-regardless of whether it's a hierarchical taxonomy (a place for everything and everything in one place only), a polyhierarchical taxonomy (a Yahoo!-like scheme where items can be placed in more than one category), or a flat classification scheme (as with the simplest brochure sites), etc. B&A What about software-can you think of software that could benefit from architecting their information? SB: A topic worthy of a book, undoubtedly. When I'm looking at information architecture for content I tend to focus on classification, navigation, labeling and search, and there are certainly aspects of most all of these in software programs. Labeling is a huge issue in the functionality of software products, especially because we tend to be dealing with extremely narrow and deep structures with software. Good labels (even in the form of rollovers for icons) can make a significant difference in the users' ability to understand and use the tools. (An interesting side note here is that generally novice or infrequent users have more success with broad and shallow schemes, something that doesn't tend to work especially well with software interfaces.) B&A What is your dream process for creating an architecture? SB: Dream process, hmmm. Well first it begins with assembling a great team. I'd need to have a sense of the parameters to know what size team to go with, but at Argus we had great success with fairly small teams even for rather significantly sized projects. The best teams are a mix of skills, experience and personality. I tend to be drawn to the bottom-up elements of IA (e.g., content analysis, vocabulary control, indexing, etc.) so I tend to look for people with top-down skills (strategy, heuristics) to balance my approach. After assembling the team, my dream project would have a dream context -clearly defined scope and goals with clients who value information architecture and are prepared to be advocates in their organization (this would be true whether I was an innie or an outtie; there's generally some kind of client and stakeholder who can pave the way). But don't go thinking the dream project would run perfectly smoothly-it would still have enough challenges to keep things interesting. I like projects that are daunting but not impossible. So, let's see: team, clients. Then I'd have the team sit down and hammer out a process that had a mixture of things we were comfortable with/had done before and had a high degree of confidence with and a few things we wanted to try out/experiment with. And once we had a rough road map we'd dive in and do the work. B&A There is a lot of talk about semantic webs and self-organizing systems-automated IA, in other words. Meanwhile our community is talking about getting into Experience Design or getting MBA's... can you see a future where there are no information architects, just machines and people who know what they do? SB: I recently had a conversation with Matt Jones, IA for the BBC (his weblog is http://www.blackbeltjones.com/) about this very topic, in a more here and now way. Matt was arguing that he didn't want information architects at the BBC, he wanted multidisciplinary staff members who were skilled in the discipline of information architecture. I took the position that in a world of ever increasing specialization, coupled with corporate environments that ask people to take on ever more responsibilities, with restricted schedules and budgets, we desperately need an individual in the IA role, both to look out for the IA particular issues and to evangelize. A sort of Lorax role-I am the Information Architect, I speak for the...labeling scheme and the organization structure and the search/browse system and so on and so forth. But that's today, and you're really asking about tomorrow. In the library world there have long been whispers that automation will replace the need for librarians-it was even part of Autonomy's ad campaign a few years ago. I think that there is a human tendency to both intrigue and scare ourselves with the idea that our creations will make us obsolete. And it is true that automation results in dramatic change. However, instead of making librarian's obsolete, my experience has been that technology and automation often tends to replace the routine tasks, leaving the more subtle, often more interesting, challenges to be performed by people. So, in the big picture, I have no doubt that automation and technical developments will change the nature of our work as information architects over time. But people have been bending their minds to the nature and need for organizing information for a long, long time, whether as librarians or records managers or database administrators. Right now it's a very thrilling time-we have a new medium and a new discipline, and a lot of work ahead of us teasing apart what it all means. So, yes, I think our work will evolve and change dramatically, but I don't think the role is going to go away anytime soon. B&A So what is the future of Information Architecture? SB: The gazillion-dollar question that leaves me tongue-tied and tempted to blurt out "heck if I know!" But I think your question about semantic web and self-organizing systems hints at the answer-the immediate future requires stabilizing our role in the academic and business communities and identifying the key challenges and problems that we want to solve in the next 10 years. I think we'll continue to see a weaving of old, new and newer-advancing technology with respected, well understood concepts and evolving thinking. Whatever the future of Information Architecture turns out to be, I'm excited about being part of the work as it unfolds.

Christina Wodtke is the founder of Boxes and Arrows. Her day job is Partner at Carbon IQ, a small user-experience agency in San Francisco, where she designs information architectures and conducts user research in the quest to create more usable, effective and profitable products.

Fear of Design

Christina Wodtke — Sat, 01 Jun 2002 20:08:44 GMT

Not so long ago, on my personal site I posted a little entry on design. And a comment was made: “IA is not design.” This sentence has sat vibrating in my head for months. It speaks of bravado in the face of fear. But why should Information Architects fear design? Every time we make something, we are leaping out of an airplane and all the research in the world is just us packing our parachute carefully. Information Architecture is design. We are afraid to admit it, but IA is surely design as much as Interaction Design is design, Architecture is design, and Engineering is design. In each of these activities we create. The nature of design is to make, with its accompanying activities of refining, organizing and surfacing. We look at the world, we think, we call upon our trained gut and we make something. We then refine that little germ of a design through skills acquired over time, we organize the designs into a consistent whole, and we create a surface to make that whole palatable to the consumer. If you think IA has nothing to do with surfaces, think of labels or navigation structures. We may not always choose the color, but we are deeply concerned with surfaces because they are the final manifestation of our design. Usability is criticism. It looks at the designer's creations and says “I have evaluated on X, Y and Z and found it wanting in A, B and C” Then usability specialists are free to leave the room. They’ve done their piece; they can now sit back and wait for the next creation. It’s valuable, it informs and improves our work, and it’s safe – emotionally—for the practitioner. User research informs design. You learn how people work, how they dream, their desires and fears and habits. A user researcher observes people’s behavior and then they write up a nice report: user x likes this, user y tends to do that. But someone has to make a leap from this information into an actual creation. Someone has to be ballsy enough to say “User Y tends to do that so the button goes HERE.” It’s the same with business analysts, or requirements gathering. However, at some point you have to leave the safe haven of information gathering into the uncertain grounds of design. At some time you have to screw up the courage and make something. Why are we afraid of design? Because if we are designers, we will have to be responsible for our designs. Researchers and critiques can shrug and say, well those are the facts. But designers must stand tall and say, “That was the solution I came up with.” The designer and the design are not so easily separated. It takes an iron grip on one’s ego to take criticism on one’s designs, no matter if it’s a thesaurus or a front page of a website. Crafting a design is an attentive and loving act. It makes one vulnerable, and I suspect some IA’s think that by donning Jesse James Garrett’s Lab Coats , they can trick themselves into separating themselves from the design and getting emotional distance. “I have studied this problem at great length and the solution is indicated by the data.” My design is perfect. Bullhockey. The web is too new—heck, software design is too new—for us to say there is a clear and easy answer when we design. Every time we make something, we are leaping out of an airplane and all the research in the world is just us packing our parachute carefully. The landing will still be felt. Graphic designers have fought this vertigo for years. They’ve learned to articulate a defense for their design in presentations, they learn to explain their rationale in hopes of slowing the free-fall and they even have protective gear for when they jump (lately seen outside a flash conference: a gaggle of designers all in horn-rim glasses and Italian shoes). But they know and I know that bad landings happen. Designers get pulled off projects and their ego is bruised. Feeling hurt is how they should feel. If their ego wasn’t bruised, they weren’t trying hard enough. Professionalism means they don’t show it, but if they are good designers, they care. And caring means feeling pain sometimes. So are we, designers of digital experiences, architects of information, ready to take on that potential pain in order to make good work? Are we ready to take in information, but not hide behind it? Will we be responsible for our creations, will we to put our ego in the plane? Do we have the courage to design?

Leaving the Autoroute

Christina Wodtke — Thu, 31 Oct 2002 21:05:15 GMT

I recently had the pleasure of traveling across France via autoroute. In the past, my husband and I had taken all backroads for our adventures, but on this trip we need to get from one in-law to the next in a day, and the autoroute was the ticket. The vast expanses of French countryside are gorgeous and remarkably varied—rolling hills and grassy fields becoming bluffs and cliffs; vineyards become cornfields then become sunflower fields; all punctuated by signs proclaiming the next town. The signs caught my eye. Unlike America, where a sign just has the town name, here each name was accompanied by an illustration of the things for which the town was famous: one town is famous for mustard, one town for knives, one for nougat, one for a type of melon… the first time I saw this I laughed. The idea of a town devoting itself to nougat seemed a bit absurd. But specialization has power. The nougat of Montelimar can be found all over France and is known to be the best. Laguiole is recognized as making fine knives not only in France, but around the world. Everyone knows the mustard from the city of Dijon. By committing all their attention to a single craft, often literally over hundreds of years, each town has received the renown that comes with great work. But what happens when you leave the autoroute, lured by one of those signs proclaiming the town’s mastery and claim to fame? You find a town—a butcher, a baker, a pastry shop, a pharmacy. Little gray-haired ladies with their baskets heading for shops, men sitting in the café with a glass of Pastis or playing Petanque in the park. Mothers shopping, pushing baby carriages, tourists eating in overpriced cafes with English menus, a church still frequented by worshippers as well as chubby tourists… in other words, each town has all the things a town must have to be a town. Laguiole has its share of knife-shops, but overall it is still a town and supports the inhabitants that give it life. The knife-maker has a place to eat and drink, work and worship, as well as to see friends for a drink and a game of Petanque. Moreover, as he watches the butcher cut a steak from a side of beef or a pastry chef slice apart a cake, he knows more about what a knife should be. So, other than a chance to reminisce (ah, the oysters of Gujan-Mestras, the macaroons of St. Emilion, the cannelles of Bordeux) what does this mean for us, practitioners of the young and unrefined craft of designing digital systems? What the heck are you raving about, Wodtke? Simply that the passionate debates over specialization vs. generalization are a false dichotomy, and are not serving us. It’s not vs, but and that we should be using. Designers who know nothing of html or image optimization, usability experts preaching without even a basic knowledge of design principles, information architects and interaction designers who don’t understand each others’ skills are weakening themselves, as Laguiole would, if it closed its pharmacy for another knife shop. The health of your craft comes from a rich broad base of knowledge. Recently a well-known usability expert discovered a clue to improving his own site from a web design list. This tip was one of the most basic pieces of design knowledge you learn when you begin to study design. Yet, this specialist didn’t know it—and moreover, it hurt the usability of product because he was not well rounded. Usability sites are notorious in the crudeness of the design, design sites for their lack of usability. Sites by engineers often miss both, while sites without an engineer’s knowledge load slowly and are buggy. It’s not enough to be a specialist—as they say, when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. You have to have a broad grounding in the related fields along with a deep understanding of your area of specialization. IBM calls these folks T-shaped people, and seeks them out when hiring time rolls around. Moreover the world beyond our craft teaches us our craft. Poetry informed my ability to be an information architect—you learn about the subtle nuances each word carries and to craft phrases to ensnare your readers’ emotions. This knowledge informs labeling choices of course, but also the more delicate arts of contextual messaging and categorization. Cooking and collecting cookbooks impart a great deal of insight into what makes instructions succeed or fail; travel has taught me to question my most basic assumptions about user behavior. I have also cracked a few O’Reilly books and learned basic coding, I have spent time in usability labs learning from users and the researchers who can interpret what that means, I spend time at designer’s elbows asking them to explain color, line and form, I read business tracts — all have had a direct and immense effect on my skill at Information Architecture and Interaction Design. I don’t consider myself a master-craftsman, but I know that if I wish to become one, it means attending to not just my specific skillset, but to the world in which it resides. You can’t be in expert in everything, obviously. But you can make sure you have enough knowledge to appreciate the craftspeople you work with. So designers, take “Introduction to programming” at the local college. Engineers, attend all the usability sessions and watch what those crazy users do. Usability folks, go read Robin Williams “The Non-Designers Design Book” at least. If you dream of being an expert, read the Sunday paper cover to cover, from business section to comics page and then read a peer-review journal. Take a painting class, study yoga, cook a complicated meal. Learn from your coworkers, and learn from your friends. Specialize, but remember to be a human being as well. And someday you may be as famous as the mustard of Dijon.

Prognostication Digitalis

Christina Wodtke — Wed, 01 Jan 2003 21:20:11 GMT

Boxes and Arrows was born in 2002. We came into the world in March like a lion, and swore to write about “what we do” even though we couldn't agree what that was or what to call it. Like art or porn, we agreed we knew it when we saw it, and that was good enough. As the year unfolded, we discovered “it” was strategy and practice, design and evaluation, and most of all understanding and empathy for users and business. We definitely design, but we design more than just an interface or just a sitemap. We discovered we need a vast variety of skills to do our jobs well. And we need to do our jobs well to survive. 2002 was the year the rubber hit the road. Cutbacks hit companies hard across the world, and everyone struggled to justify their existence. Some new media professions and techniques disappeared almost completely; others became part the standard design practice. 1997 to 2001 was our digital childhood, but now we are clearly in our adolescence—immature, cantankerous, argumentative, but also passionate, hopeful, and determined. So now we stand poised to dive into 2003. What will this year hold for the profession known as “what we do” and its children, information architecture, usability, interaction design, interface design, and graphic design? What will it hold for our favored media, the digital world? Boxes and Arrows asked our authors to hazard a guess. Here's what they came up with. Dan Brown predicts: Information architecture will be in high demand in the federal government, which faces information-sharing challenges with the Homeland Security “merger,” and information findability challenges as implied in the new e-Government Act of 2002. Information architecture, therefore, will play a prominent role in eGov conferences. The federal government might even recognize an official Information Architecture role in the Office of e-Government. There will be at least one course on information architecture in every major university in the world. The number of books specifically on information architecture (a la Polar Bear and Blueprints, et al) will double. On the other hand: No standard will emerge for information architecture deliverables. The concepts are too varied, the field too dispersed, and the practitioners too spread out to achieve any sort of unity. This prediction won't come true only if the information architecture community can find a unified voice. Nate Burgos predicts: Like the advancement of Internet2, there will be the advancement of Blog2. More serial narratives, a la comic books and graphic novels, will be established on the Internet as the culture of online literary audiences grows. Reacting to global causes and conflicts, there will be an increased wave of socially entrepreneurial web presences. The nomenclature of visual communication will increase. Earl Morrogh predicts: I predict that in 2003 the subject of the emerging profession of information architecture will be picked up and reported on by at least one of the major television news networks. The report will include clips from an interview with either Christina Wodtke, Peter Morville, or Louis Rosenfeld. I also predict that in 2003 there will be at least one newsworthy lawsuit served by a major retailer against a website design agency (or individual information architect) for a site design that fails to meet their return on investment expectations because of performance-related issues. Scott Berkun predicts: We'll realize that the names used to define what we do (UX/IA/UI/design/usabililty) are less important, compared to the impact we have on customers and businesses, and the positive effect we can have helping each other, when we manage to ignore those names and focus on the impact of the work. Adam Greenfield predicts: In 2003, some members of our community—which tends to be populated by highly principled and ethical sorts—will be forced to confront their feelings regarding the political uses to which our work can be put. Will they, for example, improve the findability of suspect records in “homeland security” databases, or design simplified interfaces to surveillance systems? Steve Fleckenstein predicts: The most awesome IA challenge ever will surface in 2003, and most professionals in the field won't even hear about it. The people in charge of the Department of Homeland Security's website will have to contend with a merger of 22 separate agencies, page counts in the millions, hundreds of content owners, hundreds of web developers, dozens of contractors, a multitude of technical environments, and an extremely large and diverse user base (literally, the entire population of the U.S., along with tens of thousands of businesses and government agencies). Jeff Lash predicts: 2003 will be the year of wireless. Wireless networks in homes, businesses, and public and common spaces will be increasingly popular, and cheaper service plans for mobile phones and PDAs will drive the development of usable and useful wireless-based applications. The increase in the number of web applications and web services will highlight the need for standards for distributed information architecture. With more desktop software applications connecting to the Internet to obtain, upload, and share files and information, interaction designers will need to design conceptual models for this new line of “webware” that blurs the line between traditional software and web applications. David Heller predicts: Instant Messaging will enter the enterprise as a true collaboration tool, as opposed to a distraction that is stopped at the firewall. Tablet PCs (especially laptop/tablet hybrids) take more market share from laptops. The Content Management Systems (CMS) market is going to thin out as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle take bigger chunks of the enterprise market, forcing previous enterprise vendors to find space in the middle tier. Dan Saffer predicts: As the word about our discipline(s) continues to spread, more companies, established and startup, will begin hiring in-house IAs. Transportation systems, military applications, biomedical systems, gaming, PDA/phone/wireless applications, and financial services will be the areas where the most interactive work will occur. Several IAs will get drunk in Portland. Elan Freydenson predicts: Phone companies will realize snapping and emailing photos from cell phones is the next killer mobile data hog. Flash will still not be the web client of choice for highly interactive applications. Hopeful: Cell phone manufacturers will finally realize that they need to make hands-free use much more usable, starting all the way from connecting the headset (cordless or otherwise) to redialing a lost connection to dialing with spoken digits ("call 2015553434"). And I’ll play the game too—Christina Wodtke predicts: Information architecture as a skillset will become ubiquitous—any company making websites will have people who practice it. Information architects however, will remain relatively rare, and be hired mostly as consultants for major content restructuring. The people in companies doing IA will be visual designers and interaction designers, product managers, database modelers, programmers, webmasters, and editors. Design teams will start remembering they have to hire writers. “Findability” will begin to be part of the business vocabulary along with usability and understandability, but not until the end of 2003, where it will be mentioned in a magazine such as CIO or Fast Company. Knowledge management and information architecture will recognize each other as kin and begin intense collaborative efforts, both informally and formally. The SIGIA list will either collapse under the weight of annoying squabbling, or become fiercely moderated. Meanwhile, an exciting new interaction design list will pop-up… somewhere… A company delivering films online will grow popular among the high-bandwidth set for its excellent findability and usability, allowing the film industry to avoid being cannibalized by pirating. Meanwhile, the music industry will continue to slit their own throats by not figuring out how to deliver music to their users in a satisfying fashion. However, the independent music labels will figure it out. Somebody will finally write a readable book on controlled vocabularies. Somebody else will come up with a formula for ROI of Design and Information Architecture. Somebody else still will start selling prepackaged taxonomies. ...and that is all my Magic 8-Ball will tell me. Next year, hopefully we can all check in and see how many we got right, and how many we got wrong. And now I dare you: what are your predictions for 2003?

Happy Birthday B&A

Christina Wodtke — Sat, 01 Mar 2003 21:43:45 GMT

“Boxes and Arrows was formed to break that code of silence, “dedicated to discussing, improving and promoting the work of this community, through the sharing of exemplary technique, innovation and informed opinion.” I think we're making some progress.”Welcome to Boxes and Arrows...wait, is it a year already? Holy cow! Well, happy anniversary! I am incredibly proud and amazed at what this little zine has accomplished in providing a space for information sharing. A quick look around reveals that we've got 111 articles, 84 authors, and already over 1,149 comments at the time of this writing. Holy cow, redux. Moreover, Boxes and Arrows sports an impressive range of articles for beginners to experts, written by some of the best minds in Design today—both known and unknown. When I read the succinctly written introduction to key first principals like Visible Narratives, or learn about an advanced technique never-before shared, like free listing, I get a frisson of joy. (And that's just last month!) Sometimes lately in our profession, it seems like we are treading water, reinventing the wheel, going in circles—whoops, there I go. Boxes and Arrows seems to be apart from that (except for an occasional passionate thread in the discussion page). Paula Thornton, interaction design strategist, referred to us as "the community's water cooler," where designers gather to discuss what works for them. I believe these discussions are key to our profession's survival and advancement. In the late nineties, we kept every innovation secret, as if the way we did a wireframe was the key to our companies survival...yet all it resulted in was thrashing—and the secrets eventually got out as people changed companies and shared what they knew with their new groups. Boxes and Arrows was formed to break that code of silence, “dedicated to discussing, improving and promoting the work of this community, through the sharing of exemplary technique, innovation and informed opinion.” I think we're making some progress. Some fun facts about B&A

It was originally designed to be a magazine for Information Architecture. I'm glad it's not just IA.
Yes, it was started after a three-dollar bottle of pinot grigio was consumed in the sun.
I was going to be happy if it lasted six months.
During pre-launch, the staff fought passionately over the definitions of IA, Design and many other topics. Yep, we do it too.
Gabe Zentall of Carbon IQ designed our lovely site, and yes, we fought bitterly, changed our minds and vacillated until he was driven to distraction. Yep we did that as well.
Hacking Movabletype to use as our CMS was not necessarily the wisest course of action for us, but it seems to be working out. There is a market out there for a CMS for small magazines, I swear...
“Publisher” at B&A means you pay the ISP, debug Movabletype every so often and occasionally send hysterical email.
“Technologist” means answering a percentage of those hysterical emails. Thanks Jay and Josh.
“Editor” means you do almost everything else. The editors of B&A are Boxes and Arrows. Many folks don't realize what editing does for writing, but let me tell you the reason B&A is more coherent than a collection of blogs is because of these hard working folks.

So, much love to the current editorial staff: Christy, Liz, Lara, Brenda, Ryan, and the queen bee visionary, heroine of a Chief Editor who makes this rag come out twice a month, Erin Malone. If you love this magazine, send them a thank you. They do it for free in their precious off hours. Also special love to the midwife editor, George Olsen, without whom we probably wouldn't have gone live in the first place. And if I'm giving thanks, thanks to all who made this possible, both past staff and current. You did good. Finally, thanks to the authors past and future who are the very soul of this endeavor. Writing is painful, sharing your knowledge risky, yet you put yourself out there and I am grateful. You make me look forward to Tuesdays. p.s. B&A is having a gathering at the IA summit after the events on Saturday (we'll put up a flyer with the exact details). Meet us in the bar, chat with other readers, authors, the editors and, of course, myself. See you there!

Building a Vision of Design Success

Christina Wodtke — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 21:28:25 GMT

“Alone, the pain that triggers a redesign is not enough of a guide to build something useful to the company. You have to build a shared vision.”

Vision

In the last year I’ve been at Yahoo!, I’ve had the pleasure of participating in three redesigns. They have all gone rather well, though through conversations with colleagues, I’ve come to understand this is not always common. Redesigns are as often crucibles of group anguish as they are opportunities for invention and rebirth. In the entirety of my career, I’ve definitely seen both. So what is the difference that allows one redesign to work and another to turn into months of tail chasing? Fortunately I’ve been part of several post-mortems as well, and I think the key difference is vision. A redesign has some built-in advantages over everyday maintenance; the most useful being focus. And focus is the loam that allows a shared vision to grow. A group chooses to redesign typically because the site is no longer working, and the pain of the site not working is greater than the pain of stopping business as usual and entering into an expensive and emotional project. But once committed, you have to move the project from reactive (something is broken) to proactive (we’re going to build something great). Alone, the pain that triggers a redesign is not enough of a guide to build something useful to the company. You have to build a shared vision.

Shared Vision

A common view of vision is that it’s something handed down by a leader to the troops. When a redesign goes awry, the troops complain, “There was no vision.” Sometimes there was a vision, but the leader didn’t communicate it, or more commonly, no one bought into it. Then the leader complains the troops didn’t obey. But the problem goes deeper than either scenario; the problem is that there was no shared vision. A shared vision is born of collaborative conversations, articulated in a form that is digestible and memorable, and then internalized and personalized by every member of the team. The power of the shared vision is that it is shared—it is held within every member of the team (or organization) and thus needs no leader to carry it forward; every action of the team helps make the vision real. Success, all starts in the way the vision is birthed. A vision can come initially from one of two places: the leader can create it or recognize it. It’s another fallacy that folks think leaders must be the source of all ideas—they don’t. A great leader should be just as capable of recognizing an idea as well as dreaming one up—in fact, more the first, which is more scalable. So: a leader has either come up with an idea (the current site doesn’t allow us to realize a new business model; we need to redo it) or may recognize one (our usage numbers are in decline—marketing says people think we don’t have what they want; user research says it’s hard to find anything on the site, I just read this article on findability—hmm, I wonder if there is something there). This germ of a vision is the proto-vision. To get the proto-vision to a vision, the leader needs to feel comfortable shopping around the proto-vision. When you shop around the proto-vision, you have numerous one-on-one or small-group conversations about the proto-vision with as many people with different viewpoints as is feasible. Again, this is often hard for new leaders, who think they have to be the single resource of all wisdom. More seasoned leaders are eager to do this, as the act of shopping around the vision sets the foundation for a shared vision. It also makes the vision stronger, as it roots out biases arising from a single point of view. Finally, the initial vocalized reason for the redesign is often not a good vision. Let’s say you redesign because your navigation system isn’t scalable. That’s the pain-point that kicks off the work, but is that a guiding force to lead you to a great product? You’ll need to deconstruct “our navigation isn’t scalable” into “we offer the greatest collection of independent movies in the world, easy to find, easy to watch, easy to share” (for example).

Look both ways

Let’s assume, for whatever reason, you will be shaping the shared vision. Maybe you are the leader, or maybe the leader hasn’t provided enough of a vision to make you confident in your project, and you are going to lend a hand shaping the vision. To shape the proto-vision into a vision, you’ll need to do some interviewing. I usually select the people who will help me shape a vision using a few criteria: domain expertise, intelligence, system thinkers and open-mindedness. I always do these in one-on-one discussions. This avoids group think, and I find I can help people speak more honestly if there isn’t any sort of audience. The conversation covers three topics: looking backward, looking forward, and finally, the protovision. To look backward, I find it useful to use Peter Senge’s Five Why’s. This is a very simple technique in which you ask why, and when you get a response, you ask why again. It helps you move from specific issues to uncovering larger underlying problems. For example, let’s say you are the head of user research: Me: Why do you think we should do a redesign? You: Because people can’t find anything. Me: Why can’t they find anything? You: The navigation isn’t intuitive. Me: Why isn’t it intuitive? You: We didn’t do any user research when we designed it, just usability after. Me: Why is that? You: Well, our budget was cut… Me: Oh? (which is what I say when I’m tired of “why”…) You: Well, the company doesn’t seem to value getting user feedback. From this short conversation, I’ve learned several things. The user researcher thinks findability is a key problem, and he thinks research would help, and he feels we don’t invest in it. I can return to any of the places where I asked way, and take a different branch to find out more. I could ask “What makes you think the site isn’t intuitive” to learn more about the site problems, I could ask more about “Why you thought that usability wasn’t enough,” or could continue digging out why the company doesn’t think user research is important or I can spend another five whys finding out if user feedback is valuable and why. To be thorough, I’d probably dig through them all. I’ll finish up the conversation by asking many of the classic pre-design questions, which allows me to look forward: why are we doing this design now? What are the opportunities? What will make this project a success? What would success look like? Later, when I walk through my notes, I’ll be trying to find the concrete problems and positive aspirations. The concrete problems will go into my redesign plan, the positive aspirations are fuel for the vision. My sets of questions would probably lead me to moments of both: “Our site isn’t easy enough to use—our users say they want to be able to find and rent a movie quickly, because they are often doing it at work.” From here speed and ease arise. “Our users are sick of all the blockbusters they can get at the local store; they want to find movies they’ve never seen before.” From here comprehensiveness or unique collections arise as an aspiration. As you get to your fifth and sixth conversations, you’ll find you start to have a more defined set of aspirations for your proto-vision which you can use as foil for your discussions: Me: Do you think we need to offer access to every movie on the net? You (business leader): No, I think we are positioning ourselves as an alternative to Netflix—it’s more critical to be comprehensive on independent movies. Me: Hmm—can you tell me more? (another why alternative) You: It’s an underserved market—we can build our strengths there before trying to get share from the big guys. Me: What does it take to satisfy this market? You: Better talk to Sally in research, if I recall right she said it’s going to take 500,000 films to appear useful. Me: With so many films, how can anyone find anything? You: Well, that’s your problem… Me: But it needs solving? You think we need to make sure the site is easy to use? You: You bet—we’ve got to satisfy this market; they influence others. I’ve now gotten a more senior individual to voice his belief that a large selection that is easy to access, is a goal critical to the redesign. Even though his original kickoff to the redesign might have been about navigation, he has now revealed and/or bought into the larger vision to provide user satisfaction, built on ease of access and selection. You may think this technique is a consultant’s tool, but even though I’m in-house, I still go forward asking these questions. Just because I think I know the answers doesn’t mean my answers are right. Let’s say I thought we planned to offer every movie ever made—I’d discover I was wrong. Moreover, these conversations tie us together in our inquiry, giving us an infrastructure of shared knowledge that will lead to shared vision. These conversations can be quite delicate and require one to have a certain amount of skill in interviewing. It’s critical you do not lead the conversations with your ideas and that when you introduce elements of your proto-vision you are doing so in a way that tests the concepts and builds shared vision, rather than trying to get a quick buy-in (which will bite you in the patootie later). User researchers are excellent in subtle interviewing techniques; if you haven’t got the skills, you may want to go to a researcher for coaching, take a class or read a book (some resources listed below).

Digest, and articulate

At the end of each conversation, you have hopefully noticed some common themes. If you didn’t, you went through your notes and pulled them out. Then you took the themes to the next conversation, as you worked your way across disciplines and up and down the hierarchy. Maybe there have been three conversations, maybe there are ten, maybe they were all a tidy hour, maybe some of them were five minutes in the cafeteria…but you should now have what you need. You have a collection of critical aspirations for the site. Now take a pass with your user base. In the past, I’ve successfully used a variation of an older technique which involves word-importance. You take a set of 100 words/two word phrases that represent qualities of products you offer and have a larger sample of users pick ten to fifteen of the ones that matter to a (mail, shopping, research) site. For each product, replace some of the words in your standard list with ones that are relevant to the product—in this case, your redesign. For example, a news site might need the word authoritative, a personals site might replace that with warm. Next you ask the users to rank them in order of importance. When you analyze this survey, you should see five words rise to the top—these will become touchstones for your work. You can also later use these words at the end of a usability evaluation (on a scale of 1-5 how authoritative was this site?) or to test visual comps in surveys. At Yahoo!, we print them and hang them in our war rooms to provide focus. Once you have the words from users, and the interviews, you can see if they don’t match. God help you if they are completely different. Odds are good, though, there will be a fair amount of overlap, and a bit of nudging will ferret out a set of final qualities, valued by business thatusers also aim for. If time is an issue, you can do this at the same time you are still conducting interviews. If you don’t have access to large user numbers, I recommend skipping this exercise and using a different concept testing technique. And shocking as it may be, you may not get to have user input at all—in this case, hold as many interviews, with as many folks as you can, and include a few target users by going to the mall or asking questions on web bulletin boards. Honestly, you may even find you are forced to begin to design with the final vision unformed…it happens. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue to push toward a vision: a vision coalesced halfway through a redesign is still better than no vision. Now take the time to articulate the complex vision made up of proto-vision and the user and business knowledge you are holding in your head into a simple vision—preferably one sentence. This will be hard, it’s almost like creating a mission statement. However, it’s not a vision for a whole company, so don’t kill yourself. Just get to a simple, clear sentence or phrase that is the essence of what you are striving to accomplish. I’ve seen redesigns driven by even the simplest set of words, provided they are the right words. What is critical, is that it captures the essence of what you hope to accomplish, collectively.

Market the vision

Now that you have your vision seed, you are going to do almost the opposite of what you have been doing. So far you’ve taken as many diverse elements as possible and boiled them down to the essence. Now you have to take that essence and make it accessible for the folks who will hear your vision. You have to articulate what that vision means—for example, if fast is a part of the vision, it’s worth it to clearly articulate that you mean, fast loading (for engineers to concentrate on optimizing on the server-side and designers to avoid graphics) , the illusion of fast downloading (for your web developers, so they can look into things like progressive rendering) and fast-to-scan (for your designers, to concentrate on clarity). Next you need to market this eloquent vision. Some potential forms for this include:

PowerPoint presentations: The first sentence of the vision is the first slide, and then you go on to explain what the meaning of the vision is, what the aspects of the vision are, why this is the right vision and what it takes to get to it.
Posters: We’ve used posters as a great tool to keep the vision in front of our eyes as we work. The poster consists of a simple strong image capturing the essence of the vision, with words or phrases elaborating the vision around it.

Simpler than a poster, you can print out the vision statement in a large font and hang it up in every cube, in every meeting room, and in the war room.
Memes: These are catchy phrases that hold a single key concept. You use them while reviewing work to hold the work accountable to the vision. If an aspect of the vision is speed, embodied in a fast download, then a meme might be “Every pixel has a job to do.” A catchy phrase is a godsend for keeping everyone focused…if you’ve got someone on your team with a talent for a turn of phrase, use them. If your memes are catchy enough, they’ll be internalized and every act of creation will be in context of these simple instantiations of the vision.

Not only do these techniques communicate the vision to those who did not help create it, but also act as a reminder of a shared vision to those who did. In the hectic day-to-day madness that accompanies any large project, reminders of a shared vision are invaluable.

In praise of vision

In a redesign, a vision can be the difference between a clear, cohesive design and a hodgepodge of various stakeholders’ urges. In the worst case, it can produce a work so inferior to the original that months are lost when the work is scrapped. Or it’s launched and customers flee in droves. In our working life, there are many things we do without a vision. And we do the work like a zombie, without our heart, or we do it passionately, but at odds with the larger goals of the company. But if we incorporate vision into our work, our work is more targeted, more effective and more meaningful. A status report becomes a tale of getting closer to a dream; a banner ad becomes a promise of delight to a customer that is fulfilled upon a website visit. This is just a simplified version of the techniques my colleagues and I have used to capture a vision to ensure a successful design process—you are welcome to expand, embellish, reduce and streamline it for your own purposes. Just remember: the vision must be clear, meaningful and shared. A top-down vision that is not owned and internalized by all members of the team is not a vision at all, but a wish. And if wishes were horses…

On shared vision: The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385260954/ref=nosim/boxesandarrows-20
On visioning: The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385267320/ref=nosim/boxesandarrows-20
On research techniques: Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by Mike Kuniavsky http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1558609237/ref=nosim/boxesandarrows-20

Terrible Twos

Christina Wodtke — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 23:40:01 GMT

Little Boxia has just turned two! Look how proud she stands, barely wobbling at all! See how she toddles around, smearing food on the walls! So independent, so curious and wait… did she just say “no!”? No, no, no! Here they come… the terrible twos.

As we celebrate Boxes and Arrows’ second birthday with pride, I find myself looking at our profession as well. As a manager of designers and as a member of the community, I am struck time and time again at how timid and uncertain so many designers are. It doesn’t matter if they are information architects, graphic designers, or interaction designers; a pervasive feeling of fraud floats through the air. “What if they don’t believe me,” “I need data,” “What have I got to offer?” Around dear Boxia’s birth, Jesse James Garrett accused the community of dressing up in lab coats to try to pass for a professional. To this day I see designers reaching for data like a thug reaches for a baseball bat before entering a street fight. The research they want to do is not to learn, but to win arguments. This is, of course, bad for design and bad for research.

How do you become confident? How do you stand up in a room with senior vice presidents, directors of marketing and …shudder… engineers and explain why you didn’t color in the napkin-wireframe they drew over lunch, but rather, that you decided to design? You have to make sure you are as professional as the professional you are.

Know your shit. Make sure you have the education you need. This is a combination of school learning, keeping up-to-date with periodicals and books on your subject of expertise, and real-world experience. This is probably the toughest for young designers. The solution though, is to read like a crazy person, talk to every senior designer you know about the work you are doing and learn from their experience, and work as much as you can, through freelancing and volunteering.

Think it through. If you haven’t thought through every bit of your design, you’ll get a kick-in-the-rear when you present your ideas. It doesn’t mean you have to be hyper-analytical while you design, but it does mean you set aside an hour or two before you present and do a heuristic analysis of your own work (or get a peer to do it). Walk through the entire solution and look for flaws. Categorize them into:
- “I will fix”
- “I won’t fix because…”
- “It could be a bad solution, but I don’t think so because…”
- “I don’t know”
Now when these issues are brought up in the presentation, you won’t trip up, you won’t lose your confidence. You’ll calmly explain that “Yes, very perceptive, I have so and so working on it,” “I’d like to, but this is the phase one solution, it’s all we have time for,” “I do see your point, but have you considered this?” and your secret weapon, “You know, I’ve been pondering over that—what do you think?” Why is this the secret weapon? Nothing shows confidence more than the willingness to admit you don’t have all the answers. Admitting you don’t have an answer always trumps bullshit.

By treating the folks you are presenting to as members of your team—equals with unique insights that match your own—you reach two goals: ending conflict while shoring up your own sense of place in the project and your value therein. You also message that to the other members of the team.

This is my final bit of advice:

Psych yourself up. I’m really not an affirmations type of gal, I’m more of a “Let’s go get beer and a pizza and see if there is some brilliant insight that comes from sausage and mushrooms.” Maybe it’s my years in California, but before a really tough meeting, I’ll sit quietly at my desk for five minutes and say to myself “You know your sht, you’ve done your homework, you’ve been doing this long enough, you are a smart cookie, you won’t say anything dumb, you will listen closely, everyone in there is on your side, we all want the same thing, you will be great. You will be great. You will be great.”

Sounds goofy, I know. I hope my family back in Iowa never reads this. But it works. You have to believe in yourself before you can get anyone else to.

At the IA summit I stated in the five-minute madness, “You win more arguments with will than with data” and it’s true. It’s all about giving up the lab coats and showing off our own design raiment.

So what has this got to do with our little Boxia’s birthday?

As a human, you enter your second year of life becoming more confident. Less obedient. More freethinking (as well as freestanding) and you often tell people “no.”

“No” takes some courage to say. It means you have realized your world view is as valid as your parents. And it’s a critically important moment in anyone’s life, be it B&A, the design profession or your own life.

Boxes and Arrows will continue standing tall, fleshing out ideas, not talking down to folks, exploring new approaches—even if unpopular, and saying “no” when saying “no” is the right thing to do.

We recommend you do so too.

*At the summit each year, the conference closes by letting anyone walk up to the microphone speak their mind. It’s called “five minute madness” and this year it included a woman singing “You Light Up My Life”, a man praising his Treo as an example of a future without limits, and another who lambasted the SIGIA list as a blight on the firmament. Madness indeed.

Redesigning Boxes and Arrows

Christina Wodtke — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 22:14:38 GMT

“If the devil is in the details, it was very clear that angels live there also.”

For a while we at B&A have been feeling unsatisfied with our software and website. It was perfect when we were young turks, but now that we have a larger body of articles, increasingly richer material, and a growing audience, we realized we need something different, something that will tell the world we are a magazine on the rise. We could have redesigned ourselves, but we felt our community is one of our biggest assets, so we turned to them to help us envision our next generation of the website. We got many entrants, often fascinating, sometimes surprising, sometimes strange, all intriguing. Some folks ignored our request to not design in the blog mode. We can only assume that this design is so prevalent that it has embedded itself in people's minds. Others think of us as a blog, because we are on Movable Type's excellent software. But we are not a blog: we embrace multiple points of view from multiple authors, we are edited, and topical. All we share with blogs, other than software, is chronological organization. And that has led us to the desire to really stand tall with other magazines who put the same editorial love into their bodies of content as we do. And by re-designing we wanted to strongly message “we are a magazine.” One thing we were deeply surprised by, was how often a design might be overall excellent (or sometimes mediocre), and then would have a tiny corner of extraordinariness. Sometimes it was something as small as the treatment of the swag, or an approach to a navigation scheme, or the text resizing tools. If the devil is in the details, it was very clear that angels live there also. Often we found ourselves wishing we could Chinese menu across multiple designers, because there were so many different lovely moments. Our judges lent a fascinating insight into the designs as well—an expert on usability would opine on the IA, or an IA remark on beauty. We may specialize, but the gestalt of a design is what we all respond to. We also asked our staff to add their two cents, because the folks who use their precious spare time to make this magazine great, could not be ignored. So what's next, now that we've got our winners? Well, none of the designs are perfect in the first shot for our needs. This can't be surprising to anyone; a great design always comes from conversations between the client and the designer. So we'll move forward, and ask our winner to work with us to get to the right instantiation of the design, as we continue to evaluate our content management system and publishing engine. Don't expect this slow caterpillar to be a butterfly overnight, but do expect a new look in 2005… So here they are, our winners!

The Winning Entry

The winner! And champion of battle Boxes and Arrows!
by Alex Chang and Matt Titchener from April3rd.com. | | The judges said “This is a clean, light design that works well. Color and type are used to reinforce visual hierarchy in a meaningful way. Screen real estate is allocated in a way to support hierarchy as well.” “This one uses the structure of the grid and palette to its advantage. It is not very efficient with its use of space. I like the effort at leaving some breathing room on the page”
The first prize winner will receive a set of professional books from the fine publishers at PeachPit Press and software from Adobe! We'll be contacting the winner to begin work on refining the design to give you a new and exciting Boxes and Arrows!

Runners Up

The silver goes to Sarah Doody | | Judges say “The colors are nice and unique. It's very differentiable and, at the same time, feels very professional without feeling too academic.” And finally, the bronze goes to the design team at Behavior Design | | This winner was not in the original final running, because of its blog-based design. However, it was so lovely and well executed, it caught the judges eye and pulled ahead to grab the bronze medal! And special mentions go to Brandon Satanek
Not only did he submit two entries, but they both were in our top 5 favorites. | | | | A final honorary "best alternative to lorem ipsum" which had us giggling everytime we reviewed the comps, goes to William Lamson. | | | We give this design a special mention because of the clever titles and lead-ins used in the layouts. We felt the judges would enjoy them as much as we did.

Overall Thanks

Most of all we want to thank all the folks who took the time to design a new look for Boxes and Arrows, and who waited patiently while we made our decisions. This was an extremely difficult task. I think we were all surprised at how hard it would be to make a final call. All were wonderful—check the full set of entries out for yourself! We especially want to give a special thanks to our judges, who took time out of their busy schedules to help us choose our winner.

Thanks all!

Under the Boxes-and-Arrows hood

Christina Wodtke, Liz Danzico — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 19:16:10 GMT

Boxes and Arrows started as a lunchtime conversation, a whim shared by two colleagues pondering the emerging disciplines the web bubble had produced. Before long, it grew up into a respectable magazine (although we still won’t admit that in public) with professionals around the world contributing content that matters to them. We’ve already made a difference.

As an editorial team, we thank you. We think about you all the time, in fact, and enjoy working with you. But now there are so many of you. And you have such brilliant ideas. That’s why we’ve decided to give the magazine to you, in part.

Starting today, you’ll begin to see some changes. While the editorial team will still maintain the tone and consistency of B&A, you’re now officially invited to be part of the process.

Here’s how:

Better ideas, better magazine.
Instead of emailing your new story idea to an editor, you post it here for comments and ratings …by everyone. This shared editorialship will help authors refine ideas and help us understand what you want and need to read.

Say that again?
Yes. You decide what gets published. (Well ok, we’ll weigh in some too.)

Ratings and transparency and reputation points. Oh my.
The B&A community has always been a smart, respectful community. We’ve been amazed at how little spam and how few trolls we attract. But we know this can’t last forever, so we’ve instituted a reputation manager. See an offensive comment? You no longer have to wait for us to get to the issue, you can help get rid of the drek. Moreover, you can star the best comments, and help the cream rise to the top!

Location, location, location.
You can see where the conversations are happening and who’s having them. Each page posts stats on conversations and people, so you can quickly find the most interesting, controversial or insightful moments on the site.

Home transparent home.
The homepage gives you the full list of site stats as well as access to your profile on B&A. You can now see what we see—what a vibrant, smart community we’ve got!

But wait! This is only the beginning. The new look and feel is still to come, now that we’ve got a new set of features. And you, our beloved community, are invited to let us know how we’re doing (as if you’d hold back!) And watch this spot—the tool we’ve build for you to enjoy B&A, we plan to make available to you to build your own community of practice.

Excelsior!

Putting the White Back in Strunk and White

Christina Wodtke — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 17:13:59 GMT

“Style and appropriateness may seem like an odd duo, but they are not. Style is the natural result of the over-abundance of energy and unique perspective a designer—a creative person—is gifted and cursed with.”

In web design screeds, the most commonly cited book is not what you might expect. It is not by Jakob Nielson or Jeffrey Zeldman or Edward Tufte. It’s not even on design or typography or code. It is a thin volume of guidelines on writing by a professor “at the closing of the first world war” and treasured by one student enough to put it into print. William Strunk was the professor, and E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web, was that grateful student. White took the master’s set of laws, removed some “bewhiskered entries,” corrected some errors, and added his own chapter at the end for “those who feel English prose composition is not only a necessary skill but a sensible pursuit as well.”

The most common excerpt from the book is one from Strunk, quoted as much for its poetry as its proposition:

bq. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

This concept seems to have permeated the design community’s collective mind. Minimalist websites eschewing borders, decorative graphics, and even color abound. The book’s principles are often held up to praise Google or damn eBay. But is anyone reading Strunk and White, or are they simply taking away quotes they like, and leaving the rest of the movie on the cutting room floor? There is a richness in the entirety of the text, which ranges from rule of grammar to approaches to structure, to even the heart of design: personal style.

Both Strunk’s original “little book” and White’s rework are available online, and comparing the two is surprising. The original was a rulebook, full of dos and don’ts. It could be used as a quick reference, perhaps, as one wrote a midterm. But the revised version is a way to approach the act of writing. It is manifesto as much as manual.

For example, section three, “Elementary Principles of Composition,” begins, in Strunk’s world (1) with:

bq. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.

bq. If the subject on which you are writing is of slight extent, or if you intend to treat it very briefly, there may be no need of subdividing it into topics. Thus a brief description, a brief summary of a literary work, a brief account of a single incident, a narrative merely outlining an action, the setting forth of a single idea, any one of these is best written in a single paragraph. After the paragraph has been written, it should be examined to see whether subdivision will not improve it. ...

But in White’s world the section opens with:

bq. Choose a suitable design and hold to it.

bq. Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily in the order in which those thoughts occur. This calls for a scheme of procedure. In some cases, the best design is no design, as with a love letter, which is simply an outpouring, or with a casual essay, which is a ramble.

bq. A sonnet is built on a fourteen-line frame, each line containing five feet. Hence, sonneteers know exactly where they are headed, although they may not know how to get there. Most forms of composition are less clearly defined, more flexible, but all have skeletons to which the writer will bring the flesh and the blood.

What advice should the designer take: a set of didactic pronouncements or a framework for approaching the world?

A love letter is not a sonnet in the way that eBay is not Google. Instead, Google is like a sonnet; it is highly structured and full of rules. User research, not imitation, might be the reason all search sites look the same—they are being driven by users’ behavior.

But why do all blogs look the same? Isn’t a blog a love letter to its readership (except when it’s a love letter to the blogger himself)? And why should a newspaper site look like a search site? Each thing is its own creature, with its own design patterns that have been developed over the last several years.

Concise is not always nice
“Conciseness is not always the same as effectiveness,” writes White. He rewrites Thomas Paine’s line, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” from The American Crisis, into:

bq. Times like these try men’s souls.

bq. How trying it is to live in these times!

bq. These are trying times for men’s souls.

bq. Soulwise, these are trying times.

All are grammatically correct, but grotesque. This lesson is one᾿s salvation when caught up in the battle to avoid the dangling participle, or adhere to the rule of the underlined link.

While Strunk teaches us economy and clarity, White teaches us there is style and appropriateness. And while economy and clarity are important, even vital, they are excessively constraining if not tempered.

Style and appropriateness may seem like an odd duo, but they are not. Style is the natural result of the over-abundance of energy and unique perspective a designer—creative person—is gifted and cursed with. Appropriateness is what helps them guide it in its application.

White’s first two items on his “List of Reminders” are, “Place yourself in the background,” and “Write in a way that comes naturally.” He says:

bq. Write in a way that draws the reader’s attention to the sense and substance of the writing, rather than to the mood and temper of the author.

and

bq. Write in a way that comes easily and naturally to you, using words and phrases that come readily to hand. But do not assume that because you have acted naturally your product is without flaw.

This is an easy translation into the design space—although you may have an impressive design style, make sure that your design is tempered to the needs of the project. A commerce site should probably not evoke gasps of pleasure at its beauty, but rather a sense of security, trust, a wealth of choice and appropriate prices.

You have a style and a way of working that is natural to you; to take on an unnatural style will result in a flawed product. Conversely your style is not necessarily suited to every project. Too often, because we are praised for our natural talent, we think that is all there is to design. But there is craft, there is understanding the product’s brand, and there is understanding not only conventions of the web, but conventions of the domain. Somehow one must balance our design nature with the environment of work.

A simple substitution and White’s quotes make perfect sense for today’s designer: (2)

bq. Design in a way that draws the reader’s attention to the sense and substance of the website, rather than to the mood and temper of the designer.

and

bq. Design in a way that comes easily and naturally to you, using layouts and type that come readily to hand. But do not assume that because you have acted naturally your product is without flaw.

Once you understand the game, his advice is fantastically accurate.

The last lesson of White’s—in the too often skipped introduction to the revised Strunk manual—is perhaps the most precious,

bq. I treasure The Elements of Style for its sharp advice, but I treasure it even more for the audacity and self-confidence of its author. Will knew where he stood. ... He had a number of likes and dislikes that were almost as whimsical as the choice of a necktie, yet he made them seem utterly convincing. ... He despised the expression student body, which he termed gruesome, and made a special trip downtown to the Alumni News office one day to protest the expression and suggest that studentry be substituted … a coinage of his own, which he felt was similar to citizenry. I am told that the News editor was so charmed by the visit, if not by the word, that he ordered the student body buried, never to rise again. Studentry has taken its place. It’s not much of an improvement, but it does sound less cadaverous, and it made Will Strunk quite happy.

Passionate pundits are not just a sign of our times, but a phenomenon that has existed as long as there have been craftsmen. I’m certain many of White’s fellow students squirmed under the oppressive certainty of William Strunk’s pronouncements. But E.B. White embraced and extended, and even appreciated the “law” laid down by Strunk. As we read vigorous statements such as “Flash is bad” or “Don’t do testing; just ship and watch,” it’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction. But stepping back from the initial emotional slap, we can see more than a petite dictator laying down the law. We can see an impassioned craftsman trying to share both his love of the trade and impart some of his hard earned learnings. Like White, can we begin to love and listen to all the Strunks out there, without becoming angry but instead synthesizing their knowledge with our own perspective?

The real secret of E.B. White is listening, incorporating, translating, and finally accepting pundits into our practice. We aren’t at war at all. We all want the same thing. We all want more great work in the world.

Notes

(1) This was the only online version of Strunk and White I could find, presumably because Strunk and White is still under copyright, while Strunk’s solo effort is not. It is misattributed to “Oliver Strunk” but comparing the text to my own paper copies, it seems to be a faithful version of the fourth edition.

(2) Is there anything worse than writing about E.B. White? James Thurber said “No one can write a sentence like White,” and as I write this essay, I cringe and rather wish I could just replace “writer” with “designer” in his book and leave it at that.

For more information
The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

The Elements of Style, Illustrated

Article in Dutch White verdient zijn plek in Strunk en White