Matt Milan and Gene Smith introduce Rich Mapping and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to information architects. SSM is a holistic problem solving framework that can be used to design and model interactions between organizations, people, environments, products and services.
I came into this presentation honestly because the other one i wanted to attend was too full for my comfort. What a stroke of luck. I thought I needed to feed my brain but this was one of those sessions that feeds your soul. You take those when you get them. Olly Wright did a great job and this was one of the highlights of the conference for me so far. I don’t know I can accurately convey what the presentation was but you can read an abstract below. Hopefully I’ll add a link to the slides soon when I get one.
This presentation will look at how as information architects we can approach our work in this cultural context. How we might take an informed, ethical stand. It will cover some of the prominent contemporary theories of ethical design, culture / media studies, and behavioural psychology, and look at their applicability to information architecture. It will explore areas such as brand authenticity, privacy, social networking, push versus pull marketing, and ubiquitous computing. And it will provide concrete examples and methods for how these can be used in practice. The aim is to bring abstract ethical theory down to the level of the concrete and applicable, and perhaps inspire some to add ‘Help make the World a better place’ to every list of requirements.
Blah, Blah, Blah iPhone. (not even going to link to it, not going to give free promotion to a company that would sue me if I posted this a week ago)
Don't get me wrong. Yes it is a really cool device but I doubt it will replace my Blackberry 7290 for these reasons:
The battery on my blackberry lasts a week
I don’t need to sync it. EVER
I drop it all the time and I don’t worry about it
Somehow I don’t think that the iPhone will meet these standards. I have considered buying a Sony Mylo, Joanna has one, but I think that the iPhone could be a much better replacement for that.
Wi-Fi, OSX, Safari & plays videos!! Cooool! However, who knows how much this thing would be without a carrier or even if it is possible to buy one without a carrier.
I think what is more interesting about this whole kafuffle is all of the really neat posts that have happened because of the hype.
Kottke.org posted some awesome photos of the cardboard prototype they made and then compared it to other devices. This is so great because it shows how fast you can create a prototype to conduct a study on a hardware device. Man making hardware would be cool, software is too insubstantial (1s & 0s), maybe I need to go back to school.
The IxDA list has blown up over this thing. One comment by Robert Barlow-Busch I found was particular insightful and yet obvious.
Lovin' a lot of things about the iPhone. But something I'm sure we'll miss is the tactile feel of buttons under our fingers. Being able to feel the buttons means we don't need to pay *quite* as much attention visually when, say, dialing a number.
I remembered that is completely true because I bought a Bluetooth Keyboard, that I saw on CSI Miami (Windows Media Link), for my Blackberry. This keyboard was a laser projected out of a little obelisk (how ACC 2001).
Now the problem was that even though it was hella cool you were always looking at the keys as you typed, which was even less efficient then using my Blackberry keyboard because at least I had some muscle memory of where they keys were.
I hope that apple or third party vendors come out with a decent keyboard or maybe an iPhone with out the Phone part :-)
Once you convince your project stakeholders that when you are building an website or application that competitors are not always direct competitors or even in the same vertical. You can sit down and go over the applications or sites that they enjoy using. I find that this gives me really valuable information into the design patterns that my client have in mind when they are envisioning the application that they want built.
Now it is hard enough to to convince people to indulge this activity normally, but when you are building an enterprise application and you are asking people to tell you why they like the Air Canada booking system it can become downright impossible to keep them engaged. The one exception to this is when you are designing an enterprise search and everyone just wants it to be “like Google”. (Don’t get me started on that right now :-), I will discuss that later)
When you are defining requirements for your next enterprise application bring in some of the eventual end users of the system and have them talk about the sites that they like with the project stakeholders. You’ll get some insightful information that you can use in your design, your stakeholders will hear the “voice of their customers“, and if you are lucky hopefully this will aide in the adoption of social software on the Enterprise.
This will become even more important as Web 2.0 patterns start to infiltrate the enterprise (Ã la Enterprise 2.0).
5. Consumerization of the enterprise will continue apace and will help drive Enterprise 2.0 adoption at the grassroots level. If any of this Enterprise 2.0 trend is really starting to happen, it’s because it reflects a better way of working that users are already adopting en masse on the Web. For example, blogging reaches more people than an e-mail can, and often in unexpected, serendipitous ways. “Spaces” build out a low-barrier, cost-effective personal channel on the Internet that provides a well-defined way for a user to communicate with the rest of the world or organization. These models are becoming well-understood and effective on the Web and will drive bottom-up adoption in the enterprise, often being pushed by newer, younger workers who are comfortable and conversant with them. Also, I suspect no solution to the empty quarter will be found in 2007.
I just wanted to remind people that EnterpriseCamp Toronto is happening this weekend on January 13th.
We wanted to get the enterprise development community together in Toronto in a BarCamp style unconference.
This is going to be a different focus then regular BarCamp events. This event focuses on enterprise software infrastructure, solutions and development. Topics could include Enterprise 2.0, Business Intelligence Applications, ECM, Collaboration, Employee Self-Service, Enterprise Search, Technology Infrastructure, Workflow Automation.
Here is what people are thinking of talking about:
Ryan Coleman – I could put something together on Translation/Localization Workflow automation.
Carsten Knoch – Porting Web 2.0 to the Enterprise: stop “empowering employees”, start looking for ROI :)
Jevon Macdonald – Where does the software fit? 4 real enterprise 2.0 case studies
Peter Childs & Ian Graham – Calendaring in the Enterprise
Jeff Irving – I’d like to do a session on the value and practice of Domain Modeling during Requirements Analysis of Enterprise Applications.
Bill Dunlop – I can put together an overview of WCF. (NOTE: that is “Windows Communication Foundation (formerly code-named “Indigo”) is a set of .NET technologies for building and running connected systems.” for the acronym impaired… :-)
James Christopher – HPC applications and Visualization, how organizations use technology for competitive advantage and value creation.
I would also like to congratulate Albert and the team at Bubbleshare. They have worked really hard and have produced a great product and in my opinion kaboose is getting a great deal.
DISCLAIMER: This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. The information that I present will often be created by others and they would be the owners of that content, I do not presume any ownership of their content.
