This presentation kicked of the IA Summit this year for me. It is a big topic to get into any real detail in 45 minutes and I’m looking forward to the book.
We’re witnessing a rapid recognition of the value of search analytics among people from a variety of backgrounds, and we hope that our presentation helps crystallize the discussion within the IA community.
This was a panel discussion Margaret Hanley, Lisa Chan, Tom Coates and Matt Biddulph given at the 2007 Information Architecture Summit. In a nutshell this discussion we talked about the role of data on the web and how the web is changing the nature of data. It was very entertaining and informative and I’ll add a link to the slides as soon as I can find one. This talk reminded me of another great presentation which is Drew McLellan’s “Can Your Website be Your API?” [ PDF ] and there is a audio recording of that session as well.
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.
Someone recently posted on the IAI list that they were seeking case studies on city websites. Two years ago I finished a report of the User Research Navantis did as part of developing a community portal for the City of Hamilton, Ontario. Hamilton is almost 500,000 people so roughly the same size as Atlanta or Cleveland. The material of the project was public domain as it was a public project and two years have past so I think I can post the report.
Some of this stuff is a little awkward in hindsight but I still think there is some interesting stuff in there.
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