* There already is a company, PerceptivePixel, that is building these interfaces for use by the military (which is a great application of this technology, by the way).
* This technology has been around, according to the Popular Mechanics video, since the 1980's.

Now, admittedly, the wireless device-to-device transfer bit is cool. But why is everyone running up and down the halls screaming and waving their hands like their hair is on fire? Honestly, my very first reaction when I watched this was "this is going to revolutionize Kodak photo centers in the local Walgreens drug stores everywhere." Is that a good enough reason to buy a device that will cost $5,000 - 10,000? I'm just not seeing the application here. It's a kiosk with features.

Now, granted, they said they're going after the commercial sector first, which is probably the best application for this device, but I can't help but think about how this will transfer over to the personal sector. Portability is a huge issue. I can't pick it up and carry it. It's GOT to remain a tabletop device in order for the cool device-to-device transfers to occur (how can you set your phone on something mounted to a wall??), but in a house with two kids, I'm just not seeing it. It did a cool interactive animation in response to a water glass. I wonder how it would display a reaction to dried-on Gogurt and Goldfish cracker crumbs?

The other concern I have is the ergonomic considerations of this device. Totally cool for "driveby" computing in a lounge or in some other kiosk environment, but this thing is not designed for long-time computing use. Imagine how sore your back and neck will be if you tried to use this for an afternoon to construct your favorite simulation. Even if you angled up the interface much in the same way that we used to angle drafting tables, it's still going to be a lot of strain. The multi-touch features are really cool as well, and in that instance, it makes more sense for it to be wall mounted. But again, it's geared to driveby computing. Can you imagine using a wall-based computer for an afternoon? It could be pitched as the next great upper body workout.

Finally, I'm fast-forwarding to the day where this does enter homes and we begin to be bombarded by gigantic colorful, moving ads that fill the screen. Combine this with the Microsoft engineer's statement that some day all surfaces will be computers, and it gives me the willies because we will be forced to seek solitude in new ways. I bet I am not the only one thinking of this, though. I imagine the online marketing industry will not be able to see their Surface computers what for salivating all over them...

Sometimes, when telling someone about my job or things that I do at work, they seem amazed, while to me, it's just a day's work. At last year's summit, many seemed intimidated by the design side of IA. I find that the easiest part. What makes us different?

I chose to investigate this for this year's summit. While initially proposing a presentation that would focus more on the unique challenges of my current job and what I do to get past them, this presentation has morphed into what I hope will become a launchpad for perhaps more fully defining what we do as IA's.

I began by looking at the types of activities I do on a daily basis. I grouped those activities into 4 categories: IA as IA, IA as Development Liaison, IA as Interdepartmental Representative, and IA as Corporate Strategist. I then outlined skills that I needed to possess in order to accomplish each role.

After doing some research, an article by Max Wideman caught my attention. Having completed the same process a few years back with the project management field, he had assigned names to these roles: Administrator, Driver, Coordinator, and Explorer. The problem was that this still didn't answer my basic question of what makes us good at the things we do.

Continuing with Wideman’s work, I read that he cross-referenced these roles with Myers-Briggs types. The Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) was initially designed in the 1920’s by a mother-daughter team. It is based on the principles of Jungian Psychology and illustrates preferences in the way that we process information. Although it’s somewhat controversial, it has been used extensively by Industrial Psychologists and as a result, many professions have been mapped with specific MBTI types. This, I felt, might be pointing me toward the answer of why.

Studying further, I gained an understanding of what the MBTI is assessing –
• How a person orients and receives energy (introvert/extrovert)
• How a person prefers to receive data (sensing/intuition)
• How a person makes decisions using data (thinking/feeling)
• How a person processes the information received (judging/perceiving)

After an individual answers a series of questions, a pattern of preferred processing methods emerges. Each individual falls somewhere along a continuum of the extremes listed above. The end result is a 4 character type title – one of 16 - that summarizes the way that the individual prefers to process information.

I returned to my original 4 categories and began to think of professions that might be similar to what I do on a daily basis. I came up with a few: software developer, project manager, visual communicator, and sales and marketing professionals. I began to investigate the MBTI types frequently associated with each profession. Patterns began to emerge, and when I looked at the descriptions associated with each pattern, I began to see how different each profession was.

I began to wonder how IAs fell. What other profession are we most like? Do we have our own pattern? To find out, I posted a quick survey using SurveyMonkey and posted the invitation to the IAI and Sig-IA lists. The first question inquired about the participant’s MBTI type and included a link to an online survey to complete if the participant did not know it. The second question gave the participant a list of common IA activities and asked them to rank the activities from most enjoyable to least enjoyable. The third question asked the participants to rank common IA activities from most frequently performed to least frequently performed. Although my goal was 100 responses, I received 85.

I mapped the types to the MBTI grid and found that the majority of IAs represent personality types in the intuitive hemisphere of the grid. This correlates with visual communicators, sales and marketing professionals, and some project managers.

I also attempted to correlate the personality types with the most-enjoyed IA activities. To accomplish this, I split the types into quadrants and analyzed the activities for the types in each quadrant. Three of the four quadrants most enjoyed Big IA activities. One quadrant most enjoyed Little IA activities. When looking at least-enjoyed activities, two quadrants representing the intuitive hemisphere least enjoyed providing marketing support. The other two quadrants, representing the sensing hemisphere, least enjoyed creative services coordination.

While this survey and investigation was not large enough or detailed enough to draw any definitive conclusions, it does open up some points that we should be discussing as a profession. Given our difficulty in defining just what IA’s can provide, and our difficulty in explaining the value we provide, this type of work could provide a springboard into meaningful discussions about the type of language we should use during these discussions with colleagues.

Description:
This presentation illustrates a method of information-gathering employed in December 2004 to gather initial design feedback for a website redesign. This approach was utilized to gather high level input from 10 users of a commercial website. The content for this approach comes from a large-scale web survey completed in November of 2004. Results from this work were turned into tangible designs that were formally usability-tested in January 2005 with excellent results.

Specifically, this approach combined the interactivity of a paper prototyping session with the ease of administration and data collection of a web-based survey. In this approach, a series of images representing potential screen designs and content were placed into a commercially-available web survey site. Questions scattered through the survey gather immediate user feedback. Appointments were set with the participants, and during these appointments, a researcher called them and, using a predefined script, walked with them through the web survey. Using this hybrid approach, the researcher was able to gather immediate thoughts and reactions to the information viewed in the survey, answer questions, and ensure that the participant understood the task.

One unique approach attempted in this task was the assignment of content to screen locations as outlined by a grid superimposed on a screenshot of the site. Use of this method provided a feeling for the relative importance and location of content in the final design. When it was compared to results of eyegaze studies, those items that rated most highly in this survey were placed in "important" locations on the screen as determined by eyegaze studies.

What happened next:
The results of this study allowed me to produce initial screen designs for the testing that followed in the lab a month later. By knowing where to place content, and how it should interact, the prototypes for the in-lab testing were very well received and the testing was highly successful. In fact, the designs were verified during the first day in the lab, leaving the second day to test other areas.

The presentation from the IA Summit
The script I used

Where I'm struggling, however, is the point at which UX should "trump" business needs and vice versa. There are times when UX running the show and left unchecked, is a bad thing. There are also times that doing something solely for the benefit of the bottom line is not good, either.

Branding also enters into the mix in my thinking. We've been spending a lot of money on branding, and certainly a corporate logo - the most obvious form of branding - is sacred. In a partnership agreement, a partner would never insist that a logo be removed. In that same agreement, however, design of screen elements is fair game. Why? Can't ease of use, as implemented in a design, lead to branding? At that point, it should become as "sacred" as a logo.

I was thinking about Coca-Cola today. As the most recognized brand in the world, it takes very little to get consumers thinking about Coke when they see elements of that brand scheme. Suppose, for a moment, a company wanted to partner with Coke for something. They would co-produce a product that would include both logos. You would immediately recognize it as being "part of Coke". But what if the partner wanted to put the Coke product in a Gatorade bottle? Or a milk carton? I don't think for a moment that would fly, because I can see a bottle discarded by the side of the road and know instantly it's a Coke bottle. My point is that even the container represents the brand.

So back to the web world now. Consider a partnership arrangement wherein the partner wants to rearrange screen elements that we have carefully crafted in an effort to create consistency in our brand. What wins? Let's toss navigation into this mix. Suppose a partner wants to put our content on their site. What if we are putting the partner's content on our site? Does that change the outcomes at all? In what direction?

Here are my thoughts. Each company has a niche. We do what we do well, and our partner does what they do well. We also have niche users. They are used to our site, and because of our work in the interface consistency realm, they have that comfortable, familiar experience no matter where they are on the site. We can put just about any type of new content in front of them, and they can use it effortlessly because the experience is familiar and flows from one portion of the site to the next.

While the user is wrapped up in this seamless, comfortable, familiar experience, we're building credibility and trust. They may not be thinking it, but somewhere the thought "I *know* what is happening on this site" is registering deep in their brains. As a result, when we do ask them to do something a bit out of the ordinary, they're more likely to go along with it. (If you want to learn more about this, pick up a copy of Persuasive Technology by BJ Fogg).

In any event,

Based on a discussion on the IA Institute list, I have posted the sample exercise I used during the search to find Chaz, our graphic artist.

We got burned with our initial graphic artist. She had a nice portfolio and spoke very well about the work she had done. But when we hired her and asked her to do work very much like our sample problem, it became tremendously obvious that she could not do it. I don't know if she had worked for an art director who had told her specifically what to implement, or was just so completely unfamiliar with the B2B universe, but it was clear that it was just not going to work out and we needed to let her go.

During the second round of searches, I created a sample problem for the candidates to complete around the time of their face-to-face interviews. We had already weeded out some candidates based on their phone interviews, so these were the folks who had good potential.

I worried about providing them with an activity that could be perceived as creating deliverables for free, and I was also sensitive to the fact that they all had their own full time jobs. I wanted something that would allow me to "get inside their heads" and not require them to produce comps.

I was spoiled at HCT because I got to work with Graphic Artists who understood the importance of design research and cross-disciplinary design efforts and I wanted to find that for this position at KnowledgeStorm. I was convinced that this person HAD to be out there somewhere. I just had to find him or her. This approach was the method I used.

I thought it worked well. The candidates reported that it was interesting, not too taxing, and was sort of fun. All completed it fairly quickly, and although speed of completion was not truly a factor in my decision, I did, in one instance weigh speed of completion against the thoroughness of the answer provided.

As a result, we found Chaz who has worked out so wonderfully. I'd use this method again in an instant to find additional team members.

Information Architecture Links:
Information Architecture Institute
Introduction to Information Architecture
Website Navigation: Design in Infospace
American Society for Information Architecture & Technology (ASIS&T)
Jesse James Garrett
Argus-ACIA
Webword
IAslash
Lou Rosenfeld
Boxes and Arrows
CMSwatch

Web Dev/design links:
WebMonkey
WebReference.com

Web usability links:
Jakob Nielsen's UseIt
Useable web
Usability.gov
Nielsen/Norman Group
Dey Alexander

Information design links:
Informationdesign.org
Edward Tufte
AIGA's information design forum
Elegant Hack

Interaction design links:
Ask Tog
Welie's interaction design patterns
Jennifer Tidwell's design patterns