Please Mind Your Head – the nuts and bolts of being an Information Architect

January 28, 2009

If the Tories have realised this about IT projects why hasn’t everyone else?

Filed under: Project Management, Public Sector, Research, The Industry — markbaynes @ 2:25 pm

It seems the Conservative Party knows a lot more about big IT projects than the people who are responsible for big IT projects.

Apparently they are considering putting a £100m cap on government IT contracts according to this BBC news report.

This is based on a report from Judge Business School, Cambridge.

Great idea. I have long considered that there is a certain size above which big public service projects are doomed to go pear shaped, no matter what.

Maybe the cap should be £10m and not £100m?

I can’t really be bothered to get into the whole open source thing although having open data standards across government would seem, er, sensible.

I just think that big IT projects don’t go according to plan.

But then thinking about it the really small ones don’t either!

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January 19, 2009

Hangin’ on the telephone

Filed under: Usability, User Experience — Tags: email, iphone, mobile, mobiles, technology, telephones, Usability — markbaynes @ 10:17 am

No surprises really in this story about how mobile phones are getting more complex to use, and that more people would use the more advanced functions if they could only use them.

Not rocket science is it?

I am ready to admit that I spent many hours onerously deleting read emails on my iPhone one by one until a colleague informed me that the edit button allows you to mark emails for deletion.

And that’s hardly an advanced function.

January 12, 2009

Confused.com aren’t confused

Filed under: Accessibility, Information Architecture, Usability, User Experience — markbaynes @ 4:52 pm

The recent TV adverts in the UK (that’s just to the left of Yerp if you live in America) for the Confused.com price comparison website are unusual simply because the main selling point is usability.

Yes that’s right, a TV ad promoting the benefits of good web design.

The Confused site before their site redesign is one of the sites reviewed for the BBC by real people with real accessiblity needs and is interesting viewing. You can see the review here.

December 17, 2008

What’s in a name?

Filed under: The Industry — markbaynes @ 2:52 pm

Information Architect. User Experience Designer. IA. IA/UX Designer. UXD. These are just some of the most common job titles we use to describe what we do. Of course the problem is that quite a few people don’t think these job titles are that descriptive. I have to agree to a certain extent.

The term ‘Information Architect’ is I think reasonably descriptive and the one I use most commonly. But then what one digital media agency thinks of as IA work another calls UX work.

I have a bit of a problem with ‘User Experience Designer’ for the simple reason that I don’t think it is very descriptive. User Experience? What’s that? If you are reading this blog you probably know, but try telling the average person in the street that you are a ‘User Experience Designer’ and you will probably get a blank look.

What type of user? Drug user? Bicycle user? Computer User Experience Designer is a bit of a mouthful of course. But if you ask a brain surgeon what they do and they say ‘I am a brain surgeon’ then you will know what they mean. Ask a train driver what they do and when he or she says ‘I am a train driver’ you will know what they do.

But User Experience Designer?

Just to confuse things further I tend to think that an Information Architect is someone who defines and designs the overall structure of a website, whereas a UX Designer is someone who deals more with the creation of wireframes and more direct User Experience issues.

Of course in reality it’s usually all done by whoever is available.