Author: Dan Ramsden

  • ‘Architecting’ is a word

    ‘Architecting’ is a word

    I love words. I love the sounds they make and the shapes they form. I love the ideas they can inspire. I love words. Words, for me, provide the perfect balance of freedom and containment. I mention this because I recently read an interview I’d given and in it there was a word that gave…

  • User journeys, Trajectories and Transitions for UX designers

    User journeys, Trajectories and Transitions for UX designers

    This post is about gaps. I think gaps are where most of the interesting design challenges are lurking, particularly if you’re interested in information architecture. Information architecture is fundamentally interested in gaps — gaps between problems and solutions, between products and audiences, between perfection and pragmatism. Gaps invite us to think about the differences that cause them and…

  • Sitemaps and taxonomic thinking

    Sitemaps and taxonomic thinking

    I used to love a good sitemap, all those boxes and arrows… lovely stuff. But now I’m not so sure. I think it’s good to occasionally take a step back from the bread and butter techniques and deliverables that you rely on and ask a few questions. Sometime I think we come to an old…

  • Everyone makes IA – World IA Day 2015

    Everyone makes IA – World IA Day 2015

    This is a post inspired by my talk from World IA Day. On the day I had 20 minutes to fill – I did a magic trick and talked about an imaginary uncle. This post has the benefit of an edit, but recreates the central argument – everyone makes IA. Information architecture is everywhere, it’s…

  • Everyone makes IA – running a team away day

    Everyone makes IA – running a team away day

    Before you read this post. Choose a card. Remember it. In December 2014, just before Christmas, the UXA team at the BBC took on the challenge of convincing 120 UX designers that they all make information architecture. IA is a specialism. But it also underpins all user experiences. I wanted to give UX designers the confidence to…

  • Reflective practice

    Reflective practice

    If you’re anything like me, you’re probably quite good at a few things. But if you are like me you probably sometimes have a hard time bragging about those things or even quite believing you possess them. This post is about the relationship between the things we do well (and not so well) and what…

  • Interact 2014 – Dan Ramsden

    Interact 2014 – Dan Ramsden

    Design like you’re right. Test like you’re wrong. And be careful what you throw away. Interact London is a UX design conference which brought together leading speakers with talks that explored the importance of design and the roles that User Experience and Information Architecture play in today’s digital society. I chose to talk about reflective…

  • Curations in space and time

    Curations in space and time

    Information architecture is preoccupied with space. I work hard to understand the shape and nature of the information spaces I create online. I work even harder to try to imbue these spaces with meaning, making sense of the content individually and considering what will happen when these pieces are combined into a whole. I want to create…

  • What’s a UXA?

    What’s a UXA?

    I’m a User experience architect or UXA. UXAs are part of the BBC design team, but it’s a job title that can sometimes be difficult to decode – as I’ve learned when trying to describe what I do to family and friends. It’s fairly easy to imagine what a designer might do, but a user…

  • Content discovery and consumption – delivering the virtuous circle

    Content discovery and consumption – delivering the virtuous circle

    The main challenges for online audiences of the future (and content publishers) isn’t finding content, it’s finding (and recommending) the right content. The homepage is dead. Or perhaps now every page is a homepage. But what does that tell us? This post is about three stages of the user experience – content discovery, consumption and…

  • Designing navigation – the information to affordance ratio

    Designing navigation – the information to affordance ratio

    When you’re designing navigation you need to keep in mind that on the web, signposts don’t just point, they also transport. The last time I had a big ‘navigation’ job on, I wrote about this. I observed that links on the web describe a destination and provide the means by which to travel there. Navigation…

  • UXAs at the BBC – The horizontal discipline

    UXAs at the BBC – The horizontal discipline

    IAs are the connective tissue that connect and combine ‘verticals’ into experiences. Being a UXA is a difficult job and it requires a specific skill-set and mindset. But to be truly effective, the difficult challenges are the ones that we need to seek out. And we need to take responsibility.

  • IAs are designers too – World IA Day 2014

    IAs are designers too – World IA Day 2014

    [fancy_headline]On February 14th 2014 I spoke at World IA Day in Bristol. I talked about how an IA-mindset that can be shared across UX teams and organisations to seed IA-thinking throughout products and services. Rather than focus on the practice and process of IA, I wanted to talk about how IA theory can have an…

  • Spaces vs. Places – structures in information architecture

    Since I joined the BBC’s knowledge and learning team I’ve been exploring the concept of “real-world information architecture”. It’s a term I inherited, and I’ve never been entirely satisfied that there’s a shared definition of what it means. I’ve struggled to create a definition, but I think over the years I’ve been thinking about it,…