User journeys, Trajectories and Transitions for UX designers
23 October, 2015
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 the connections that might bridge them. Gaps keep us in a job. This article is…
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Sitemaps and taxonomic thinking
3 March, 2015
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 template or technique and use it unthinkingly, forgetting the thought and effort that went into…
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Everyone makes IA – World IA Day 2015
22 February, 2015
Unintentional architecture / WIAD
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 a part of every project, every design includes it. But I think there’s often a…
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Reflective practice
21 November, 2014
competence / double-loop learning / leadership / Maslow / 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 we think and know about them. It’s about how self awareness and reflective practice can help you consolidate what you’re good at and get better at the other stuff.
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Interact 2014 – Dan Ramsden
23 October, 2014
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 practice and the importance of teaching in developing your own confidence, skills and experience. This…
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Curations in space and time
30 June, 2014
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 the right kind of ‘wholes’. Because I learnt something when Alice fell down the rabbit hole….
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What’s a UXA?
19 June, 2014
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 experience architect is a little less obvious. I wanted to share what UXAs do and…
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Designing navigation – the information to affordance ratio
25 April, 2014
When you’re designing navigation you need to keep in mind that on the web, signposts don’t jump 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 is both information and affordance. When I wrote that post, I’d started to realise that…
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IAs are designers too – World IA Day 2014
16 February, 2014
IA mindset / World IA Day
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 impact across experience design. Here is what I planned to say. I work for the…
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Spaces vs. Places – structures in information architecture
15 January, 2014
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, it’s informed the IA philosophy that has emerged and shaped our products and services. This…
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