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This workshop aims to teach participants activities that use information architecture for gaining upfront consensus on a variety of projects.
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Understanding Information Architecture
A workshop by !@Abby_the_IA
Agenda for today Answer these questions: • What is Information Architecture (IA)?!• What does “good” mean?!• How is IA best used and when?!• What IA tools can I walk out of here with today?! Attempt these stunts: • Funnel development !• Persona segmentation !• Collaborative design session brief creation!
Similar to what Architecture does for physical structures
Information Architecture provides actionable Blueprints of what is being designed and built.
As Architecture does for physical places
What is information architecture (IA)?
• Making complex things be clear(er)!• Making things not just look good, but be good!• Consensus facilitation!
--!• NOT “just Sitemaps and Wireframes”!• NOT “the old name for UX”!• NOT “just digital”!
I Have used IA to help
• Change the audience for Sharpie from a office supply consumer to teenagers looking for a self expression tool!
• Grow a 150,000 member Facebook fan base for JELL-O over the weekend.!
• Pilot a revolutionary diet for people with Type 2 diabetes!• Analyze and strategically prioritize digital marketing
efforts and improvements for Herman Miller in support of their movement into the B to C market!
basic process of making
things
ResearchStrategy
ArchitectureDesign
Execution
Questions that Need
Answers
ResearchStrategy
ArchitectureDesign
Execution
Why?
What?
Who?
When?
How?
Next?
IA can be used when • Conducting Research (Persona Research, User
Interviewing, User Testing, Competitive Research, Contextual Inquiry)!
!• Formulating Strategic Insight (Stakeholder
Interviewing, Analytics, Goal Setting, Key Performance Indicator Development, Heuristic Evaluation)!
!• Creating Structural Blueprints (Product Roadmaps,
Site maps, Process/Flow Diagrams, Requirements, Experience Maps, Cross Channel Maps, Prototypes)!
ResearchStrategy
ArchitectureDesign
Execution
Goal Setting
WorkshopPersona Workshop
Collaborative Design Session
Why?
What?
Who?
When?
How?
Next?
3 tools of the IA trade we will learn today
Lesson 1:
Using goal Setting to
establish checks and balances
upfront
In this lesson… • You will gain a basic understanding of the tools used for
measuring and evaluating the quality of a product or serviceʼs user experience !
• You will learn the importance of prioritizing what you measure. !
• You will learn the importance of setting goals!• You will understand the difference between directional
goals and specific goals!• You will be able to help your team to understand the
goals for your user experience!
What do we use to measure?
• User testing !• Satisfaction Surveys!• Usage Data/Analytics!• Social Media Statistics!• Sales data, even non digital equivalents!• Qualitative metrics (sales force or
customer service quotas)!
What are we actually measuring?
• The simple answer is… NOT everything.!• The more complicated one is … measure
what matters.!
Action: What is the 1
thing you want users to do
Conversion: Where are places that
people decide to proceed with your business
Acquisition:Where are you
bringing people to your product from?
Loyalty:Do they ever come back?(Optional)
Competition:When they
proceed but not with you?
Where do they go? Add why?
Distraction:When they don't
proceed? Where do they go? Add why?
Awareness:How do people know
about you? Or not know about you?
Getting at what matters… !Attach to the Funnel:!!• What you have today!• Opportunities you
have!
Start thinking about what you would need to measure in order to determine if each part of the funnel is optimized.!
Example: Small Community News Collec6ve With the goal of providing quality local music news (Note: I made this up, no hipsters were harmed in the crea6on of this example)
Action: Read the
News
Conversion: Home pageArticle pageTwitter page
Facebook page
Acquisition:Blogger NetworkSearch EnginesAdvertisementSocial Media
Loyalty:Sign up for the
community(Optional)
Competition:Main Stream Music Sites
Other Music Blogs
Distraction:
Advertisements
Awareness:Social Media
Word of Mouth
Add burning ques6ons and what you know
Action: Read the
News
Conversion: Home pageArticle pageTwitter page
Facebook page
Acquisition:Blogger NetworkSearch EnginesAdvertisementSocial Media
Loyalty:Sign up for the
community(Optional)
Competition:Main Stream Music Sites
Other Music Blogs
Distraction:
Advertisements
Awareness:Social Media
Word of Mouth
How do people find us?!Where are
loyal users likeliest to come from?!
How long should we expect people to stay?!
Do people appreciate suggested content? Do they want to share?!
Our time on site average is less than a minute!
We donʼt track suggested content today!
We have no social media!
We have never talked to users!
Finding the right measures
If you have a question about! Examples to be looking at…!
If something is effective! Completion rates !
Whether something is findable! Speed to find!
Peopleʼs Expectations! Bounce Rates & Time on Site!
Satisfaction! Interviews, Surveys, Ask Sales and CSRs !
Is enough Information provided?! Are people clicking to further information consistently?!
Are people using the path as designed?! Click path data!
(Courtesy of Richard Dalton)
The Big Ques6ons Planning to measure Awareness: How do people find out about us?!
User interviews and Surveys!
Acquisition: Where will our loyal users be coming from?!
Surveys, Analytics: Traffic Sources for Repeat Users !
Conversion: What is the average time on site for us? What is normal?!
Analytics: Time on site compared to industry averages and for loyalty users vs single article users!
Action: Will people interact with the content we suggest they interact with after reading the entry article?!
Analytics: Click rates on items suggested on article pages!
Loyalty: How will loyalty users differ from new users?!
Analytics: Compare variety of points across loyalty users and single article users!
Other: How should sharing work? What do people share?!
Surveys, Interviews, Analytics: Track social sharing behavior to establish baselines for types of events!
Attach measurement plans to questions
Exercise 1 Imagine that your team is being asked to redesign the General Assembly experience. !!As a group, fill in the funnel with: !!q Facts – you (like many startups) wonʼt have many ;)!q Questions youʼd like answers to!q Existing pieces of the experience!q Opportunities to explore!q How you might measure things along the way!
Setting Goals: in 2 Delicious Flavors
• Directional Goals!• Specific Goals!
Establishing Directional Goals
That
This
What makes a Good scale?
² Challenge the old with the new!
² Define success differently!
² Manage priority and scope!
Show departures from consensus
Establishing Specific Goals
Goals should be S.M.A.R.T !!q Specific!q Measurable!q Achievable!q Relevant!q Time bound!
Example: Specific Goals Our Goals for the next 6 months!– Establish an average time on site with our loyalty
users of 2+ minutes (matching industry standards for news sites)!
– Produce an average of 100+ unique social media impressions per month for the news organization brand!
– Increase the likelihood of loyalty users to click of secondary materials from 10% to 20% through better content tagging and human curation!
Lesson 2:
Personas distill
research into ‘weaponized’
bits
In this lesson… • You will understand the value of personas in the design
process!• You will be able to identify potential sources for personas !• You will learn how to segment target users into persona
targets!• You will understand why stories are a powerful tool to
incorporate into your personas!• You will learn strategies and common pitfalls when
selecting photos to accompany your personas. !
Why personas work: • People like having someone to design for:
meaning there is already a persona or two living in the head of every member of your team.!
• Personas inspire teams to work towards a shared vision instead of many disparate ones!
Choosing Representative Personas:
• Step 1: Make a post it for each user type you can think of • Step 2: Group them on a wall into clusters by how they might
think about or use your product or service • Step 3: Pick 3-‐5 clusters of people that seem like the ones
most important to whom you are trying to reach • Step 4: Choose one “person” from each of those clusters that
you feel could stand up and make decisions for that whole group if a vote were to occur
• Step 5: Decide what you know, and what you need to know • Step 6: Devise a plan to find out what you don’t yet know.
Who to Prioritize? Urgent Not Urgent
Urgent Not Urgent
Impor
tant
Not Im
porta
nt
Impor
tant
Not Im
porta
nt
1st
2nd
3rd
SOL
Quick ways to get to know your users:
• Talk to potential users!• Talk to actual users (if you have them)!• Talk to competitive users (no one said you couldnʼt –
unless they did, then donʼt)!• Spend time shadowing users in their real lives!• Watch people using equivalent or similar things to what
you are making!• Use competitive things in the market!• Social media listening!• Blogs, customer reviews, forums… the internet is HUGE!
Urgent
Important
Not Im
portant
Not Urgent
Important
Not Urgent
Important
Urgent
1 Professional Artists
3 Students2
Craft Artists
Example: theArtistsway Persona research done on 3 segments:!
• Survey distributed on social media for 3 types of artists to learn differences!
• Buy-along trips to local art supply stores!
• Remote usability tests of current sites used for buying supplies online to discuss functionality and pain points!
• Interviews and studio visits were done to discuss storage of supplies, how far in advance supplies are bought etc!
!
Urgent
Important
Not Im
portant
Not Urgent
Important
Not Urgent
Important
Urgent
Exercise 2: q Individually brainstorm
the different types of users the GA campus needs to serve (and not serve)!
q Within your team, plot them on the urgency/important 4 up !
q Decide the top 3 clusters you would research as personas and the best ways to research them!
Building each persona: • Step 1: Choosing a name and photo!• Step 2: Rough demographics, home life, work
life, digital life!• Step 3: Attitudes and Product/Service/Industry
Related Feelings !
Common pitfalls in photo and name selection:! !• Racially insensitive or inappropriate!• Hot people!• Stock photos or headshots!• “Thatʼs not so-n-so”!• Team or customer photos or names!!
Narrating each personas experience
• Step 1: Put on the shoes of each persona and describe the world they experience today. !
• Step 2: Write a story of what they see. What do they wish was better? Where would your product fit in?!
If your product is in their story today, be brave!! !Show the under belly and admit the flaws of what you are offering through their eyes. What is their likely reaction?!!
How to tell the story effectively…
• Capture quotes you think people would say or emotions you anticipate they would have!
• Try to write the personas in their words!• Grab screenshots and video grabs where you can to
show the experience through their eyes!• As you read your story, use the visuals to support it!• Ask your team for confirmation that the story seems
realistic and not over the top in either a positive or negative direction!
Example: theArtistsway About Janie: Professional ArtistJanie is a designer at heart and by trade. She is an artist living and working in a small studio she shares with husband and photographer -- in the West Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.
When shopping for clothing, art supplies, whatever: quality and style matter to Janie more than price. She doesnʼt often shop at mass retailers and loves spending a Saturday browsing the local markets and boutique retailers. She considers her digital life much the same. And chooses to use devices and tools she likes to look at and use.
In the last 5 years Jane's entire life has migrated online, but she feels like her business as an artist has been left without a place that is meant for her. All the tools available are for consultants, not artists.
Age: 53Work Life: Professional ArtistHome Life: Married to Michael, 54. No children. Owner of a 2 catsIncome Level: 120k household
.
+
+
+
Design Minded
Business Savvy
Digital Savvy
Digital Life: Janie is a Mac enthusiast for work, but a mostly iPad user when it comes to her casual browsing and emailing. She also is starting to get into social media and loves to post things she finds on her Facebook wall for her friends to see and occasionally to her agencyʼs blog.
Technology and Media Diet:
• Loves to browse blogs and design magazine sites on her iPad. Also a iPhone 3G user, but doesn't browse the web very consistently from it.
• Loves her Macbook Air for ease of travel and slick design
• Bose noise canceling headphones, also essential for travel
• Netflix Instant Subscriber, great for her since they donʼt have cable anymore
• eBook purchaser, keeps the clutter down in a NYC apartment
• Has a personal and business Facebook accounts
• Has a business twitter account which she doesnʼt touch but tells her staff about content to post
"I'm finally digital, now I'm ready for my art business to be."
Lesson 3:
Sketching Experiences
and managing scope
In this lesson… • You will understand the basics requirements for
preparing and hosting a collaborative sketching session.!• You will learn the basic outline of a process to facilitate
collaborative sketching and a basic structure for synthesizing ideas that come out of a collaborative design session.!
• You will synthesize ideas generated by others for use in future product planning!
What’s the difference between sketching and drawing?
• Drawing: The art or skill or making such pictures or diagrams!
• Sketching: Give a brief account or general outline of!
Only you can prevent “brainstorms”
• The most important thing to remember when running a session is that the quality of what you put into preparing will reflect itself in what comes out of the session!
• If you go in and throw blank paper around and say “lets draw the new product” – you will get blank paper of a generic product out of it. !
Preparing a good “brief”
Just like on a secret spy mission, a good briefing should have:!!• Intelligence: from the competition (herein referred to as
the enemy) audience, market and/or industry!• Dossier(s): Your personas from the last lesson!• State of Affairs: Where you are today (if anywhere) !• The Assignment: A set of experiences you want them to
redesign during the session !!
Framing the Assignment(s)
• Pick a Persona!• Pick an important task (something the user
will accomplish)!• Describe the personaʼs completion of the
task (as the world is today)!• Draft the assignment for the session!
Example: Current Situation: Joan is a professional artist who orders the same supplies on a regular basis. Today she manually orders monthly and on an as needed basis through Dickblick.com. She manages her business through spreadsheets and a variety of paper based methods. Much of the rest of her life is now online and she is interested in a new way, but hasnʼt heard of such a thing for artists like her.!!Your Mission: Work with your team to envision a product experience for Joan to manage and execute her monthly art supply purchases online. For this first task, letʼs start with Joan hearing about this new product on a site like Facebook, investigating it and signing up to use it for the first time.!
Exercise 3 Write a short scenario for each of your GA personas. !!If time allows, we will vote on one scenario to sketch through.!
What Happens after the Brief?
• Brief (5 Min)!• Sketch Individually (10 min)!• Group Sketch (15 min)!• Present to Room (5 min per group)!!
Fortune Favors the Bold
Bring in Friends: Ok so you are sitting there saying, I am one person, no team. Thatʼs ok! Invite some friends. It wonʼt be exactly ideal BUT I bet you get something out of it.!!Bring in Users: This exercise is excellent with an internal team. But bringing users into a room and doing this together can be an amazing way to unlock insight and bring new ideas to life. But I will warn you it takes careful planning and excellent moderation.!!
What is Scope and Why Should you care?
Scope = What we all agreed to do
Preparing to Scope
• Truth #1 Some of the ideas that came out of the session will be bad !
• Truth #2 Someone will have to make a call!• Truth #3 Not all important features will have
been captured.!
Understanding Prioritization
Brandʼs Prioritization:!
ü Meets Competitive/Industry or Regulatory Bar!
ü Meets Contractual Obligation!ü Availability of Resources or
Partners!ü Budget to Produce!
User Prioritization:!
ü Appropriate for my life!ü Relevant to me!ü Within reach in price and
availability!
What measurement is fair?!!• High: Must have and would consider holding launch until I get it!• Medium: Is pretty essential but launch is priority over it!• Low: Nice to have but not essential!
A format for prioritizing:
• Allows for dual prioritization!• Allows for phase designation outside of
prioritization!• Indicates cost/time per feature or idea (optional)!
If things get messy: Get out the monopoly money. Each stakeholder gets an even cut of the phase 1 budget and has to buy the features and functions they want. It will get interesting.!
Feature or Idea!
Brand (H,M,L)! User (H,M,L)! Phase Decision!
Cost/Hours to Produce!
Insert! Insert! Insert! Insert! Insert!!
Example: MusicLocal Feature or Idea! Brand (H,M,L)! User (H,M,L)! Phase Decision!
Mobile Site: Upload of Pictures!
Low! High! Beta Phase 2 (watch traffic to decide if functionality is implemented in phase 2 release)!
Website: Multi picture uploading during posting process!
High! High! Phase 1!
But wait! there’s more...
Than I can cover in 3 hours. But now you know the right place to start.
