Boxes and Arrows Podcast

In this episode Chris Baum speaks with Donna Spencer, Lynne Polischuik, Justin Spencer and Erin Jo Richey at the 2012 IA Summit about their interactive panel discussion Taking the plunge: Diving into Indie UX. They share practical and personal considerations of being an indie designer, including how to to get over the fear of making the jump, where and how to find clients, managing the business side of design and what it’s like to work alone.

In this podcast, Jeff Parks talks with Jessica DuVerneay, the Global Director for the first annual World Information Architecture Day, held in February 2012. Jessica shares her experience of organizing a global event to celebrate and share the IA discipline.

Chris Baum talks with Patrick Quattlebaum at the 2012 IA Summit in New Orleans about his insights about holism vs. atomism and tools that designers can use to help companies see and develop experiences across channels.

Jeff Parks talks to Boxes and Arrows founder Christina Wodtke about the past and future of the magazine. Her key message is that designers still need to get their ideas out into the community.

Mr. McGovern, who will be teaching a Masterclass series in Canada on the importance of task management this November, discusses several of the key findings in his new book and how such knowledge can lead to better designs for all users.

In this session aimed at Information Architects interested in deploying social networking in organization, Manya Kapikian, Kevin Lynch, and Michael Patterson expose 11 hard lessons learned from the pilot that apply to this relatively undefined territory.

Aaron Hursman introduces introduces a new user research technique that engages research participants. Learn how you can use this game approach to produce rich, quantifiable data.

Through a website case study, they cover what worked and what didn't for testing content early in the project—from concepts to prototypes—to inform content strategy and tactics.

With boundaries between the abstract digital world and the real physical world becoming blurred, we need new approaches to wayfinding, information scent and navigation.

This calls to the next generation of user researchers to apply quantitative methods to our study of user behavior on the web.

User experience designers need to stop thinking about interfaces as dumb control panels for manipulating machines and data and start thinking about them as human beings.

They focus on activities such as Laddering, Game play, Storytelling and Triading that can help expose opportunities for radical innovation and designing products that people can’t live without.

They discuss how this technique will change your perception of personas, no matter what you think of them now, and how it can showcase how real people are behaving related to your brand, product, or project.

You'll learn about the underlying causes, characteristics and consequences of flow, how flow is related to emotional design, and how to take user goals into consideration when designing for it.

He shows how ORS can articulate a distinct information architecture role, shaping an IA practice, and how we align ourselves and our teams for growth, accountability, and discovery within our discipline.

What does location mean for UX? How does information architecture and design synchronize with urban architecture? How does mobile communication and web culture impact the streetscape? Are we living in facets of the same virtual city or does location still constrain us?

You'll see the benefits of formulating a solid experience vision. And, you'll learn why it's critical to shift your organization's culture past risk-aversion.

Adam Polansky shares how to shift the focus of your presentations to you, the storyteller, rather than living or dying by the content of your slides—and in the process getting your ideas into someone else's head more effectively.

Along with conference speakers, attendees share their thoughts of the IA Summit, its people, ideas explored, or whatever else they want to share... but they only have 5 minutes each to do so.

The most successful social media experiences will be the ones that understand how our offline and online worlds connect and interact.

Sharing the Capability Strategy Template, and Experience Strategy Map, Richard Dalton and Rob Weening look at improving the experience for all users online.

Creating meaningful digital experiences is a complicated business. Fluctuating requirements, unexpected technical limitations, and stringent branding rules can make experience design feel like an exercise in compromise. In this hands-on session.

Derek helps attendees gain new insight about accessibility as part of user experience; leaving participants walking away inspired—and ready to inject accessibility into the web.

By designing influence, user experience pros can increase their impact, create better experiences for people, and help their organizations succeed.

Perhaps our field is too young to have a mature theory, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a set of immutable principles that give us a sense of quality in IA.

The architecture of piles suggests an intriguing direction for information architecture—into the ad-hoc, fluid, and informal.

The American Greetings team has learned the hard way what works, and what doesn't, when educating people across the organization about integrating UX into a a wide range of strategic initiatives.

In this straightforward, practical session about search and browse interfaces, Greg Nudelman talks about improving the search experience from the customer's perspective- a perspective that few resources discussing search focus on.

Having a shared vision understood by all team members is critical to product design. Design tenets support and extend a core vision. They add character and definition to a vision, providing direction and helping product stay true to a clear vision.

Looking to get more insight from usability testing more quickly, cheaply, and with fewer people and headaches?

Looking to get more insight from usability testing more quickly, cheaply, and with fewer people and headaches?

Peter explores what's needed to practice successful search-centered information architecture, how newer means of input and output are reshaping what's possible, and shares inspiring examples across different types of applications and industries.

Drawing from her experiences at Vodafone, she shares how to educate non-UX people about human-centred design, participate in hackdays and barcamps, and add value to design competitions and challenges normally aimed at developers.

So you've designed a great product, fixed a stack of usability problems and spent a fortune on marketing. The only problem is, people aren't using it.

Finding answers may not be easy, but asking the right questions can lead you in the right direction.

You'll learn how to make the users the ultimate stakeholder, replacing the traditional stakeholder review with a user-centred review process.

From this session, you'll gain an understanding of the patterns and how to select which ones to use for your content.

A bodystorm is a live presentation, like a short play, in which user experience people improvise several scenes with the audience asking questions; leading to a better understanding of the problem and solution space.

With a multi-disciplinary team that gathers constant input from users, better experiences can be created based on usability testing and skills.

The web is more important to business than ever, yet business leaders often remain uncomfortable with what goes into making a website successful.

Information is bleeding out of computer screens and into the real world; he convergence of physical spaces and digital devices We have different names for this: ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence, and more.

Looking for more effective ways to communicate your research and designs? Kevin Wick says one way to do that is to stop creating static, paper-based wireframes and to start creating browser-based, interactive prototypes.

What are the differences between online and offline conversations, if any? As we create digital spaces involving social media, how can we support the conversations happening in those spaces?

Card sorting is a popular technique used by Information Architects to help understand how a product or website should be organized.

Colleeen suggests us we can overcome our fears of migrations, redesign, and integration by getting to know our content.

Conversion is key for many web-based businesses, especially those dependent on subscription fees.

To bring clarity and traction to research insights, research and design teams are increasingly using hands-on, visual tools and including other stakeholders in the analysis process.

You don't get a second chance to make a great first impression—and that includes kickoff meetings.

We, as information architects, stand at the crossroads of our profession as a whole.

From every level in the organization, what’s above you can look strategic and what’s below you tends to look like tactics. Stepping up to a new level demands sensitivity to and understanding of the important differences between them.