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Frameworks are the Future of IA: A Case Study and Example

September in Amsterdam approaches: in addition to the inevitable mix of clouds, rain, more rain, and tiny slivers of sunlight, September means EuroIA 2008, where yours truly will speak about design frameworks.

In case you can't make the conference, here's a text only summary of my talk. Pictures will follow the presentation - promise!

It's a DIY Future
The Web is shifting to a DIY [Do It Yourself] model of user experience creation, one where people assemble individual combinations of content gathered form elsewhere for expressive, functional, and (many) other purposes. The rapid growth of widgets, the resurgence of enterprise portals, the spread of identity platforms from social network destinations to blogging services, and the rapid increase in the number of public APIs syndicating functionality and data, are all examples of the DIY shift.

Architects of the Future
For design professionals, the defining characteristic of DIY future is co-creation: the participation of a broad spectrum of people in creating experiences. In this new world, the role of designers is to define the tools co-creators use to assemble experiences for themselves and others. These tools will increasingly take the form of design frameworks that define the modular components of familiar structures such as social networks, functional applications, collaboration platforms, personalized dashboards, and management consoles.

Why Frameworks?
Frameworks are the future for three reasons. First, everyone can create sophisticated information structures now, and designers no longer serve as a gateway. Second, the definition of frameworks allows designers to continue to provide valuable services and expertise in a cost effective manner: It's something designers can sell in a commodified digital economy. Third, designers have an good combination of human insight and architecture design skills; this hybrid way of thinking can serve as a differentiator and strength.

One example of the sort of design framework information architects will create more of in the DIY future is the Portal Building Blocks system described herein. Providentially, this design framework addresses many of the problems inherent in the current architectural schema for DIY self-assembled experiences.

History Repeats Itself: The Problem With Portals
The rise and fall of the Web 1.0 portal form offers a useful historical lesson for creators of the new generation of design frameworks underlying DIY self-assembled experiences.

Despite early promises of utility and convenience, portals built with flat portlets could only grow by expanding horizontally. The resulting experience of low-density information architectures was similar to that of navigating postwar suburban sprawl. Like the rapid decline of many once-prosperous suburbs, the inconvenience of these sprawling collections of portlets quickly overwhelmed the value of the content they aggregated.

The common problem that doomed many very different portals to the same fate was the complete lack of any provision for structure, interaction, or connection between the self-contained portlets of the standard portal design framework.
Looking ahead, the co-created experiences of the DIY future will repeat this cycle of unhealthy growth and sprawl - think of all those apps clogging your iPhone's home screen right now - unless we create design frameworks that effectively provide for structure, connection, and interaction.

The Building Blocks - An Example Design Framework
The building block framework is meant to serve as a robust architectural foundation for the many kinds of tools and functionality - participatory, social, collaborative - that support the vision of two-way flows within and across the boundaries of information structures. This means:

• Allow for rapid growth and structural change


• Establish a common language for all co-creation perspectives


• Encourage construction of scalable, reusable structures


• Create high-quality user experiences


• Enable sharing of assets across boundaries


• Enhance social dynamics, such as 2-way conversation flows

The Building Blocks framework defines two types of information architecture components in detail - building blocks (or Containers), and navigation components (or Connectors) - as well as the supporting rules and guidelines that make it possible to assemble complex user experience architectures quickly and effectively.

The Containers and Connectors specifically provide for structure, interaction, and connection at all levels of the information environment; from the user experience - visual design, information design, interaction design, information architecture - to functionality, metadata, business rules, system architecture, administrative processes, and strategic governance.

Case Study: Evolution of an Enterprise Portal Suite

The Building Blocks began life as an internal tool for lowering costs and speeding design during the course of sustained portal work done for a Fortune 100 client. Over a span of ~24 months, the Building Blocks provided an effective framework for the design, expansion, and eventual integration of nearly a dozen distinct portals.

The design framework evolved in response to changes in the audiences, structures, and contents of portals constructed for users in different countries, different operating units, and several organizational levels.

The portal suite went through several stages of evolution and growth:

• Experimentation


• Rapid expansion


• Consolidation & integration


• Stability and continuity


Lessons In Designing Frameworks

Successful co-created experiences - Flickr (commercial) and Wikipedia (non-commercial) - combine deliberate top-down architecture and design with emergent or bottom-up contribution and participation in a new kind of structure Kevin Kelly calls the "hybrid". Frameworks support hybrids!

Hope to see many of you in Amsterdam!

local tags: building_blocks, cocreation, DIY, frameworks, information_architecture, portals, user_experience

Ethics and Design Podcast: Part Deux

The I.A. Podcast (by Jeff Parks of I.A. Consultants and BoxesandArrows podcast fame) just published the second of two interviews discussing research on ethics, design, social media, and conflict.

Play and download the second interview here.

Subscribe to the iTunes and feedburner feeds for the I.A. Podcast here.

These podcasts are based on the Designing Ethical Experiences series I'm writing for UXMatters: watch for publication of the final article later this summer.

Thanks again, Jeff!

local tags: cocreation,, design,, DIY, ethics,, frameworks,, integrated_experiences,, social_networks,

Understanding Juicy Rationalizations: How Designers Make Ethical Choices

Understanding Juicy Rationalizations, part 3 of the Designing Ethical Experiences series, just went live at UXMatters.

Here's the teaser:

From "The Big Chill"

Michael: "I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations."

"They're more important than sex."

Sam: "Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex."

Michael: "Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?"

Designers rationalize their choices just as much as everyone else. But we also play a unique role in shaping the human world by creating the expressive and functional tools many people use in their daily lives. Our decisions about what is and is not ethical directly impact the lives of a tremendous number of people we will never know. Better understanding of the choices we make as designers can help us create more ethical user experiences for ourselves and for everyone.

Understanding Juicy Rationalizations is the first of a pair of articles focused on the ways that individual designers make ethical choices, and how we can improve our choices. This second pair of articles is a bit of eye-opening window into how people make many of the choices in our daily lives - not just design decisions. Or, at least it was for me... Readers will see connections much broader than simply choices we explicitly think of as 'ethical' and / or design related.

The final installment in the Designing Ethical Experiences series is titled Managing the Imp of the Perverse; watch for it sometime soon.

With the publication of these next two articles, the Designing Ethical Experiences series consists of two sets of matched pairs of articles; the first article in each pair framing a problematic real-life situation designers will face, and the second suggesting some ways to resolve these challenges ethically.  

The first pair of articles - Social Media and the Conflicted Future and Some Practical Suggestions for Designing Ethical Experiences - looked at broad cultural and technology trends like social media and DIY / co-creation, suggesting ways to discover and manage likely ethical conflicts within the design process.

It's a nice symmetrical structure, if you dig that sort of thing.  (And what architect doesn't?)

For commuters / multi-taskers / people who prefer listening to reading, Jeff Parks interviewed me on the contents of this second set of articles, which he will publish shortly as a podcast.

Thanks again to the editorial team at UXMatters for supporting my exploration of this very important topic for the future of experience design. In an age when everyone can leverage professional-grade advertising the likes of Spotunner, the ethicality of the expressive tools and frameworks designers create is a question of critical significance for us all.

local tags: design, ethics, methods, psychology, social_media, user_experience

Speaking at EuroIA 2008 In Amsterdam

I'm happy to announce I'm speaking at EuroIA 2008 in Amsterdam, September 26 - 27. My session is titled 'Frameworks Are the Future of IA'. If the exciting title isn't enough to sell you on attending (what's more compelling than a case study on an open structural design framework for self-assembled user experiences and information spaces...?), here's a description:

The Web is shifting to a DIY (Do It Yourself) model of user experience creation, where people assemble individual combinations of content and functionality gathered from many sources to meet their particular needs. The DIY model for creating user experiences offers many benefits in public and consumer settings, and also inside the enterprise. But over time, it suffers many of the same problems that historically made portals unusable and ineffective, including congested designs, poorly planned growth, and inability to accommodate changes in structure and use.

This case study demonstrates a simple design framework of standardized information architecture building blocks that is directly applicable to portals and the DIY model for creating user experiences, in two ways. First, the building blocks framework can help maintain findability, usability and user experience quality in portal and DIY settings by effectively guiding growth and change. Second, it is an example of the changing role of IA in the DIY world, where we now define the frameworks and templates other people choose from when creating their own tools and user experiences.

Using many screenshots and design documents, the case study will follow changes in the audiences, structures, and contents of a suite of enterprise portals constructed for users in different countries, operating units, and managerial levels of a major global corporation. Participants will see how the building blocks provided an effective framework for the design, expansion, and integration of nearly a dozen distinct portals assembled from a common library of functionality and content.

This case study will also explore the building blocks as an example of the design frameworks IA's will create in the DIY future. We will discuss the goals and design principles that inspired the building blocks system, and review its evolution over time.

The conference program includes some very interesting sessions, and Adam Greenfield (of Everyware reknown) is the keynote.

Amsterdam is lovely in September, but if you need more reason to come and say hello, Picnic 08 - with a stellar lineup of speakers - is just before EuroIA.

local tags: amsterdam, building_blocks, design, diy, euro_ia_2008, framework, integrated_experiences, systems_thinking

Obama Crowdsources Election Campaign Funding

The NYTimes reports today in Obama Opts Out of Public Financing for Campaign that Senator Obama

"...raised $95 million in February and March alone, most of it, as his aides noted Thursday, in small contributions raised on the Internet. More than 90 percent of the campaign's contributions were for $100 or less, said Robert Gibbs, the communications director to Mr. Obama."

Obama's success raising money with small donations is a clear indicator that crowdsourcing is a viable approach to financing what is probably the most expensive and demanding type of electoral contest ever seen - a U.S. presidential election campaign.

The old ways aren't going away just yet - witness McCain's more conventional reliance on a mixed palette of public finance and unlimited donations to the RNC - but successful crowdsourcing of an election effort of this scale and duration proves other models - networked, distributed / decentralized, bottom-up, etc. - can be effective in the most challenging situations.

"Instead of forcing us to rely on millions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, you've fueled this campaign with donations of $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford," he told his supporters in the video message. "And because you did, we've built a grassroots movement of over 1.5 million Americans."

And that's a good thing. The relative electoral stalemate we've had in the U.S. for the last decade echoes the trench warfare phase of World War One; grinding battles of attrition between nominally distinct combatants that consume much, accomplish little, and yield no substantive change for the people involved.

The next step is to apply this networked / crowdsourced / distributed financing model to support a campaign by someone outside the (distressingly) complacent major parties. We've managed to change the feeding mechanism, now we have to change the animal it feeds.

local tags: crowdsourcing, elections, networks, obama, politics

Ethics and Design Interview Live

The I.A. Podcast (by Jeff Parks of I.A. Consultants and BoxesandArrows podcast fame) just published the first of two interviews we recorded recently, talking about ethics, design, social media, and conflict.

Play and download the interview here.

Subscribe to the iTunes and feedburner feeds for the I.A. Podcast here.

Stay tuned for the second interview!

Thanks Jeff!

local tags: cocreation, design, ethics, integrated_experiences, social_networks

Spring Reading

The other day, over a hot corned beef sandwich from the 2nd Avenue Deli, someone asked what I'm reading now. As usual, I ended up mumbling a few half complete book titles (not sure why, but I always have difficulty remembering on the spot - probably because I've got four or five things going at once...).

To help fill out the list, and because I'm still doing most of my writing via other outlets, here's a snapshot of the books scattered around my house. It's divided into helpful categories, including 'Books I'd Like To Start Reading Soon, But Shouldn't, Because I'm Still Reading Other Stuff', and 'Books I've Been Meaning to Read Sometime Soon, But Probably Won't Won't Get To In The Near Future.'

Books I'm Reading Now

• This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Daniel Levitin


• Critical Mass: How One Things Leads To Another. Philip Ball


• Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Adam Greenfield


• Pulse. The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things. Robert Fresnay


• The River Cottage Meat Book. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall


• In Praise Of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire. Mike Davis

Books I'd Like To Start Reading Soon, But Shouldn't, Because I'm Still Reading Other Stuff

• Maximum City. Suketu Mehta


• Atlas of Novel Tectonics. Reiser + Umemoto


• Failure: Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices. Various


• Istanbul: Memories of A City. Orhan Pamuk


• Uncany Networks. Geert Lovink


• The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein

Books Recently Finished

• Sailing to Byzantium. Robert Silverberg


• A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisine. Anthony Bourdain


• The Laws of Simplicity. John Maeda


• Buda's Wagon. Mike Davis


• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Michael Pollan


• The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy. Sasha Issenberg


• The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. Mark Roberts, Jeff Vandermeer

Books I've Been Meaning to Read Sometime Soon, But Probably Won't Get To In The Near Future

• A Thousand Plateaus. Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari


• Hackers and Painters. Paul Graham


• Leonardo's Laptop. Ben Schneiderman


• Emergence. Stephen Johnson


• In The Bubble. John Thackarra


• The Direction of Cities. John Guinther


• Home: A Short History of an Idea. Witold Rybczynsk

Bonus: Things I'm probably Never Going to Start / Finish Reading

• Women Fire and Dangerous Things. George Lakoff


• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

local tags: books, reading