Joe Lamantia.com

I’m post­ing slides for my ‘Under­stand­ing Frame­works’ por­tion of the Beyond Find­abil­ity work­shop on strate­gic prac­tices just given at the 2010 IA Sum­mit.  This por­tion of the full-day pro­gram empha­sizes under­stand­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing the com­mon things that make up a design frame­work, con­cen­trat­ing on the sim­ple struc­ture that design­ers need to grasp in order to cre­ate their own effec­tive frame­works for solv­ing design chal­lenges. I hope you find it infor­ma­tive and useful!

I’ve posted the slides from my tuto­r­ial / work­shop Design For Goals at JBoye 09 on slideshare: they’re embed­ded below.

The struc­ture for this tuto­r­ial is part method review (on how to under­stand people’s goals in a struc­tured way), and part shar­ing of re-usable pat­terns found after research­ing goals.   Since the con­text of ori­gin for both the goals and pat­terns was com­plex inter­na­tional finance, some trans­la­tion of the raw mate­ri­als and exam­ples and the syn­the­sized pat­terns into a realm closer to home for ordi­nary peo­ple is likely in order.

As you’re going through the slides, I sug­gest using your own activ­i­ties that involve infor­ma­tion find­ing and mak­ing sub­stan­tial finan­cial deci­sions as a ref­er­ence.  Not all the exam­ples that I selected as the basis of exer­cises dur­ing the tuto­r­ial made across the cul­tural bar­rier between North Amer­ica and North­ern Europe: I was sur­prised at how many peo­ple (in a pro­fes­sional audi­ence) have never bought house or car…  Which proves yet again that this is one of the areas for user expe­ri­ence design to work on as a discipline.

And as we had a small, noisy, and rather warm room right after lunch, I should say big thanks to all the par­tic­i­pants and vol­un­teers — every­one — who made an effort to engage.

Even design edu­ca­tion is a work-in-progress, it seems.

So many good books come out every year — even in the design and tech­nol­ogy fields — that it’s hard to ‘make a selec­tion’ as they say in Europe. To help through the dif­fi­cult choices, let me sug­gest two new user expe­ri­ence books worth adding to your library.

Mod­u­lar Web Design: Cre­at­ing Reusable Com­po­nents for User Expe­ri­ence Design and Doc­u­men­ta­tion, by Nathan Cur­tis, of eight­shapes fame. Com­po­nents, frame­works, and mod­u­lar­ity are near and dear to my heart (when applied in the right times and places for design pur­poses), so I can say with con­fi­dence that Mod­u­lar Web Design is the best explo­ration of the what, how and why of mod­u­lar design cur­rently avail­able. It should change the way you think about archi­tect­ing expe­ri­ences of all kinds, and — if you’re on board already — help you put this approach into prac­tice with clear exam­ples, advice, and guidance.

Card Sort­ing: Design­ing Usable Cat­e­gories, from the good peo­ple at Rosen­feld Media. Card Sort­ing is a thor­ough treat­ment of one of the most flex­i­ble, afford­able, and light­weight meth­ods in the user expe­ri­ence toolkit. Use my tool, but for chap­ter and verse on card sort­ing, read Donna Spencer’s book.

Buy both, and enjoy!

I’ve posted my slides and mate­ri­als from the Beyond Find­abil­ity work­shop Andrew Hin­ton, Livia Labate, Matthew Milan and I put on at the IA Sum­mit in Mem­phis recently.

This set of mate­ri­als addresses some of the most impor­tant ques­tions for prac­ti­tion­ers con­sid­er­ing a framework-based approach to design: why frame­warks mat­ter for user expe­ri­ence and inter­ac­tion design, what frame­works are use­ful for, and how you can work with them effectively.

Why *do* frame­works mat­ter? As I’m argu­ing, look around and you’ll see pro­found shifts chang­ing the struc­tural makeup of the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment, the con­texts and bound­aries of the expe­ri­ences, and the role of pro­fes­sional designers.

For design­ers, very com­pli­cated and inter­est­ing prob­lems are on the way: think of Mike Kuniavsky’s work defin­ing some of the fun­da­men­tal con­cepts behind the ‘smart things’ that will inhabit this new design envi­ron­ment, such as infor­ma­tion shad­ows and ser­vice avatars. It’s plain that this world will require new tools, and I believe frame­works are part of that toolkit. (See my col­umn Every­ware: Design for the Ubiq­ui­tous Expe­ri­ence for ongo­ing perspective.)

And check out the slides for the rest of the work­shop

Noth­ing bet­ter than blues, bar­be­cue, and Build­ing Blocks!

In case you couldn’t make it to Ams­ter­dam for EuroIA 2008, or if you were in town but pre­ferred to stay out­side in the warmth of a sunny Sep­tem­ber Sat­ur­day than ven­ture into the mar­velous Tsuchin­ski the­ater, I’ve posted the slides from my talk Frame­works are the Future of Design.
Enjoy!

The recent launches of Ubiq­uity (Mozilla Labs) and Chrome (Google) show how sexy it is to be mod­u­lar on the web, from the user expe­ri­ence [Ubiq­uity], to basic appli­ca­tion archi­tec­ture of the browser [Chrome]. This shouldn’t be a sur­prise to any­one, but it’s not some­thing I hear much about in the user expe­ri­ence com­mu­nity. The frag­men­ta­tion of the web into a ver­i­ta­ble bliz­zard of ser­vices, feeds, wid­gets, and API’s that cre­ate tidal waves of portable and sharable socially rich objects makes think­ing about mod­u­lar­ity indis­pens­able. In all design con­texts.
It’s time the user expe­ri­ence com­mu­nity embraced this way of think­ing, not least because it has excel­lent pedi­gree. Fifty years ago, in his famous talk There’s Plenty of Room At the Bot­tom, physi­cist Richard Fey­man said, “What I want to talk about is the prob­lem of manip­u­lat­ing and con­trol­ling things on a small scale.” His point was sim­ple: think about *all* the lev­els of scale and struc­ture that are part of the world, from very small to very large. Feyn­man wasn’t talk­ing about design­ing ser­vices and expe­ri­ences for the web or the wider realm of inte­grated expe­ri­ences(nice to see the com­mu­nity pick­ing up my ter­mi­nol­ogy…), but his mes­sage still applies. Work­ing, think­ing and design­ing at [sm]all lev­els of scale means doing it mod­u­larly.
The micro­for­mats com­mu­nity has under­stood this mes­sage for a long time, and is very suc­cess­ful at cre­at­ing small, use­ful, mod­u­lar things.
So how are you think­ing mod­u­larly about user experience?

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!

Boxes and Arrows just pub­lished Enhanc­ing Dash­board Value and User Expe­ri­ence, part 5 of the build­ing blocks series that’s been run­ning since last year. This install­ment cov­ers how to include high-value social and con­ver­sa­tional capa­bil­i­ties into por­tal expe­ri­ences built on top of archi­tec­tures man­aged with the build­ing blocks. Enhanc­ing Dash­board Value and User Expe­ri­ence also pro­vides an explicit user expe­ri­ence vision for por­tals, meta­data and user inter­face rec­om­men­da­tions, and as tips on mak­ing por­tals eas­ier to use and man­age / admin­is­trate.

Thanks again to all the good peo­ple who vol­un­teer their time to make Boxes and Arrows such a high qual­ity publication!

Quick update on spring con­fer­ences: I’m speak­ing at Blogtalk 2008 in Cork (Ire­land) Feb­ru­ary , and the 2008 IA Sum­mit in Miami (SOBE — it’s sort of the US, but not entirely…) in April. This is my first Blogtalk con­fer­ence! I’m look­ing for­ward to meet­ing some new peo­ple and get­ting closer to the social soft­ware com­mu­nity.
At Blogtalk, my ses­sion is titled “The DIY Future: What Hap­pens When Every­one Designs Social Media? Prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions for han­dling new eth­i­cal dilem­mas“
Here’s an excerpt of the descrip­tion:
Both tra­di­tional design pro­fes­sion­als, and the grow­ing ranks of DIY design­ers, must be pre­pared to address the increased eth­i­cal com­plex­ity of the inte­grated expe­ri­ences of the future. This pre­sen­ta­tion will share prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions for the design and archi­tec­ture of eth­i­cally sound social media using famil­iar expe­ri­ence design meth­ods and tech­niques.
Full details for the ses­sion and the rest of the pro­gram are avail­able at the Blogtalk site. I’m fol­low­ing Salim Ismail’s open­ing keynote. (Note to orga­niz­ers: No pres­sure in that at all, thanks…)

At the IA Sum­mit, my ses­sion is “Effec­tive IA For Enter­prise Por­tals: The Build­ing Blocks Design Frame­work”. If you’ve been read­ing the series of arti­cles on the build­ing block in Boxes and Arrows, the talk will tie in nicely. If you’re new to the build­ing blocks or they’re out­side your prob­lem space, con­sider this a great look at a design frame­work in action.

Here’s an excerpt of the descrip­tion:
Por­tal design efforts often quickly come to a point where their ini­tial infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture is unable to effec­tively accom­mo­date change and growth in types of users, con­tent, or func­tion­al­ity, thereby low­er­ing the qual­ity of the over­all user expe­ri­ence. This case study style pre­sen­ta­tion will demon­strate how a frame­work of stan­dard­ized infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture build­ing blocks solved these recur­ring prob­lems of growth and change for a series of busi­ness intel­li­gence and enter­prise appli­ca­tion por­tals.
Full details for the ses­sion are avail­able from the IA Sum­mit web­site.
Both con­fer­ences look good. Make sure to say hello in the hallway!

Jumpchart - the online sitemap ser­vice — is about to move from beta to sub­scrip­tion pric­ing.
Any­one who like to try it out, or who wants 3 free months of ser­vice should drop me a line to get an invite code.
Good luck to the Jumpchart team!