Dan Ramsden on World IA Day 2016
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The document discusses an event for World IA Day on February 20th, 2016 in Bristol. Dan Ramsden, who is the creative director for User Experience Architect, tweeted about the event and noted that everyone is an IA.
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Dan Ramsden on World IA Day 2016
- 1. is by Dan Ramsden Everyone an IA. Dan Ramsden, @danramsden Creative director for User Experience Architect Bristol World IA day 20 Feb 2016 #WIAD16
Editor's Notes
- This is my third year speaking at World IA Day. I love this event. I reinforces the sense of community, collaboration and inspiration that makes great IA possible. Two years ago I came here and gave a talk called ‘IAs are designers too’ - I talked about how contributing the IA mindset to design sprints enhances the desirability and feasibility of the ideas you create. Last year I came and said that ‘Everyone is an IA.’ I talked about how everyone creates information architecture, but how, when IA is the result of other design decisions, rather than the result of conscious choices you undermine your ability to manage meaning across context. I wondered what to talk about this year. The theme of ‘information everywhere’ resonates with me. Scale is a challenge we face at the BBC. But I was uncertain. Then I wondered whether that was the thing to talk about - how more information, perversely sometimes leads to more uncertainty. But then I thought whether I should talk about long term planning and strategy - the third prong of our IA fork at the BBC. So this year forms an unexpected trilogy. Instead of me talking I’m here with three colleagues. They’ll talk about the three elements of our UXA practice - doing great IA, supporting others to do IA and advocating planning for longer term strategic design… so I’ll spend a few minutes introducing those themes and worrying about uncertainty.
- Scale is probably our biggest challenge. BBC Digital, the division responsible for our websites, apps and interactive TV deliver experiences to 35m devices every week. We publish, on average 1,500 URLs each day. If you take one BBC website - our catalogue of BBC programmes content across TV and Radio (old broadcast media) we currently have around 3 million 66 thousand pages. If you we to print those pages out the tower of paper would be over 1,000ft high - 304m. It would require a lot of filing cabinets to keep organised. Then if you consider that each of those pages is made of multiple components, information and data sources, assets… the tower gets taller and taller.
- But the BBC doesn’t just live online and in apps. We support real world events. We’re part of British life and culture. We know from Pervasive IA that information spaces blend and bleed with the physical world and that the interconnectedness of meaning across our lives is complex.
- This reflects the major challenge we face. When the BBC was founded the most valuable things we could do for our audiences was broadcast - we could take a signal and share it with many. Now our opportunities are different. We have many signals, thousands of pages of content produced every week. Audio, Video, games and digitally native content and experiences. Broadcast is no longer enough. We need information architecture more than ever before.
- The ratio of content producers at the BBC to UX designers and architects is roughly 83:1. When more and more content is funnelled into digital experiences, we need to be even more confident that the architecture that supports those experience is well thought through, especially when we consider that ‘content’ is no longer the opaque type of object that could be broadcast - even broadcasting based on ip open up wonderful opportunities to enrich ‘broadcasting’ with richer, more personalised experiences. We need information architecture more than ever before.
- Our team often talk about Eddie Obeng’s definition of four types of projects. Paint-by-numbers are the kind of projects you can approach with most confidence, you know what to do and how to do it. If you follow the method defined by the problem, you should succeed. “Movie projects” occur when you’re less certain of what to do, but have a good understanding of method. You can explore goals, identify stakeholders, refine and then agree goals. Then you build a team matched to your requiremnts, storyboard out the actions and then execute the plan. Quests are the type of project where you know what you want to achieve, but you’re not sure of how to get there – imagine collecting a band of knights to go in search of the Holy Grail. You know your goal but you need to build commitment, share a definition, select options, implement, review and repeat. The fourth kind of project are foggy – you don’t know what to do or how to do it. This is the type of project that is complex and usually the one where an information architect can be most helpful. In reality it’s rare that any problem we’re faced with is fixed. It’s even rarer that we’re presented with problems, challenges or opportunities that are not interconnected to one another. We deal with dynamic situations that evolve, change and interact with each other. As Schon describes in The Reflective Practitioner, not all problems stand still long enough for you to solve them. We need information architecture more than ever before.
- So how do we help? We do three things: We do Brilliant IA. We ask the right questions before attempting to find an answer. We put the ‘what’ and ‘why’ before the ‘how’. We “architect”. We also support others to create intentional architecture. We ensure that our IA isn’t just the exhaust gas of other product delivery and design process. We share our expertise and encourage every designer at the BBC to make IA intentionally. And we play the long game. We turn up, year and year. We find connections. We build things that are greater than the sum of their parts.
- This is my third year at World IA Day. I’m proud to be a part. Over the last three years this event has helped me to refine my practice and understanding of what it means to be an IA. I think that is one of the two fundamental bits of value that IA brings to any organisation, project or problem. Definition - we make meaning. We define and clarify. And the value of this cannot be understated. I think about those foggy projects - any project that begins without a definition of purpose or methodology and I know it is doomed to fail. These projects remind me of a paradox of standing on the North Pole. You can stand there and travel in any direction with the absolute certainty that you’re going in only one - south. Start a project without an IA and you’re doomed to fail. You’ll head into the long grass. You’ll lose your way. We need information architecture more than ever before.
- The second thing we focus on in ‘dependencies’. Once we have worked on and refined our definition we begin to untangle and define dependencies. We architect systems, and we know that systems deliver value by combining and exploiting inter-related parts. It makes me think of Stewart Brand’s pace layers - how ‘foundations’ provide the basis for success, and that there relationships within systems that we should understand to design and build successful systems.
- This is my third year at World IA Day. And I am proud to be here again, because we need information architecture now more than ever before.