EuroIA2006 Berlin
Olly Wright from MediaCatalyst Amsterdam
The strategic IA
- Strategy
influences and consequences
Who stands to gain and who stands to lose - Why IA and strategy?
defining the product experience
Experience design label
Functional understanding
who are our users and what do they want
client - stakeholder contact
multi-disciplinary - Business, politics and creating a space for strategy
Find out what your bosses boss wants
Ask the dumb questions
Advocate users - read the research - don’t imagine it
Don’t go in with a hidden and set agenda
People decide if they want to believe you first
Cut your losses - Domain level IA
Patterns and rules - IAs as control freaks
Give support and patterns and not rules
Rule with an open hand
Future proof - myth
Flexibility is key
Nothing is built to last - Presentation and visualisation skills
The missing middle step is persuading people
Everybody loves pictures
Design has value at every stage
You can’t draw it unless you understand it
Communicate efficiency - Iterative IA as a tool for business and requirements analysis
Agile development for the web, quick prototypes
Assess and change at every prototype stage
Nothing is fixed
No-one reads wireframes
With iterative development clients give better and earlier feedback
Don’t argue with user tests - use them to guide you at an earlier stage - not a problem to overcome - let the tests guide you instead - Metrics, KPIs and usability in a business context
Choose the right kpis for real business needs and value
Powerful persuasion tool
Pick the key factors and demonstrate the relationship
If you don’t know the effect of everything you do then you are just guessing
Soft metrics and hard figures - business people are looking for the hard kpi
Find successes in usability tests as well as the negative
What people say and what they do
Use a survey and track real behaviour as well
How do you compare usability test resultsLarge scale web based testing to monitor specific task success and track over time for the key tasks
Businesses then understand IA as it connects with what they wan their users to do
Need large sample size and demographic info - Marketing
Seth Godin - tech just gives you a shot at marketing to people
Online is one channel amongst many
We are enmeshed in the web
There are lots of people who remain unconvinced
Tactical and strategic planning - strategic questions the assumptions
Marketing is great at segmentation which is very valuable for creating personas.
Campaigns never seem to fit int our IA framework
More emotional and less functional - Brand strategy is now a part of IA
The experience is the brand
The rise of digital advertising
Think mass - don’t get bogged down in the niche - expand your sources of information
Don’t copy the latest and greatest new thing
Culture as context
Ethical design - accessibility, design is a political act - Business models, money and focusing on the bottom line
Why are you being paid
Appreciate your value to them - follow the money - and give them what they want
Where does your client make their money
Make your strategy work under budget and clients will love it
he higher up you go the more focused on money and figures clients become - Make your assumptions explicit
- Keep an open mind and listen to others problems
- Experience design is too vague a term
- IA as business consultant - we have a wider view
Jonathan