More IA Summit 2006 Session Reviews
Published: April 14, 2006
The Impact of RIA on Design Processes
Panelists: Jeanine Harriman, Tanya Livingston, Matthew Moroz, Jenica Rangos, and Garrick Schmitt
I didn’t know what to expect from this presentation.
I marked it in my schedule, but can’t remember why. And yet
it turned out to be one of my favorite sessions. The presenters
focused on the long-term impact of RIAs (Rich Internet Applications)
on design and development, and based on their findings, made
some bold statements. For example, they prophesied the death
of the information architect, wireframes, and functional specifications,
and heralded the evolving importance of the interaction designer,
interactive prototypes, and the business-intelligence strategist.
They gave a real-world example in which they compared Ajax
and Flex as the Ninja versus the Sumo, respectively. They talked
about a design process of the future that would combine current
practices to form a best-of-both-worlds process, in which
workflow is central and the interactive prototype acts as the
hub for all ideas. And their conclusion was that designers
should think holistically, stop focusing on pages, and focus
instead on design and data. All in all, the panelists brought
a lot of energy to this presentation and their ideas had their
foundation in real-world experience and practical thinking.
Content Analysis: Methods and Mentoring
Presenter: Chiara Fox
I was initially disappointed in the subject-matter of Chiara’s
presentation. I was hoping to find some insights into analyzing
the content of a complex Web application, but the focus of
this presentation was solely on analyzing the content of a
Web site. However, I spoke with another attendee afterward
who thought the presentation was great and met all expectations.
With that said, Chiara did a great job of explaining a simple,
practical process for cataloging Web sites. She detailed three
primary deliverables: the content audit—a sampling of
content that gives its flavor; the content inventory—a
meticulously detailed accounting of everything on a Web site;
and the content map—a graphical representation of a site.
She included real examples and walked through the steps for
creating each deliverable. She then discussed the analysis
phase that follows data collection and described what she does
with the information she’s collected. Content analysis
is all about patterns and relationships. Interestingly, Chiara
used Microsoft Excel to record her data and produce many of
the deliverables. Ironically, this made me think she knew what
she was doing; more often than not, fancy tools don’t get you
much further than a basic spreadsheet.
IA: Not Just for the Web Anymore
Panelists: Dan Brown, Seth Earley, James Melzer, James Robertson, and Lou Rosenfeld
This presentation was really about getting IA out of the
closet by applying its methods to the strategic problems that
face the C-level executives running an enterprise. Far beyond
issues of just Web content alone, the applications and challenges
of Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA) deal with an enterprise’s
overall information management strategy and require input from
and collaboration across many different areas of expertise,
including record management and data standardization. Of all
the sessions I attended, this was the least practical and rightly
so. EIA is cutting edge, a big chunk to bite off, potentially
extremely valuable, and requires progressive thinking and evangelism,
which is what this group of presenters was all about.
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