Session type: 45 minute talk

As waves of new technology continue to roll in, it’s critical now more than ever that we spend time and resources to understand the humans involved and their unique paths in life. However, the process of performing qualitative research to understand the essential “why,” is incredibly challenging. Successfully moving from research insights to action within the organization is even more difficult, but is the key to helping build a more human-centered world. In this session, you will learn:

• The causes of vapor research and how to avoid it
• The keys to a successful user research process and effective deliverables
• A framework for building an effective user research practice in your organization

Who should attend? Managers, researchers, designers, product owners, and other IA practitioners looking to understand or improve their qualitative research process and practice.

“Diversity is going to the party. Inclusion is being on the party-planning committee.” [Verna Meyers] Diversity and inclusion are imperative for anyone practicing information architecture. Categories, labels, and complex information spaces being built today will inherit value judgments by those who create them, impacting anyone else coming into contact with the frameworks that are built. On top of that, our society is changing as digital natives approach classification and naming differently from those who came before them. Join in learning what was discovered and built by a dynamic collection of adventurers, thought leaders, teachers, researchers, and other curious folks who explored how Information Architecture should foster diversity and inclusion in complex information spaces. This session is sponsored by the 7th annual Academics and Practitioners Roundtable.

Google has become synonymous with search, and voice platforms like Alexa are changing expectations from lists of potential results to a single "right" answer. In the face of well-performing, well-funded competitors like these, it might be tempting to throw in the towel entirely and assume that building your own site search or app search is no longer necessary. However, in truth, search has never been more important to driving great user experiences than it is today. To start, we'll look through some examples of content and navigational search done well and talk about why they work—for instance, Netflix responding to searches for films they don't currently have available for streaming with automated suggestions of similar films. We'll also look at some missed opportunities—for example, Washington Post not returning any relevant results for a search on "subscription" or "home delivery", or Wolfram|Alpha returning images of a moose when the user searches for pictures of a deer (because, obviously, a moose is part of the deer family!). We'll next discuss the changing audience expectations that users bring with them when they open search on your website or app—and what you can do to meet and exceed those expectations. Finally, we'll take a look into the crystal ball to see what today's technology developments (Voice! AR/VR! Machine Learning! Crypto!) might hold for the future of homegrown search applications.