Session type: Main Conference Talk

“The Spatial Turn” is a term used to describe an intellectual movement that emphasises place and space in social science and the humanities. It is closely linked with quantitative and geo-spatial analyses of history, literature, cartography, and the communication arts. In this talk, the presenters take turns mapping the evolution of thinking in the community of IA practice along the lines of this Spatial Turn in adjacent fields, and advocate for a substantive revision to the standard Ontology / Taxonomy / Choreography model for explaining information architecture in light of what our colleagues already know and benefit from knowing.

We have the difficult task of solving enterprise problems, often without having direct access to end users or understanding the domain we are designing for. When we do talk to end users, there is an expectation of subject matter knowledge and a respect for their domain before asking a single question. Additionally, organizational resistance makes traditional research methods unrealistic. Not all hope is lost: there are ways you can get a base level of knowledge and design for the enterprise without talking to a single user. We’ll walk through five research and information architecture approaches available to learn the domain, the application, and who your users are. We’ll also discuss how to use those findings so you can successfully design for the enterprise without performing typical user research methods.

In some ways, this talk is a simple one, designed to provide a single solution to a core problem facing all us UXers: Too many project managers, product managers, project sponsors, and so on balk at the idea of performing ANY user research. Two key objections arise when user research is proposed:

• "Our users don't have time to go to a focus group or a conference room and spend hours listening to someone or doing inane exercises."
• "We can't spend tons of project time for six months just fiddling around with talking to users...who need to be doing their jobs, by the way."
• To cut through this barrier, I came up with the method I call ""5:15."" Put simply, it involves asking a person to commit to answering five questions in only 15 minutes.

Almost no one can spend two hours out of their workday talking to a user experience researcher; almost everyone has 15 minutes. Even asking someone for an hour of their time seems excessive, especially in enterprise settings. However, that request for 15 minutes seems innocuous. We'll look at how these questions work well, how you can gain insights easily, and why you should never take NO to research plans as an answer.

As UX Researchers, our job is not over when the observations are done. In fact, that’s when the most important part of our job is just beginning. A key finding from a research study is only actionable if it’s shared in a meaningful way that grabs the attention of your stakeholders and team members. How are you going to make sure to tell the end user’s story in a way that creates empathy so the right design decisions are made? For those that could not observe the research first-hand, we have a responsibility to relay the emotions, not just the findings, that were expressed during the research. If we do our job well, we can transport them to that user’s environment. Storytelling makes this possible by creating an emotional impact, which gets the listener to actually feel a user’s pain and motivate them to take corrective action. Come to this talk to learn more about the best ways to share the stories from UX research and different ways to present research data. I’ll cover different ways to learn people’s stories, how to decide what stories to tell, and how you can actually tell those stories in a meaningful way.

The making of a truly connected city via their State Departments, Organizations & more. How Information Architecture may help State Government Agencies to push the envelope and deliver unforgettable, Citizen-Centric experiences? How to design a seamless journey across Departments, Bureaus and more ensuring a comprehensive Content Authoring layer that grows organically while more and more organizations join an ecosystem? What are the challenges while designing a framework that directly impact the life of 11 million constituents? Get in touch with the journey that started 2 years ago with the State of Ohio and see what's happening with a program that is being fueled mostly by Information Architecture. Understand the past, the present and envision the future of a truly integrated Citizen Experience.